PROGRESS
PROmotinG DiveRsity in Signal ProcESSing: PROGRESS
PROmotinG DiveRsity in Signal ProcESSing: PROGRESS
PLEN-2: Rabab Ward: Multimedia, Brain-Computer Interfaces and Medical Instrumentation: Dispatches of a Pioneer Woman in Engineering Across Continents
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of British Columbia, Canada
Description
Rabab Kreidieh Ward grew up in a Moslem family in Lebanon, and has worked there as well as in Zimbabwe and North America. A specialist in the field of signal processing, she has had to overcome many hurdles in the course of a career in engineering that began as an engineering student in the early 1960s. For much of her working life she was the only woman in otherwise all-male academic departments. In this talk she recalls some of her formative professional experiences, why she loves academia, how she achieved her goals, and discusses some of the exciting developments and applications in electrical engineering that have kept her curiosity sharp over decades.
Dr. Rabab Kreidieh Ward is a Professor Emeritus in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of British Columbia, Canada. A Fellow of IEEE, Royal Society of Canada and Foreign Member of the USA National Academy of Engineering, she was the first woman holding a Ph.D. that was appointed as professor in engineering in Canada. She has over 40 years of post-doctoral experience in education, research and leadership. She has supervised around 50 Ph.D. and 50 Master students. Her research contributions are in broad areas of signal processing, including signal detection, image encoding, and restoration, and their applications in cable TV, HDTV, medical imaging, infant cry signals, and brain computer interfaces. Dr. Ward has published over 670 refereed journal and conference papers, and holds eight patents related to monitoring, measurement, and noise reduction concerning cable television. Some of her work has been licensed to US and Canadian industry.
She has served in leadership positions as Director of the (UBC) Institute for Computing, Information and Cognitive Systems (1996-2007) and as the Research Coordinator in UBC VP Research and International Office (2008- 2014). She was the 2016-2017 President of the IEEE Signal Processing Society, and is presently serving on the IEEE Board of Directors (as Director, Division 1X).