The Third Women-in-IES Luncheon at the 50th IECON in Chicago
by Ya-Jun Pan – Chair of The Women-in-IES Committee
On 5 November 2024, we had our third Women-in-IES luncheon to celebrate the 50th IECON 2024 in Chicago, USA. It was very successful with more than 100 attendants.
The luncheon was organized by the committee with Drs. Ya-Jun Pan (Dalhousie University, Canada), Lucia Lo Bello (University of Catania, Italy), Morgan Kianni (Texas Christian University, USA), Norma Anglani (Università degli Studi di Pavia, Italy), and Mengqi Wang (University of Michigan-Dearborn, USA).
The event started with opening speeches by Dr. Ya-Jun Pan, Chair of Women in IES, Dr. Milos Manic, IES President, Dr. Antonio Luque, IES Vice President of Membership Activities, and the local host Dr. Mohammad Shadmand, IECON 2024 General Chair. Three inspiring talks were delivered by distinguished speakers, Dr. Bozenna Pasik-Duncan from the University of Kansas, USA, Dr. Kamal AI-Haddad from École de Technologie Supérieure (ETS), Canada, and Ms. Kathy Herring Hayashi from Qualcomm, USA.
It was our honour to have the IEEE President-Elect Dr. Kathleen Kramer, IEEE Vice President of Technical Activities Fred Schindler and Past IEEE Vice President of Technical Activities Dr. John Verboncoeur to celebrate with us at the Women-in-IES luncheon.
The luncheon is an opportunity to exchange ideas, present recent advanced technology and research, and discuss the challenges we face as women in engineering today. Specifically, Dr. Bozenna Pasik-Duncan shared her rich and pioneering experience in WIE through the talk “The Power, Beauty and Excitement of Giving Back. Why I do care?”. Dr. Pasik-Duncan shared that there are various challenges and opportunities for Women in the 21st Century. Networking, collective efforts in education and research, and outreach activities can make a big difference in Women’s lives through her global, national and local connections and volunteering experiences. She is the one who initiated Women-in-Control activities in the IEEE Control Systems Society a few decades ago.
Then Dr. Kamal AI-Haddad shared a rich data and discussion on “Women in Engineering Education and Research Challenges”. He shared his personal journey as well as the statistics on the percentage of women in IEEE and his institute – ETS Canada, and the global status of WIE. Women are still underrepresented in engineering around the world and around 40% of the women in engineering either leave the profession or never enter the field again. Dr. AI-Haddad recommended that future actions must be taken to improve the current situation and attract more women to choose engineering as their career.
Ms. Kathy Herring Hayashi, a leader from industry shared “Technologists Making an Impact: Shaping the Future of Technology”. She shared her leadership experiences in IEEE and Qualcomm as well as the state-of-the-art innovations in the semiconductor industry. Insights are that technologists can make an impact, for example, technology can take thousands of people to make a chip, leads to commercial product through iterations and is important and critical to quality products.
Finally, there was a very lively discussion from the panel and the audience on the challenges and retention of Women in Tech in the Questions and Answers session.