Our Fabulous Team

Nita Patel, P.E., is a Systems and Software Engineering Director at L-3 Warrior Systems, manufacturer of night-vision and electro-optical systems.Nita has been involved in many facets of IEEE, including her current role as Women in Engineering International Leadership Conference Chair, Second Vice President of the IEEE Computer Society and Board of Governors member of Eta Kappa Nu. Nita is your host for 23-24 May 2016 WIE ILC in San Jose, CA. She is excited about leading this collaborative, educational, innovation focused conference themed Lead Beyond. Accelerating Innovative Women Who Change the World.Outside of IEEE, Nita is active with Toastmasters International and the United States Chess Federation. Nita received her MS Computer Engineering, BS Electrical Engineering and BS Mathematics from Southern Methodist University.

Takako Hashimoto graduated from the Ochanomizu University, and received a Ph.D. in computer science, specialization in multimedia information processing, from the Graduate School of Systems and Information Engineering of University of Tsukuba in 2005. She worked at the software R&D center of Ricoh Co. Ltd., in Japan, and participated in the development of many software products as a technical leader including international collaborative research handling. From 2009, she has become a faculty of Chiba University of Commerce. Currently, she has focused on the data mining research and the visual instruction method development for finance engineering.

From 2011, she's been serving as the IEEE Region 10 Women in Engineering (WIE) Coordinator and from 2013, she has been part of the IEEE WIE Committee as the chair of the membership/affinity group sub-committee. She has been part of the R10 Humanitarian Technology Activity Committee as well, and organized the R10-HTC 2013 in Japan as part of the organizing committee. In 2015, she will be IEEE WIE Chair.

Keyana Tennant, the Women in Engineering (WIE) Program Manager, has a passion for STEM education and is committed to encouraging students, especially young girls, to pursue technology careers. Since 2005, Keyana has applied this passion in her work in leading, managing and developing the WIE program. Over the years, Keyana co-developed and is the Associate Editor of the award-winning IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine, supports the IEEE WIE Committee, and supports the WIE Affinity Groups. Keyana established and helped produce content for the WIE ieee.tv channel, led the “I Change the World. I am an Engineer.”Program which includes WIE public visibility campaigns resulting in a WIE eBook, posters, on-line live chats, apps, and supported WIE presence at multiple events around the globe. She is a Graduate of University of Maryland College Park and has a Masters in Public Administration.

Executive Account ManagerRockwell Automation

Project Manager at Technology & Manufacturing Group (TMG) Global Supply Management (GSM) at Intel Corporation.

Yumiko is located at Intel's headquarters in Santa Clara, California, USA.

Yumiko is also Co-Director of K-12 Student Outreach at IEEE WIE Santa Clara Valley Chapter

Roxsana is currently a New Product Program Manager in SSVPG (Server, Switching, and Virtualization Product Group) at Cisco focusing on new UCS (Unified Computing System) Hardware and Software products. She is passionate about technology and innovation hence joined Cisco 8 years ago; Managed BU’s (MXABU, PSBU & IoTBU) and led Global NPI team to successfully launch 25+ HW and SW video & security products. Her past professional experience includes: Sr. Staff Engineer, Manager and Director at various Silicon Valley companies including GENUS Inc., PRIAM, Network Computing Devices, WinCom Systems, Quantum 3D and Tesla Motors.

She was featured in the Focus magazine for Women of Cisco All-Star in June of 2016.

She has BSEE & MSEE from S. Illinois University.Roxsana is an IEEE Senior member; co-founders of the IEEE Santa Clara Valley Women in Engineering (WIE) in 2002: Chair from 2006 through 2012 with Certificate of appreciation from SCV Section and currently is a WIE Sr. Advisor. In 2009, she served as IEEE SCV Section Chair with Certificate of appreciation from IEEE President and previously served as Secretary, Treasurer and Vice Chair.

She has been Cisco’s Corp Liaison to IEEE-SCV section from 2014 thru 2015. She has been 2015 & 2016 IEEE Central Area Awards Chair to Region 6. She was 2015 IEEE-USA representative to DiscoverE Foundation Steering Committee.

She was instrumental in Cisco’s Title sponsorship at 2015 & 2016 IEEE WIE International Leadership Conference and participated as keynotes & committee member hence the recipient of the 2015 Section Award for her significant Contribution.

She was also the recipient of the certificate for 2015 IEEE Women In Engineering Inspiring Member of the Year with Honorable Mention.She was an advisor to the IEEE Spectrum Media Group and had included Tesla Motors and Cisco Systems in a number of events from 2007 thru 2011. She values the impact of IEEE on her life and attended yearly Silicon Valley Engineers Week Banquet and ACE Award including ceremony for IEEE Spectrum Group award winners from 2005 thru 2014.

She was the speaker and panelist for IEEE-SCV-WIE event on Feb 6, 2014 at Stanford University on “how to grow stronger through rapid changes in technology” for IEEE-SCV-WIE and Student branch development. Also panelist for "Women in Engineering in Management: Truth Talk" on Sep., 3rd 2015 at AMD in Sunnyvale, CA hosted by SCV TEMS (Technology and Engineering Management Society) and SCV WIE.

Shana works as a Project Specialist for the IEEE, Meetings, Conference & Events (MCE). She has been with the company for four years with a focus on event planning and coordination.
With a B.A. in Public Relations and minor in Journalism from Rowan University, Shana has a background in writing and communications. She also loves meeting new people and broadening her horizons.

Tittu Varghese is currently working as Chief Technology Officer at Merclain. And he completed his Bachelor of Technology from College of Engineering ,Adoor. He is active IEEE volunteer for the past 4+ years and served many positions including IEEE SB Chair, IEEE LINK (Kerala) Execom member, IEEE R10 web team, WIE ILC and IEEE MGA Branch Chapters web team. Also he have received many appreciation awards for outstanding volunteer-ship in different committees.
He is passionate about Website and Web Application developments.His major focused areas are web applications and mobile applications. He is an expert in programming languages like PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript and JQuery.

Vidhya M.P is pursing Bachelor of Technology in Electronics andCommunication Engineering at College of Engineering, Adoor. She is anactive IEEE volunteer and WIE member for the past two years. Shestarted her volunteering at IEEE SB CEA and volunteered for manysection level IEEE events and competitions. She is specialized inWordPress website development and content management.

Joseph Wei is the Managing Director of Lab360. Lab360 is supported by Qihoo 360 (NYSE:QIHU), one of the leading Internet companies in China. Joseph is an experienced entrepreneur, investor and a mentor of startups. Prior to Lab360, he founded SJW Consulting Inc., a technology and business strategy consulting and advisory firm for many of the top tech companies. He has led several new businesses that pioneered innovative products, and, generated over $500 million in revenue when he held executive positions at Inventec (top 5 ODM from Taiwan), Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI), NEC and DEC (acquired by Compaq/HP). He is recognized for his expertise in wearables, IoT, Cloud computing, and is a frequent speaker and author on these topics. He is a senior member of IEEE, the world's largest technical professional association with over 400,000 members, the Chair of the IEEE Section and the Vice Chair of the Consumer Electronics Society for the Santa Clara Valley (Silicon Valley). He is also an advisor to several startups, as well as a mentor to AngelHack HACKcelerator and RoyseLaw AgTech Incubator.

Jie Xue leads Cisco’s Technology and Quality organization, a global team responsible for delivering customer-driven quality and leading edge technology solutions at Cisco. Prior to joining Cisco, Jie held several management and engineering positions at Motorola, Inc., working on R&D and product development.

She is an IMAPS Fellow, IEEE Fellow, President of IEEE – Components, Packaging, and Manufacturing Technology Society (CPMT) in 2014-2015, and IEEE-CPMT Distinguished Lecturer. She received YWCA Tribute to Women TWIN Awards in 2015. She also has published more than 90 technical papers, holds 12 patents, and has given keynote talks at many international conferences.

Jie holds a Bachelor of Science from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China and a Master of Science and PhD from Cornell University.

Carolyn works in both technical and intellectual property related areas in digital signal/image/video processing and communications. Carolyn is currently Senior Patent Agent at Thermo Fisher Scientific focusing on bioinformatics. Previously, she has been in private practice as a patent agent and consulting expert for patent litigations, Director of Intellectual Property at Samplify Systems, Inc., and Senior Member of the Technical Staff at Signal Science, Inc. Carolyn has served in several IEEE roles, including Santa Clara Valley PACE chair, Precollege Education Committee representative for Region 6 and chair, and IEEE Special Awards judge at science fairs. She was awarded the IEEE Regional Professional Leadership Award and IEEE Millenium Medal for leadership in precollege STEM outreach programs. She has served as co-chair of the Leadership Circle Committee at the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose. Carolyn enjoys the art of dance and is a member of the San Francisco Ballet Auxiliary. Carolyn has an M.S.E.E. with a double-major in biomedical engineering and a B.S. degree in physiology from University of California, Davis.