She is the first woman ever to win the prestigous award.

Jackson tops the list of the more than two dozen African Americans who will receive recognition at the Black Engineer of the Year Awards Conference, which will be presented during special ceremonies at 8 pm, February 10, at the Morris A. Mechanic Theatre in Baltimore.

The conference is sponsored by US Black Engineer & Information Technology Magazine, Lockheed Martin Corporation, and the Council of Engineering Deans of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

The conference, which will be held February 8-10 at the Baltimore Convention Center, is considered to be one of the most comprehensive career and professional development events for black executives, professionals, and college and high school students.

This year more than 7,000 people are expected to attend the conference and take part in the Career Fair, workshops, and networking events.

Jackson’s selection was announced by Tyrone D. Taborn, chairmain and CEO of USBE & IT Magazine’s publisher, Career Communications Group Inc. In the announcement, he said, "Dr. Jackson is a distinguished theoretical physicist with a long string of ‘firsts’ to her credit. She is the first woman to win the prestigous Black Engineer of the Year award, the first African American on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the first to head that agency, and the first black woman to earn a Ph.D. at MIT in any discipline, among other achievements."

"The gender gap in technical fields is abysmal," Taborn added.

"Women have never received more than 18 percent of the engineering bachelor’s degrees awarded in the U.S. in any year. And the ethnic divide in engineering is worse: only 3,000 to 4,000 African Americans annually out of 64,000-plus graduates.