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 for 24 years, and participated in the development of many software products as a technical leader. She has a rich project management experience including international collaborative research handling as well. From April of 2009, she was involved in Chiba University of Commerce as Associate Professor. In 2015, she has become Professor of Chiba University of Commerce. In 2015, she stayed at University of California, Los Angeles as a visiting researcher. She has become Director of Institude of Economic Research, Chiba University of Commerce in 2016. She has served as an Associate Editor of Journal of IEICE Data Engineering and Information Management and IPSJ Transactions On Databases (TOD). She is an Board Member of the Database Society of Japan and IEEE Japan Council. She was the Chair of IEEE Women In Engineering (2015-16). This year she became the Chair of IEEE MGA Membership Recruitment and Recovery committee.

Currently, she has focused on the data mining research and the social media analysis, especially topic extraction from millions of tweets related to the East Japan Great Earthquake. She is developing the high performance feature selection technique for big data. She’s also conducting global researches for developing the social media analysis platform in multi-language/cultural environment.

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 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.

Nivas Ravichandran is associated with Freshdesk (A cloud-based customer support software funded by Google) as the Product Marketer. With Freshdesk, he handles the Product Marketing strategy for the Service Desk Platform Freshservice.

With IEEE, he is the Region 10 (APAC) Young Professionals Coordinator for 2016 and the Vice-Chair of All IEEE Young Engineers' Humanitarian Challenge. He also played a key role in the IEEE India Strategic Initiative Committee in the Entrepreneurship and Internship Initiatives.

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.

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.

Shahrnaz Azizi received B.S. degree from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, M.S. degree from Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran and Ph.D. degree from Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA, all in Electrical Engineering. Since May 2000, she has been with Intel Corporation where she has worked on the design, development and implementation of wireless technologies and devices, in particular Wi-Fi devices. She has contributed to various standards developments in IEEE 802.11, WiMax and LTE with focus on the physical layer algorithms. She is currently a Research Scientist at Intel Labs with research interests in development of physical and MAC layers of next generation wireless communications systems. She is an inventor of more than 140 patent applications with 32 already granted. She is an IEEE senior member and an IEEE WIE member, and the 2016 Secretary of WIE Santa Clara Valley Chapter.

Salima Kaissi has an Engineering Degree in Telecommunication and Computer Science from National School of Applied Sciences in Morocco and an Executive Masters in Strategy and Management of International Business from ESSEC Business School in Pars. She has a strong international experience and worked for many companies including Alcatel Lucent, Nokia, Microsoft, Twitter, and is also volunteering for international NGOs, mainly IEEE for the last 15 years.

Currently Salima is a Co-Founder and VP of eSTEM Morocco, an NGO that aims et Empowering Girls and Women in STEM fields.

Salima loves Volunteering, Yoga, Running, and Crochet.

Alina is a Corporate Marketer with Freshdesk Inc, CA. She handles content across the company's four products - Freshdesk, Freshsales, Hotline and Freshservice. She collaborates with their global teams in San Francisco, Berlin, Sydney and London for events, corporate collateral, PR, branding, marketing or out-of-home campaigns.

Alina also volunteers as the Region 10 Women In Engineering Deputy Information Manager and as content volunteer for multiple regional and global conferences in IEEE. During her undergrad in Engineering, she was also a freelance side-hustler in content with NASSCOM, Tech In Asia and other top startups in Asia.

Susmitha is an Assistant Systems Engineer - Trainee at Tata Consultancy Services Limited, India. She has previously worked with YES Cables Private Limited as a technical trainee and YES Broadband Private Limited as a finance trainee. She is a recipient of IEEE Computer Society Upsilon Pi Epsilon Scholarship 2016. She is also a very ardent volunteer of IEEE Women in Engineering and IEEE Computer Society.

Susmitha completed her B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering from Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT).

Jibin started his career with INK talks (An Indian version of Ted Talks) where he was an intern and coordinator for Teenovators Project and was handling their day to day operations. He is of a multi-disciplinary person and realistic in approach. He has varied interests in Science, engineering in the fields like electronics, computer science, robotics, programming etc. He is a volunteer with IEEE (World’s largest technical organization) and has made lot of value connections. His works with IEEE, opened up his dreams to do things that matters in the most unique way possible. He has experience in organising over 150 events including global competitions, conferences, and student congresses.

Jibin Sabu completed his B.tech course from FISAT (Mahatma Gandhi University affiliated). During his UG programme, he worked with AIESEC – (Association internationale des étudiants en sciences économiques et commerciales) an International Association of students in Economic and commercial science, MAD (Make A Difference) etc.

In his free time he likes to mingle a lot of with people, he is energetic about roller skating, table tennis, travel, meeting people and also if time permits he jumps himself into playing basketball. He is currently working for FullContact Inc. handling Partner Development.

Amaad Soomro works as a Creative Designer and Web Developer at 10xC Startup Accelerator in Pakistan. 10xC provides seed funding, advice and shared services to entrepreneurs working on technology startups. Amaad is passionate about designing interfaces. He focuses on the branding and user interfaces of the startups at 10xC.

He is also a passionate IEEE Volunteer. He has been actively volunteering at IEEE since 4 years. Recently selected as Region 10 Coordinator for Young Professionals at Microwaves also He is the Lead Graphic Designer at IEEE Region 10 Young Professionals. He received 2015 Outstanding IEEE Volunteer Award from IEEE Karachi Section.

Preeti Kovvali currently is leading a large Finland based Retail engagement for Tech Mahindra in the role of Delivery Manager. She essayed an anchoring role in streamlining processes for major projects, where she drafted the strategy. She was recently selected as the Emerging Leader as part of the Tech Mahindra's elite batch of 1000 Leaders Program. Preeti has been an active volunteer with IEEE for 10 years and has contributed across the section, regional and global committees/boards. She is largely associated with the IEEE Young Professionals and Women in Engineering. Loves bringing together like-minds and holds experience in curating conferences/meet-ups. Preeti likes to blog and travel around the world, understanding new cultures.

Susan (Sue) Delafuente has more than 20 years of experience working for top Silicon Valley computer, networking and telecommunications companies. She is deeply involved with the IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE) community, and has served in many posts in the Santa Clara Valley WIE group—including as 2017 Vice Chair and 2015 Chair. She is a longtime member of the IEEE Computer Society. She is a past president of San Jose State University’s Alpha Eta Rho, a professional aviation fraternity, and continues to speak at the San Jose State University’s Management InformationSystems (MIS) Honors Practicum for Seniors. She is most proud of her three daughters: a teenage honor roll athlete; ahumanitarian and cheerleader; and a graduating senior in engineering at Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, California.

Susan Delafuente can be reached at sdelafuente@ieee.org.