Dr. Tanja Karp received her Dipl.-Ing. (M.S.) and Dr.-Ing. (Ph.D.) degrees in Electrical Engineering from Hamburg University of Technology, Germany, in 1993 and 1997, respectively.  She is currently an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, and a U.S. Fulbright Scholar at the University of South Africa (UNISA).  Prior to joining the faculty at Texas Tech in 2000, Dr. Karp was a Senior Research and Teaching Associate at the Institute of Computer Engineering at Mannheim University, Germany.  Her research interests include digital signal processing, multicarrier communications, and STEM education.  She has published over 75 journal and conference articles in these areas.

Since 2005, Dr. Karp has been involved in K-12 engineering outreach geared at attracting more and better qualified students into engineering careers and increasing the retention of engineering undergraduate students.  She has taken a leadership role in among her colleagues at the university in organizing high school student summer camps at Texas Tech University and has implemented a pipeline of engineering activities for K-12 students during the academic year.  She annually organizes the Get Excited About Robotics (GEAR) competition in Lubbock and a Virtual GEAR competition to enable international participation without the cost of travel.  During this 8-week long competition students from elementary and middle schools design LEGO NXT robots to autonomously perform tasks described in the annually changing challenge.  Participants are mentored by engineering freshmen enrolled in a Service Learning introductory engineering course which she regularly teaches.  Since 2006 the Lubbock GEAR competition has grown from a single participating school to over 1200 students from 75 schools and attracts a large percentage of female participants and of students from low socioeconomic background.