W11: The 2nd Annual VTC Diversity Workshop

Co-chair: Carmela Cozzo, Samsung, USA
Co-chair: Katie Wilson, Santa Clara University

Abstract: The 2nd annual diversity workshop will feature keynote talks by Profs. Lin Cai, Karen Panetta and Eve Riskin who are engineers and advocates for diversity.
In addition we will feature a panel on how to be an ally and mentor. Panelists include: John Cioffi, ASSIA Inc and Stanford University, Alan Gatherer, Futurewei, Lajos Hanzo, University of Southampton, H. Vincent Poor, Princeton University and Reinaldo Valenzuela, Nokia-Bell Labs.
This workshop is intended for any engineer who wants to know what they can do to make the engineering world more diverse.
Women, minorities, majorities, allies, and skeptics all welcome.

Presentation:

Event	Speakers
Welcome	Carmela Cozzo and Katie Wilson
Keynote Speech	Karen Panetta, Tufts University
Keynote Speech	Lin Cai, University of Victoria
Keynote Speech	Eve Riskin, University of Washington
Mentor and Ally Panel	John Cioffi, ASSIA Inc and Stanford; Alan Gatherer, FutureWei;  Lajos Hanzo , University of Southampton;  H. Vincent Poor, Princeton University; and Reinaldo Valenzuela, Nokia Bell Labs

Keynote Speakers:

Speaker: Karen Ann Panetta, IEEE Fellow

Bio: Dr. Karen A. Panetta is the Dean for Graduate Education in the Tufts University School of Engineering, a Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science and Adjunct Professor of Mechanical Engineering. She is the CEO and Co-Founder of Tessera Intelligence, which specializes in visual and sensing technology solutions for detection and recognition systems. Dr. Panetta was the 2019 President of IEEE HKN (Eta-Kappa, Nu) and is the Editor-in-Chief of the award-winning IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine.  She was a NASA JOVE Fellow and Vice-President of IEEE-USA.  Prior to joining the Tufts faculty, Dr. Panetta was a Principal Engineer for Digital Equipment Corporation. Karen is the recipient of the Norm Augustine Award. Previous recipients of this prestigious award included Astronaut Neil Armstrong.  She is also the recipient of the Anita Borg, “Women of Vision” award and the IEEE Education Society, William Sayle Award for achievement in Engineering Education. Karen is known as a pioneer for championing engineering education to diverse and inclusive audiences. She co-authored the book “Count Girls In: Empowering Girls to Combine Any Interests with STEM to Open Up a World of Opportunity.” She created the internationally acclaimed Nerd Girls Program, which promotes Science and Engineering education for young girls. has personally conducted outreach activities to over 85,000 young students, parents and community leaders around the world. She is now the co-host and creator of the web series “Nerd Girl Nation,” a show that celebrates female role models using their engineering and science skills to benefit humanity. In 2011, Karen was recognized at the White House in Washington, DC by U.S. President Barack Obama and awarded the NSF Presidential (PAESMEM) Award, the nation’s highest award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring.

 

Speaker: Lin Cai, University of Victoria

Bio: Lin Cai received her M.A.Sc. and Ph. D. degrees (awarded Outstanding Achievement in Graduate Studies) in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada, in 2002 and 2005, respectively. Since 2005, she has been with the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Victoria, and she is currently a Professor. She is an NSERC E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellow and an IEEE Fellow. Her research interests span several areas in communications and networking, with a focus on network protocol and architecture design supporting emerging multimedia traffic and the Internet of Things. She was a recipient of the NSERC Discovery Accelerator Supplement (DAS) Grants in 2010 and 2015, respectively, and the Best Paper Awards of IEEE ICC 2008 and IEEE WCNC 2011. She has co-founded and chaired the IEEE Victoria Section Vehicular Technology and Communications Joint Societies Chapter. She has been elected to serve the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society Board of Governors, 2019 – 2021. She has served as an area editor for IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, a member of the Steering Committee of the IEEE Transactions on Big Data (TBD) and IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing (TCC), an Associate Editor of the IEEE Internet of Things Journal, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, IEEE Transactions on Communications, EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking, International Journal of Sensor Networks, and Journal of Communications and Networks (JCN), and as the Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE VTS Society. She has served as a TPC co-chair for IEEE VTC2020-Fall, and a TPC symposium co-chair for IEEE Globecom’10 and Globecom’13. She is a registered professional engineer in British Columbia, Canada.

 

Speaker: Eve Riskin, University of Washington

Bio: Eve Riskin received her BS degree in Electrical Engineering from  M.I.T. and her graduate degrees in EE from Stanford.  She is  Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Faculty Director of the ADVANCE Center for Institutional Change at the University of Washington. With ADVANCE, she works on mentoring and leadership development programs for women faculty in STEM.  She was awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship, the 2006 Hewlett-Packard Harriett B. Rigas Award, and the 2017 ECEDHA Diversity Award.  Eve Riskin is a recipient of  a 2019 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring. She is a Fellow of the IEEE.

 

Speaker: John M Cioffi, ASSIA Inc and Stanford

Bio: John M. Cioffi is Chairman and CEO of ASSIA Inc, a rapidly growing Redwood City, CA based company pioneering dynamic broadband-internet-connection management software that services nearly 100 million broadband-access connections globally.  He is also the Hitachi Professor Emeritus at Stanford University, where he held a tenured endowed professorship before retiring after 22 full-time years. Cioffi also founded Amati Com. Corp in 1991 (purchased by TI in 1997 for its DSL technology) and was officer/director from 1991-1997.  Cioffi designed the world’s first ADSL and VDSL modems, which design today accounts for roughly 98% of the worlds nearly 500 million xDSL connections, and he holds fundamental patents on A/VDSL, vectored VDSL, and G.fast as well as several concepts in wireless and cable transmission quality.  Cioffi received his BSEE, 1978,  Illinois; PhDEE,  1984, Stanford; Honorary Doctorate, University of Edinburgh 2010;  Bell Laboratories, 1978-1984; IBM Research, 1984-1986; EE Prof., Stanford, 1986-2008.

Cioffi currently also services the Boards of Directors for Alto Beam, Collinear, Tinoq, and the Marconi Society and previously served 8 other private/publc boards, including Marvell Semiconductor, Teknovus, ITEX, ClariPhy, and others.  Various awards include IEEE Alexander Graham Bell, Kirchmayer, Edwin H. Armstrong, Kobayashi, and Millenium Medals/Awards (2010, 2014, 2013, 2001, 2000), Economist Magazine’s 2010 Innovation Award, International Marconi Fellow (2006); Member, US National and UK Royal Academies of Engineering (2001, 2009); Internet Society Hall of Fame (2014), IEEE Fellow (1996); IEE JJ Tomson Medal (2000); 1999 U. of Illinois Outstanding Alumnus and 2010 Distinguished Alumnus.  Cioffi has published several hundred technical papers and is the inventor named on over 100 additional patents, many of which are heavily licensed in the communication industry.

 

Speaker:  Alan Gatherer, Furturewei Technologies, USA and IEEE Fellow

Bio:  Alan Gatherer is a Senior Technical Vice President at Futurewei Technologies, USA and Fellow of the IEEE.  He is responsible for R&D efforts in the US to develop next generation baseband chips and software for 4G and 5G basestation modems. His group is presently developing new technologies for baseband SoC in the areas of multimode modems as a Service, interconnect and memory fabric, CPU/DSP clusters and virtualization, focusing on 5G deployment. Alan joined Futurewei in January 2010. Prior to that he was a TI Fellow and CTO at Texas Instruments where he led the development of high performance, multicore DSP at TI and worked on various telecommunication standards. Alan has authored over 50 journal and conference papers. In addition, he holds over 80 awarded patents and is author of the book “The Application of Programmable DSPs in Mobile Communications.”  Alan holds a bachelor of engineering in microprocessor engineering from Strathclyde University in Scotland.  He also attended Stanford University in California where he received a master’s in electrical engineering in 1989 and his doctorate in electrical engineering in 1993.

Alan Gatherer is a Senior Technical Vice President at Futurewei and an IEEE Fellow.  He is responsible for software/hardware R&D for next generation baseband SoC. Alan joined Futurewei in January 2010. Previously he was a Fellow and CTO at Texas Instruments leading the development of high performance, multicore DSP and 3GPP standardization. Alan has authored over 50 journal and conference papers, holds over 80 awarded patents and is author of  “The Application of Programmable DSPs in Mobile Communications.”  Alan received his BEng from Strathclyde University in Scotland and his PhD from Stanford University in California in 1993.

 

Speaker: Vince Poor, Princeton University

Bio: Vince Poor (Ph.D., EECS, Princeton 1977) is the Michael Henry Strater University Professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University. Before joining the Princeton faculty in 1990, he was on the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During 2006 – 2016, he also served as the dean of Princeton’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, and he has held visiting positions at a number of other universities, including most recent at Berkeley and Cambridge. His research interests are in the areas of information theory, signal processing and machine learning, and their applications in wireless networks, energy systems and related fields. He has served as the advisor to more than 100 doctoral and postdoctoral students working in these areas. An IEEE Fellow, Dr. Poor is also a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and is a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society, and other national and international academies. Recognition of his teaching and mentoring includes the 2005 IEEE James H. Mulligan, Jr., Education Medal, the 2015 Outstanding Mentorship Award from IEEE Women in Communications Engineering, and the 2019 ASEE Benjamin Garver Lamme Award.

 

Speaker: Reinaldo A. Valenzuela

Bio: Reinaldo A. Valenzuela: Member National Academy of Engineering, Fellow IEEE.  IEEE Eric E. Sumner Award. Bell Labs Fellow. WWRF Fellow, 2014 IEEE CTTC Technical Achievement Award, 2015 IEEE VTS Avant Garde Award. B.Sc. U. of Chile, Ph.D. Imperial College. Director, Communication Theory Department, Distinguished Member of Technical Staff, Bell Laboratories. Engaged in propagation measurements and models, MIMO/space time systems achieving high capacities using transmit and receive antenna arrays, HetNets, small cells and next generation air interface techniques and architectures. He has published 190 papers and 44 patents. He has near 31,000 Google Scholar citations and is a ‘Highly Cited Author’ In Thomson ISI and a Fulbright Senior Specialist.

 

Speaker: Lajos Hanzo

Bio: Lajos Hanzo has held industrial and academic posts in Hungary, Germany and the UK. Since 1986 he has been teaching and conducting research at the University of Southampton. He considers himself privileged that he has had the chance to collaborate with 123 talented young scientists from 21 countries of the globe.