Program

All times are in Alaska Daylight Time (UTC−08:00)
Friday, September 17
03:00 - 03:30
Welcome Remarks and Introduction to PROGRESS
Ahmed H. Tewfik Cockrell Family Chair in Engineering
University of Texas at Austin, USA
IEEE Signal Processing Society President
S. Farokh Atashzar Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
NYU Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP), NYU WIRELESS, New York University, New York, USA
Athina Petropulu IEEE Signal Processing Society President-Elect
Distinguished Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
03:30 - 04:30
Panel PANEL-1: Sharing Interview Experiences

Panelists

H. Vicky Zhao (Moderator) Associate Professor, Tsinghua University, China
Yan Lindsay Sun University of Rhode Island, USA
Wei Hu Peking University, China
Xingyu Li University of Alberta, Canada
04:30 - 05:30
Panel PANEL-2: Preparation for an Academic Career

Panelists

K.V.S. Hari (Moderator) Professor, Indian Institute of Science Bangalore, India
IEEE Signal Processing Society VP Membership
Soma Biswas Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India
Anubha Gupta Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi, India
Monika Aggarwal Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India
Lalitha Vadlamani International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, India
05:30 - 06:30
Plenary PLEN-1: Emina Soljanin: (Quantum) Independence & Interdependence
Emina Soljanin Professor
Rutgers University Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Description

(Quantum) Independence & Interdependence

Quantum phenomena provide computing and information handling paradigms that are different and much more powerful than their classical counterparts. Quantum correlation (entanglement) is the central concept behind the celebrated teleportation and secret key agreement protocols. This talk will describe the role that correlation, independence, and interdependence play in quantum key distribution. It will then argue that these are crucial skills for (female) researchers and educators.

Emina Soljanin has been a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rutgers since January 2016. Before moving to Rutgers, she was a (Distinguished) Member of Technical Staff for 21 years in various incarnations of the Mathematical Sciences Research Center of Bell Labs. Her interests and expertise are broad, currently ranging from distributed computing to quantum information science. She is an IEEE Fellow, an outstanding alumnus of the Texas A&M School of Engineering, the 2011 Padovani Lecturer, a 2016/17 Distinguished Lecturer, and the 2019 President of the IEEE Information Theory Society.

06:30 - 07:30
Panel PANEL-3: Simulating real-time interviews of candidates for SP-related faculty openings

Panelists

Georgios Giannakis (Moderator) Endowed Chair in Wireless Telecommunications
McKnight Presidential Chair in ECE Digital Technology Center, Director, University of Minnesota, USA
Xiaoli Ma Professor, IEEE Fellow, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia
Nikos Sidiropoulos Chair, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia
08:00 - 09:00
Panel PANEL-4: Practical Advice for Progressing in Academia

Panelists

Silvia Muceli (Moderator) Assistant Professor, Chalmers University, Gothenburg, Sweden
Golnaz Habibi Research Scientist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambrige, MA
Farnoosh Naderkhani Assistant Professor, Concordia Institute for Information Systems Engineering, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada
Behnaz Ghoraani Associate Professor, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL USA
09:00 - 10:00
Plenary PLEN-2: Rabab Ward: Multimedia, Brain-Computer Interfaces and Medical Instrumentation: Dispatches of a Pioneer Woman in Engineering Across Continents
Rabab Ward Professor Emeritus
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of British Columbia, Canada

Description

Multimedia, Brain-Computer Interfaces and Medical Instrumentation: Dispatches of a Pioneer Woman in Engineering Across Continents

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).

10:00 - 11:00
Panel PANEL-5: Experience Sharing by Female Researchers

Panelists

Z. Jane Wang (Moderator) Professor, University of British Columbia, Canada
Editor-in-chief: IEEE Signal Processing Letters
Lina Karam Dean, School of Engineering, Lebanese American University, Lebanon
Emerita Professor, Arizona State University
Lin Cai Professor, University of Victoria, Canada
Min Wu Professor and Distinguished Scholar-Teacher
Associate Dean for Graduate Affairs and Programs, A. James Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, USA
Nazre Batool Senior Engineer; Scania’s Autonomous Transport Solutions, Sweden
11:15 - 12:15
Plenary PLEN-3: Sameena Shah: Building AI in Industry
Sameena Shah Managing Director
AI Research, JPMorgan

Description

Building AI in Industry

Dr. Sameena Shah has built AI technologies to transform financial services, journalism, operations and legal industries. In this talk, she will share how key learnings from her experience. Specially, she will shed light on how we need to transition from thinking about specific algorithms to eventual customer of AI. This leads to thinking about AI in conjunction with human interactions, domain expertise, data and technology.

Sameena Shah Sameena Shah is a Managing Director in AI Research group at JPMorgan. She is a highly accomplished technology leader with over 20 years of educational and industry experience in engineering, AI, and leading development teams that created top AI technologies in the world for financial, news, commodities and legal businesses.

Previously, Sameena was Managing Director, Head of Data Science at S&P Global Ratings where she led the firm’s strategy and development for Augmented Intelligence. Prior to that, Sameena worked at Thomson Reuters for seven years in roles of increasing responsibility that involved building state of the art AI systems resulting in business growth and operational efficiencies. Sameena is also the Founder and CEO of Aylan Analytics LLC, and has worked at Yahoo! Research, a NYC based hedge fund, an International hedge fund, and a global startup.

Sameena has a PhD in Distributed Machine Learning and a Masters in Computer Science from IIT Delhi. She is the winner of the top PhD in the country award, Cloudera top AI/ML application award, several best paper awards and recognitions. She has contributed 41 Publications, and 11 Patents.

12:15 - 12:45
Q&A QA-1: Q&A
12:45 - 13:00
Closing Remarks
S. Farokh Atashzar Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
NYU Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP), NYU WIRELESS, New York University, New York, USA
Athina Petropulu IEEE Signal Processing Society President-Elect
Distinguished Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Saturday, September 18
03:30 - 04:00
Welcome Remarks
S. Farokh Atashzar Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
NYU Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP), NYU WIRELESS, New York University, New York, USA
Athina Petropulu IEEE Signal Processing Society President-Elect
Distinguished Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
04:00 - 07:30
Workshop WS-1: NaturalScience.Careers - Self-presentation & Networking

Speaker

Dr. Karin Bodewits Co-founder & Owner, NaturalScience.Careers

Description

Self-presentation & networking

Do you seem to miss every chance to network? Or do you have the feeling you can’t keep the conversation going or can’t even start it in the first place? No matter if you answer one of those questions with a clear “yes” or you simply have the feeling that you could perfect your self-presentation skills, then this workshop might be just right for you! From the first impression you leave, the conversation that follows to a successful or friendly follow-up… we will cover it during this seminar.

08:00 - 11:30
Workshop WS-2: NaturalScience.Careers - Oral Presentation Skills

Speaker

Dr. Philipp Gramlich Co-founder, NaturalScience.Careers

Description

Presentation skills

There are many ways in which scientists communicate their work, publications, poster or oral presentations or via individual conversations. In terms of leaving a deep impression about your work and yourself, oral presentations are a very powerful way. However, many scientists are not sure how to do this effectively. scared of the prospect of standing in front of a large and potentially critical audience to present their work. During this workshop, you learn to captivate and enchant your audience.

12:00 - 12:30
12:30 - 13:00
Closing Remarks
S. Farokh Atashzar Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
NYU Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP), NYU WIRELESS, New York University, New York, USA
Athina Petropulu IEEE Signal Processing Society President-Elect
Distinguished Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey