Women in Signal Processing Event at ICASSP 2021 LIVE

Inaugural Keynote Talk: Presented by Kathy Susan Land, 2021 IEEE President and CEO

Susan K. (Kathy) Land is a Program Manager for the U.S. Department of Defense’s Missile Defense Agency. She has more than 30 years of industry experience in the application of software engineering methodologies, the management of information systems, and leadership of software development teams.

Kathy served as the 2018 Vice President, IEEE Technical Activities. She also served two additional terms on the IEEE Board of Directors as Division VIII Director/Delegate in 2011 and 2012 and as Division V Director/Delegate in 2014 and 2015. She was President of the IEEE Computer Society in 2009. Kathy was a member of the IEEE-USA Board of Directors in 2013 and 2016.

Kathy has been an active member of the IEEE Standards Association for more than 20 years and served as the Computer Society Vice President for Standards in 2004. She was the recipient of the 2007 IEEE Standards Medallion.

An IEEE Fellow, Kathy is the author and co-author of a number of texts and publications supporting software engineering principles and the practical application of software process methodologies. She is an IEEE-HKN Member and IEEE Computer Society Richard E. Merwin Award recipient.

Invited Talk: Presented by Vandi Verma, NASA Mobility and Robotic Systems, Chief Engineer Mars 2020 Perseverance Robotic Operations

Dr. Vandi Verma is the Chief Engineer for Robotic Operations for the Mars Perseverance Mission, and the Assistant Section Manager for Mobility and Robotics Systems at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She specializes in space robotics, autonomous robots and robotic operations. She has worked on a number of Space Robotics and Artificial Intelligence research and technology development tasks and has designed, developed, and operated rovers on Mars, the Arctic, Antarctica, and the Atacama Desert. For her work she has received over 50 NASA honors and awards including the NASA exceptional achievement medal.

She holds a Ph.D. in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University and has been working at NASA since 2004. She works on new space robotics capabilities from early design, through development, testing and launch, to landing and surface operations. As Assistant Section Manager for Mobility and Robotics she helps lead about 150 JPL roboticists developing new technology for future missions and working on a variety of JPL robotic missions. The Mars Ingenuity Helicopter technology is an example of the kind of innovation developed by JPL Robotics.

Since 2008 she has been driving rovers on Mars (Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity, and Perseverance) and operating the robotic arm and sampling system. She has designed and programmed flight software that runs onboard Curiosity and Perseverance, and simulation software used in operations. She works on autonomous robotic arm positioning and autonomous science targeting for Perseverance. She is a Helicopter Integration Engineer for the Mars Ingenuity helicopter.

Keynote Talk: Presented by Leah Jamieson, IEEE President and CEO 2007, IEEE Signal Processing Society President 1998-99

Leah H. Jamieson is Ransburg Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University, John A. Edwardson Dean Emerita of the College of Engineering, and holds a courtesy appointment in Purdue’s School of Engineering Education. She is a past president and CEO of IEEE.

Jamieson is co-founder and past director of the Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) program, for which she was a co-recipient of NAE’s Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education. She was an inaugural recipient of the NSF’s Director’s Award for Distinguished Teaching Scholars and has been recognized with the IEEE James H. Mulligan, Jr. Education Medal, IEEE Richard M. Emberson Award for contributions to IEEE’s Technical Activities, IEEE Education Society’s Harriet B. Rigas Outstanding Woman Engineering Educator Award, and the Anita Borg Institute’s Women of Vision Award for Social Impact.

Jamieson served as 2007 President and CEO of IEEE, leading initiatives in strategic planning and public visibility for the engineering profession. She was 1998-99 President of the IEEE Signal Processing Society, 2003 IEEE Vice- President for Technical Activities, 2005 IEEE Vice-President for Publication Services and Products, and 2010-11 chair of strategic planning for the IEEE Educational Activities Board. From 2012-16 she served as President of the IEEE Foundation, the philanthropic partner of the IEEE.

An advocate and activist promoting the success of women in engineering and computer science, Jamieson has served as co-chair of the Computing Research Association (CRA) Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research and as chair of the Board of Trustees of the Anita Borg Institute.

Jamieson holds a BS mathematics from MIT, PhD in electrical engineering and computer science from Princeton, and honorary doctorates from Drexel and NJIT. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an Eminent Member of IEEE-HKN, and Fellow of IEEE and ASEE.

Panel Topic: IEEE SPS and WIE leaders' vision for promoting diversity and inclusion in Technical activities

Panelists

Ahmed Tewfik, IEEE Signal Processing Society President

Ahmed H. Tewfik received his B.Sc. degree from Cairo University, Cairo Egypt, in 1982 and his M.Sc., E.E. and Sc.D. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, in 1984, 1985 and 1987, respectively. He is the Cockrell Family Regents Chair in Engineering and the Chairman of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas, Austin. As Chair, he is credited with substantially increasing the funding of the Department, establishing public-private partnerships and increasing the hands-on, industry, and entrepreneurial experiences of its students. He was the E. F. Johnson Professor of Electronic Communications with the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Minnesota until September 2010. Dr. Tewfik worked at Alphatech, Inc. and served as a consultant to several companies, including MTS Systems, Inc., Eden Prairie, MN; Emerson-Rosemount, Inc., Eden Prairie, MN; CyberNova, Milipitas, CA; Macrovision, Santa Clara, CA; Visionaire Technology, Fremont, CA; Ipsos, New York; InterDigital Communications, King of Prussia, PA; Keyeye Communications, Sacramento, CA; Transoma Medical, Arden Hills, MN and St. Jude Medical, Minnetonka, MN. From August 1997 to August 2001, he was the President and CEO of Cognicity, Inc., an entertainment marketing software tools publisher that he co-founded, on partial leave of absence from the University of Minnesota. His current research interests are in technology for human cognitive augmentation and decision making, brain computing interfaces, bioelectronics, and mobility.

Prof. Tewfik is an IEEE Fellow. His professional activities include: Founding Co-Chair, 2013 IEEE GlobalSIP Conference; SPS Vice President-Technical Directions (2010-12); General Chair, 2009 IEEE Genomic Signal Processing and Statistics Conference; Member-at-Large, SPS Board of Governors (2006-08); President, SPS/COMSOC Minnesota Chapter (2003-05); SPS Distinguished Lecturer (1998-99); first Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Signal Processing Letters (1993-99); Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing (TSP); and Guest Editor of three special issues of TSP on wavelets and their applications and watermarking, special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Multimedia on multimedia databases and special issue of the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing on bioinformatics. He was awarded the IEEE Third Millennium Medal (2000); the E. F. Johnson Professorship of Electronic Communications at University of Minnesota (1993), the Taylor Faculty Development Award from the Taylor Foundation (1992) and an NSF Research Initiation Award (1990). He has given several plenary and keynote lectures at IEEE conferences and taught tutorials on bioinformatics, ultrawideband communications, watermarking and wavelets at major IEEE conferences. He has also volunteered in technical and STEM activities at the IEEE Central Texas Society Chapter.

Athina Petropulu, IEEE Signal Processing Society President-Elect

Athina P. Petropulu is Distinguished Professor at the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department at Rutgers, having served as chair of the department during 2010-2016. Prior to joining Rutgers she was a Professor of ECE at Drexel University (1992-2010). She held Visiting Scholar appointments at SUPELEC, Universite’ Paris Sud, Princeton University and University of Southern California. Dr. Petropulu's research interests span the area of statistical signal processing, wireless communications, signal processing in networking, physical layer security, and radar signal processing. Her research has been funded by various government industry sponsors including the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Office of Naval research, the US Army, the National Institute of Health, the Whitaker Foundation, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.

Dr. Petropulu is Fellow of IEEE and AAAS and recipient of the 1995 Presidential Faculty Fellow Award given by NSF and the White House. She is President-Elect for the IEEE Signal Processing Society for 2020-2021, and General Chair of the IEEE Signal Processing Society 2020 and 2021 PROGRESS Workshops. In the past, she has served as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing (2009-2011) and IEEE Signal Processing Society Vice President-Conferences (2006-2008). She was the General Chair of the 2005 International Conference on Acoustics Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP-05), Philadelphia PA, and is General Co-Chair of the 2018 IEEE International Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications (SPAWC). She was Distinguished Lecturer for the Signal Processing Society for 2017-2018, and is currently Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE Aerospace & Electronics Systems Society. She is recipient of the 2005 IEEE Signal Processing Magazine Best Paper Award, the 2012 IEEE Signal Processing Society Meritorious Service Award, is co-author (with B. Li) of the 2020 IEEE Signal Processing Society Young Author Best Paper Award and co-recipient (with B. Li) of the 2021 Barry Carlton Best Paper Award by IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society.

Jenifer Castillo, IEEE WIE Chair

Jenifer Castillo is Project Specifications Manager Latin America, at Instrumentation Group, Parker Hannifin Corp. Mechatronics Engineer, graduated from San Buenaventura University in Bogota Colombia. MBA – International Enterprises from the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico.

IEEE Senior member, being part of IEEE as member and volunteer for 16 years.

IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE) Global Committee Chair 2021, IEEE Region 9 Executive Committee Member – Secretary, and IEEE Industry Engagement Committee member. Previously, IEEE Puerto Rico and Caribbean (PR&C) Section Chair (2018 – 2019), WIE Committee Member at Large (2019-2020), and Puerto Rico and Caribbean (PR&C) Section Technical Activities Chair (2020).

Recognized with the IEEE MGA Achievement Award 2020, “For sustained and outstanding achievements in promoting Students, YP, and WIE membership development in Latin America and the Caribbean”, and the Oscar C. Fernández, IEEE Region 9 recognition to the outstanding volunteer in Latin America.

Tülay Adali, IEEE Signal Processing Society Vice President, Technical Directions

Tülay Adali received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA, in 1992 and joined the faculty at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), Baltimore, MD, the same year. She is currently a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at UMBC.

She has been active in conference and workshop organizations. She was the general or technical co-chair of the IEEE Machine Learning for Signal Processing (MLSP) and Neural Networks for Signal Processing Workshops 2001−2008, and helped organize a number of conferences including the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP). She has served or currently serving on numerous editorial boards and technical committees of the IEEE Signal Processing Society. She was the chair of the technical committee on MLSP, 2003−2005 and 2011−2013, the Technical Program Co-Chair for ICASSP 2017, Special Sessions Chair for ICASSP 2018. She is currently serving as the Vice President for Technical Directions of the IEEE Signal Processing Society.

Prof. Adali is a Fellow of the IEEE and the AIMBE, a Fulbright Scholar, and an IEEE Signal Processing Society Distinguished Lecturer. She is the recipient of a 2021 Humboldt Research Award, 2010 IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award, 2013 University System of Maryland Regents' Award for Research, and an NSF CAREER Award. Her current research interests are in the areas of statistical signal processing, machine learning, and their applications with emphasis on applications in medical image analysis and fusion.

Moderator

K.V.S. Hari, IEEE Signal Processing Society VP Membership

K V S Hari is a Professor in the Department of ECE, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He holds a BE (ECE) degree from Osmania University, Hyderabad, MTech (Radar and Communication Systems) from IIT Delhi and PhD (Systems science) from U C San Diego. He has been a visiting faculty at Stanford University and Affiliate Professor at KTH- Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. His research interests are in Signal Processing with applications to 5G wireless communications, radar systems, autonomous vehicles, neuroscience, and affordable MRI systems. He is a co-author of the IEEE 802.16 standard on wireless channel models.

He has been an active IEEE Volunteer for many years and served in several leadership positions. He is currently VP-Membership of SPS (2020-22), was the SPS Regional Director-at-Large of Region 10 (2018-19), has been a member of the SPTM-TC (2014-2019) and served as a Chair of the SPS Bangalore Chapter (2005, 2011-13). He served as a Chair of the IEEE Bangalore Section (2016) and was appointed as Chair, 2017 India Strategy Committee by the IEEE President, to develop a strategy document for growth of IEEE in India. He was a Member, IEEE University Programs (UPC) Ad-hoc Committee of the IEEE Educational Activities Board (EAB) in 2010.

He was an Editor of EURASIP’s Signal Processing journal and is currently the Editor-in-Chief (Electrical Sciences) of Sadhana, the journal of the Indian Academy of Sciences published by Springer. He is a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering, Fellow of IEEE, Member of Eta Kappa Nu and the recipient of the 2018 IEEE MGA Leadership award.

Event Moderator

Celia Shahnaz, 2021-23 Chair, IEEE SPS Women in Signal Processing

Celia Shahnaz, SMIEEE, Fellow IEB, received Ph.D. degree from Concordia University, Canada and is currently a Professor at, Department of EEE, BUET, Bangladesh since 2015.

She has published more than 150 international journal/conference papers. She is a recipient of the Canadian Commonwealth Scholarship/Fellowship and Bangladesh Academy of Science Gold Medal for her contribution in Science and Technology. Her research interests include the areas of signal processing for speech analysis and speech enhancement, audio-visual recognition for biometric security, control system, robotics, pattern recognition, machine learning and deep learning for audio, video, biomedical, power signals, multimodal emotion recognition, and humanitarian technology. Recently, her papers have received best paper awards in IEEE BECITHCON 2019, biomedical Engineering tracks at TENCON 2017 and at IEEE WIECON-ECE 2016, in Humanitarian Challenge track at R10 HTC 2017, and the best interactive poster award at ICIVPR 2017. Her paper has been selected for the top ten best paper awards in the Student Paper Contest of the 2018 and 2014 IEEE International Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems (MWSCAS), College Station, Texas, USA and Knoxville, TN, USA, respectively. She was the winner, the Best Student Paper Award, 2008 IEEE International Conference on Neural Networks and Signal Processing (ICNNSP), Zhenjiang, China. She was selected as one of the finalists of the Student Research Presentation Competition in the 2009 SYTACOM Workshop, Montreal, QC, Canada.

She was the mentor of 1st/2nd prize winning projects in IEEE IAS CMD Contests (Robotics, Humanitarian) in 2017-2019, USA. She was the supervisor of 4th/5th rank winning teams in SPCUP competitions, ICASSP 2020 (Spain)/2015 (Australia) and 5th rank winning team in VIP CUP competition, ICIP 2020 (United Arab Emirates) . She is the recipient of the 2021 Inspiring Women in Academia Award from Bangladesh brand forum, 2019 R10 Humanitarian Activities Outstanding Volunteer Award, 2016 MGA Leadership Award 2015 WIE Inspiring Member Award, 2013 R10 WIE Professional Volunteer Award.

She has been appointed as 2021-23 Chair, IEEE SPS Women in Signal Processing, 2021-23 Liaison between IEEE SPS and IEEE WIE. She has been appointed as 2021-22 Member, IEEE History Committee, Liaison between IEEE History Committee and IEEE WIE, 2021 Chair, IEEE WIE History Subcommittee and 2021 Member, IEEE Educational Activities Board Faculty Resource Committee. She is 2020-21 Member, IEEE WIE Senior Member Elevation Drive, 2019-2021 Member, IEEE WIE WePower Subcommittee, 2020-21 Member, IEEE smart Village South Asian Working Group, 2017-2021 IEEE PES Women in Power (WiP) IEEE Region 10 Regional representative. She was a candidate for the 2021-22 IEEE Region 10 Director-Elect election, 2020 Member, IEEE New Initiative Committee, 2020 Chair, Women in SIGHT Working Group, , 2017, 2019 Communications Chair, IEEE SIGHT steering Committee, 2017-18 Chair, IEEE WIE Workshops Subcommittee, 2017-18 Member, IEEE Region 10 Subcommittees (WIE, Humanitarian Technology Activity, Education), and 2016 IEEE Region 10 WIE Coordinator. She is the current Chair, IEEE Bangladesh Section. She is the founder & Chair, IEEE SPS, IAS Bangladesh Chapters, Co-founder & Vice-Chair, IEEE RAS, SSIT Bangladesh Chapters, Founder and Advisor, WIE AG, IEEE Bangladesh Section. She has served as the General Chair, IEEE TENSYMP 2020, IEEE SPICSCON 2019, IEEE PEEIACON 2019, General Chair: IEEE WIECON-ECE 2019, 2018, 2016, General Co- Chair, IEEE Region 10 HTC 2017 and IEEE WIECON-ECE 2017, Founder and TPC Chair: IEEE WIECON-ECE 2015, IEEE BECITHCON 2019, IEEE RAAIACON 201. She has served as an Editorial board member, IET Signal Processing From 2018 to date and 2018- 20 Member, Technical Committee, Image, Video, and Multimedia (IVM), Asia Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association (APSIPA). She has more than 20 years of experience (20 years as an IEEE volunteer) in leading impactful Technical, Professional, Educational, Industrial, Women Empowerment and Humanitarian Technology, Power and Energy-related Projects at national/international levels.