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.

Kathy has been involved in semiconductor software her entire career. At Unisys Corporation, she worked in research and development, working in teams to develop advanced in-house CAD software tools, including a custom RTL, custom parsers and behavior to structure synthesis tools using rules based AI techniques. She also worked on an advanced parametric graphical layout language which significantly reduced the development complexity for layout. Through acquisition, she transitioned to Cadence Design Systems where some of the previous tools were incorporated into commercial EDA tools.

She then brought her technical breadth and professional leadership to Syntricity, a San Diego based semiconductor startup. As the Director of Professional Services and Support, she led groups to successfully develop, test and support an internet based semiconductor yield management tool built on a high performance data warehouse. Kathy currently works at Qualcomm Inc., analyzing and optimizing semiconductor workflows in large scale compute environments. She also teaches at the Computer Science and Information Technology Department of Palomar College in San Marcos, California.

Kathy is on the Board of Directors for Expanding Your Horizons whose goals are to educate and promote STEM awareness and understanding among school age women. She is also a Technical Advisory Board member for the San Diego Community Colleges and a member of the San Diego Athena Forum for Executive Women.

Kathy Herring Hayashi was the recipient of the 2017 Dr. Thomas Avolt Kanneman Award for Outstanding Engineering Service from the San Diego Engineering Council. Kathy, IEEE HKN, founded and was past chair of the the San Diego IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE) Affinity Group and recipient of the IEEE 2016 Southwest Area award for Outstanding Individual, Outstanding Leadership and Professional Service. Kathy is currently the 2017 IEEE Section 6 (Western U.S. Region) Women in Engineering Coordinator.

Felicia began her current career at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) after retiring as a Captain from the US Air Force in 2005. She started out in the AFRL Information Directorate working on distributed collaborative systems and currently works developing cyber protections for avionics systems in the AFRL Sensors Directorate. Felicia also manages a state-of-the-art lab supporting multiple in-house research missions and 50+ internal government and contractor users. She received her B.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Central Florida (summa cum laude) and her M.S. in Computer Engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology.

Janet Flores is a Global Project Pursuit Manager at Rockwell Automation. She has held this role since January 2015.

In this role, Janet is responsible for managing key oil and gas, and chemicals global project pursuits. She leverages significant industry and financial business knowledge in a highly competitive environment, and is viewed as an elite sales leader and consultant in the market. Janet is also accountable for driving strategic deals to closure and sets the strategic objectives and winning strategy for pursuits working in conjunction with the local geographical teams, EPC teams and the Global Industry Team.

Janet has been involved in many facets of IEEE, including the role of IAS Liaison for IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE), and serving on the Conference Committee of IEEE Women in Engineering International Leadership Conference (WIE ILC) for the past 3 years. She has also been the Registration Chairperson for IEEE PCIC in Houston during the 2003 conference and on the local committee for IEEE PCIC 2010. She is past Chair for the Refining Subcommittee of PCIC, past Chair of the Electrochemical Subcommittee of PCIC.

Janet holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Valparaiso University.

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 six 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.

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.

Alina Benny is a Product Marketing Manager with the leading cloud-based SaaS company, Freshworks, Inc. She works on increasing organic lead generation and brand awareness for the company's CRM product—Freshsales.

She's also a writer at popular publications like Hacker Noon, The Mission and Mattermark Daily.

Akshaya Aradhya is a Senior Engineer at Intuit in Mountain View, CA. Over her last 6 years as a Product Developer at Intuit, she has been responsible for releasing high impact and high quality products in the financial services and accounting domain. She has deep customer empathy and uses her industry domain knowledge to innovate and develop products that solves technical and business problems across a large customer base.

She is passionate about working with big data, distributed systems and math. She has been a member of tech women at Intuit and has also contributed as a scholarship and content committee member for the Grace Hopper Conference since 2014.

Before joining Intuit, she was working as a senior programmer at Accenture, where she won multiple awards for engineering excellence and leadership.

She has a BE (CSE) from RV College of Engineering in Bangalore, Karnataka, India and a MS (CSE) from Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX.

Amaad Soomro is the Head of Design at Wizsoft Technologies (MarnTech) where he is responsible for product design of company's point of sale product - MarnPOS. Amaad is passionate about designing interfaces of technology products.

Amaad Soomro is the Head of Design at Wizsoft Technologies (MarnTech) where he is responsible for product design of company's point of sale product - MarnPOS. Amaad is passionate about designing interfaces of technology products.

Piyali Dey has received her B.S degree in Computer Science and Engineering from India and M.S degree in Computer Science from North Carolina State University, USA. She is a Software Engineer by profession and a Women Empowerment Advocate by passion.

Along with workingfull time as a Software Engineer, she is also one of the evangelists and tech leaders of the globalorganization called ‘Women Who Code’ as well as an event organizer with Google Developer Group, Silicon Valley. Piyali is a speaker, mentor and open source enthusiast.

Sarang Shaikh has a Telecommunications Engineering Degree and entrepreneurial mindset with aspirations. He is developing expertise and specialization in ICT Program Management, Social Entrepreneurship, and Business Development. Currently, he is pursuing his MBA in Entrepreneurship and Innovation and helping multiple universities at Pakistan in establishing Innovation and Entrepreneurship Centers. Also, he is on a mission to establish Pakistan’s first ever Academic Research Center on Corporate Social Responsibility at Mehran University, Jamshoro along with Professors and Public Policy Researchers from Denmark.

With IEEE, he is Global Chair for IEEEmadC and has served in various positions ranging from being a member of MGA Training Committee, Public Visibility Committee, IEEE Infrastructure ad-hoc Committee, R10 Humanitarian Activities Committee and Senior Assistant Editor for IEEE IMPACT Young Professionals Publication.

He belongs to IEEE Karachi Section in Pakistan, where has been contributing his voluntary services for past 7 years. A student of life interested in Philosophy, Sarang is a strong believer of “Stoicism” and has published a book titled "Inspire your Motivations" available worldwide.

Wafa works as a Software Test Engineer in Primatec Engineering Ltd. on behalf of BMW Group.

She has been a member of IEEE for the past 5 years and served as the Secretary of IEEE Young Professionals Tunisia Affinity Group in 2016. She also won the 3rd prize in Europe, Middle East and Asia in the 2016 IEEE Mind the Gap competition and has served a speaker at numerous conferences.

Wafa resides in Tunisia and graduated as an Electronic Engineer in 2015.

Ritu Bajpai works in the area of semiconductor devices. She is currently Principal Device Engineer at ON Semiconductor where she works on CMOS transistor device characterization, TCAD simulation and reliability improvement. She is also involved in electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection design for CMOS image sensor chips. Before joining ON Semiconductor, Ritu worked for SanDisk as Senior Process Integration Engineer. She contributed to problem solving and path finding for process and device issues involved in developing semiconductor emerging memory technology. She worked on technology development for memory devices and products including geometrical design rules definition, designing test structures, supervising layout implementation and deployment of DRC and LVS runset.

Ritu received her PhD from The George Washington University in Electrical Engineering. In her doctoral research she worked on developing semiconducting nanostructure devices for detection of alcohol vapors. Ritu received her BTech degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Varanasi, India. Ritu is a member of IEEE and has been a reviewer for various IEEE publications including Electron Device Letters, Transactions on Mechatronics, Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems, Journal of the Electron Devices Society. She was a volunteer for Watermark Conference for Women, Silicon Valley, 2017 and is actively involved in Women’s Leadership Initiative at ON Semiconductor.

Ritu’s current interests also including computer vision and machine learning imaging applications for automotive industry. She enjoys working on Arduino and RaspberryPi projects and participating in Hackathons.

Daryna received her M.S. degree in Applied Physics from Karazin Kharkiv National University, Ukraine, and is a junior researcher at the Institute for Radiophysics and Electronics NAS of Ukraine. Her current scientific interests include formation and investigation of nanocomposite materials containing magnetic nanoparticles, surfactants, biopolymers and biologically active substances with chemical and physical properties that enable their biomedical application.

Daryna’s passion is organization of the conferences. So far she has chaired 4 young scientists conferences, including three IEEE ones, and been involved in the organization of more than 10 conferences of different level. As member of organizing committees, she has taken part in the broad range of activities such as event planning and promotion, fundraising campaigns, venue planning and management, visual design, web support, social event coordination, speaker engagement, publication process, registration services, and more.

With IEEE, Daryna has served in various positions: from chairing the local student branch to chairing IEEE Ukraine Section Student Activities Committee. In 2015 Daryna founded and became a chairperson of IEEE Ukraine Section Women in Engineering Affinity Group.

Geetika Tandon is a Director of Technology at SRA International, a technology consulting firm headquartered in the United States. She was born in Delhi, India and migrated to the United Stated in 1997. Geetika holds a Bachelors in Architecture from Delhi University, India and a double Masters in Architecture from the University of Southern California and a Masters In Computer Science from University of California Santa Barbara.Geetika has over 15 years of Industry experience with software development, middleware integration and technology consulting. She is currently the Director of Technology and Architecture with SRA International. In her previous capacity she worked with Deloitte as a Program Manager and IBM for over 9 years, serving in their WebSphere integration Middleware group as an Executive IT Architect. She started her career in software technology as a developer working on voice and RFID solutions. She currently holds 5 patent files and 6 IP publishes. She has also presented at the IEEE Software Technology Conference, Women in Engineering conference and the IBM Technology Conference at various occasions.Ms. Tandon is a member of the IEEE software Technology Group, IEEE Women in Leadership forum and the Society of Women Engineers. She was an evaluator for the Systems and Technology Invention Disclosure Team in IBM, led the Women in Technology group in the DC Area within Deloitte and has been a speaker on STEM at the white house on women and girls.