Date: Wednesday, 7 June 2023

Time: 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM

Location: Ambrosia

Andrea Goldsmith

Andrea Goldsmith is the Dean of Engineering and Applied Science and the Arthur LeGrand Doty Professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University. She was previously the Stephen Harris Professor of Engineering and Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, where she is now Harris Professor Emerita. Her research interests are in information theory, communication theory, and signal processing, and their application to wireless communications, interconnected systems, and neuroscience. She founded and served as Chief Technical Officer of Plume WiFi (formerly Accelera, Inc.) and of Quantenna (QTNA), Inc, and she serves on the Board of Directors for Intel (INTC), Medtronic (MDT), Crown Castle Inc (CCI), and the Marconi Society. She also serves on the Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) and as the founding Chair of the IEEE Board of Directors Committee on Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity. Dr. Goldsmith is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the Royal Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her awards include the Marconi Prize, the IEEE Sumner Technical Field Award, the ACM Athena Lecturer Award, the ComSoc Armstrong Technical Achievement Award, the Kirchmayer Graduate Teaching Award, the WICE Mentoring Award, and the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal’s Women of Influence Award. She is author of the book “Wireless Communications” and co-author of the books “MIMO Wireless Communications,” “Principles of Cognitive Radio,” and “Machine Learning and Wireless Communications,” all published by Cambridge University Press, as well as an inventor on 29 patents.

Mehrnaz Shokrollahi

Mehrnaz Shokrollahi is the AI Team Lead at PureFacts Financial Solutions, where she leverages her extensive experience in AI and machine learning to help the team build robust infrastructure and apply advanced models to generate insights and add value to the wealth management industry. Her past work includes developing solutions for various fields, including biomedical engineering, mobile apps, manufacturing, and wealth and asset management.

As part of her commitment to corporate social responsibility, Mehrnaz spearheads the PurePossibilities program at PureFacts, which aims to improve financial well-being and empower individuals to lead their best lives.

Mehrnaz has been recognized for her contributions to the field of AI, having been named among the Top 25 Women in AI: Canada Edition in 2022 and the Top 30 Influential Women Advancing AI in 2020. She is also the chair of the IEEE Signal Processing Chapter Toronto Section, as well as the IEEE WISP Chair of the Industry-Academia Engagement and Education Subcommittee and serves as an advisor in the inQUbate program, a student-run startup incubator.

Namrata Vaswani

Namrata Vaswani received a B.Tech from IIT-Delhi in India in 1999 and a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2004, both in Electrical Engineering. Since Fall 2005, she has been with the Iowa State University where she is currently the Anderlik Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Her research interests lie in a data science, with a particular focus on Statistical Machine Learning and Signal Processing. She has served two terms as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing; as a lead guest-editor for a 2018 Proceedings of the IEEE Special Issue (Rethinking PCA for modern datasets); and as the Area Editor for Special Issues for the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine. Vaswani is a recipient of the Iowa State Early Career Engineering Faculty Research Award (2014), the Iowa State University Mid-Career Achievement in Research Award (2019) and University of Maryland’s ECE Distinguished Alumni Award (2019). She also received the 2014 IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award for her 2010 IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing paper co-authored with her student Wei Lu on Modified-CS. She is a Fellow of the IEEE (class of 2019).

Yang Lei

Yang Lei is a Principal Research Engineer at HP Personal Systems Software group, leading the efforts of developing computer vision solutions for computing products. Her research interests include object segmentation, recognition and tracking, 3D depth sensing, and the application of technologies in various domains, such as video conferencing, life science, digital manufacturing, education, etc. Dr. Lei is the author of 22 patent applications, and has published and presented more than 16 articles in journals and international conferences, including IEEE ISBI (Biomedical Imaging), ICASSP (Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing) and ICIP (Image Processing) in the field of computer vision and image processing . She was the winner of the 2021 Eaton Award of Design Excellence, in recognition of her outstanding work on developing a novel method to image live cells in 3D. Her research on applying computer vision to detecting circulating tumor cells won the HP Reinventer Award, the highest award recognizing innovations at HP. She received her BS degree from Sichuan University and PhD from Purdue University, both in Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Dr. Lei is an IEEE Senior Member and active volunteer in the community. She currently sits in the IEEE Women in Signal Processing Committee, and serves as the Chair of the Grade Elevation, Nomination, and Awards Subcommittee. Before that, she was the Chair of IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS), Santa Clara Valley (SCV) chapter from 2019 to 2021 (3 years), which is located in the heart of Silicon Valley, and one of the largest and most active chapters of the Signal Processing Society.

Sponsors of the Women in Signal Processing Luncheon