UWL Associate Professor hosts women in tech event at international conference
Intro
University of West London's Dr Nagham Saeed hosted a ‘Leading Women in Tech: Insights, Experiences, and Designing for Diversity and Inclusion’ event at the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) COINS (International Conference on Omni-layer Intelligent systems) recently. IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional organisation dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity where Dr Saeed serves as the Vice-Chair for the United Kingdom and Ireland section.
Main body
Dr Saeed, Associate Professor in Electrical and Electronic Engineering at UWL’s School of Computing and Engineering, organised two panel discussions for this event. The first was 'Navigating the Tech. Industry as a Woman: Insights, Experience, and Lessons Learned from Leading Women in Tech.' This gave a platform for women tech leaders and their advocates to highlight their successes and challenges in the industry, creating an open dialogue about skills, careers, and relationship building. The panel also addressed key questions many women have regarding navigating the tech space, career development, and growth in the fields of IoT (Internet of Things), AI and Data.
The second panel was titled ‘Designing for Diversity and Inclusion.’ Although the convergence of IoT, AI, Data, Edge-Fog-Cloud Computing, and Blockchain provides one of the most significant opportunities for humanity, the corresponding products, services and devices are typically not designed with the diversity of their user base in mind. This panel discussed strategies to foster genuine and holistic inclusion regarding the design of these important technologies, capturing the world’s complex cultural and environmental diversity factors to tackle the risk of abuse and imbalance.
The event’s highlight was the Diversity and Inclusion Awards, where Dr Saeed had the privilege of awarding seven PhD students with grants to cover their travel and conference registration. This accomplishment was made possible by the generous support of the IEEE Computer Society, IEEE Technical Committee on Data Engineering, IEEE COINS, and IEEE Women in Engineering UK & Ireland.
Dr Saeed expressed:
This achievement reflects our dedication to driving change and fostering balance in our community.
The aim of our Diversity and Inclusion program is to help everyone from any backgrounds achieve their full potential, improve wider society, and bring people closer together.
After months of preparation, we had a very successful event, and we have had some excellent feedback.”
One of the attendees said:
This is the best session I have attended at this conference"
- Read more about the event and the panellists via the IEEE COINS website.
- Find out more about studying BEng (Hons) Electrical and Electronic Engineering at UWL.
Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) research group
IIoT research group is a multidisciplinary group with members from engineering and computing backgrounds, focusing on industry-driven research.
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