WoWMoM 2020

N2Women

Welcome (from the organisers and chairs)

We are delighted to contribute to this N2Women panel event with the aim of highlighting some of Ireland’s leading female academics and researchers working across the different Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) research centres. Our panel members have all uniquely contributed within the Irish landscape, increasing female participation in STEM, acting as positive role models and working towards developing positive measures to ensure gender equality, representation, progression and success for all. We also have ensured that we include a student voice as part of the panel session ensuring their unique contribution is also included.

- Dr. Donna O’Shea (Cork Institute of Technology) & Prof. Ellen Zegura (Georgia Tech)

N2Women Event Flyer


Date and Time: Tuesday, 1st September. 13.00 - 14.00
N2Women event.
Location: Virtual room



What is the theme of this panel event?

The theme is “Meet some of Ireland’s leading women in innovation researching across SFI research centres”. The IEEE World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks (WOWMOM) conference was due to be held in Cork, Ireland this year but due to COVID-19 been rescheduled as a virtual conference. The theme of the panel event therefore is focused on Irish based researchers to allow attendees to get a small virtual feel on the unique challenges and opportunities that women face working across the different Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) research centres in Ireland.


When is the panel event being held?

Tuesday 1st September 13.00-14.00 GMT (Irish time)


How do I participate?

Further information on how to participate and links will be made available closer to the date.


Why should I participate or attend this panel event?

This is not a female only event! This event is open to everyone and everyone should participate if they want to educate themselves on some of the unique challenge’s women face in leadership, research and innovation. We invite men to participate, listen and contribute as we all need to be actively involved in the conversation to make real change happen.


What is N2Women?

N2Women (Networking Networking Women) is a discipline-specific community of researchers in the fields of networking and communications. N2Women encourages diversity and aims at fostering connections among under-represented women in this computing sub-field [source: https://n2women.comsoc.org/] .


Who are the panel members?

Prof. Ita Richardson

Department of Computer Science and Information Systems (CSIS),
Co-Principal Investigator, Lero – the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre
Chair, University of Limerick Equality and Human Rights Committee
SFI Centre Representation: SFI LERO

Bio:

Prof. Ita Richardson, a University of Limerick graduate, commenced her academic career with UL in 1992, where she teaches undergraduate and postgraduate students. She leads a number of research projects, and supervises PhD students and researchers in this role. As an active member of the international Software Engineering research community, Ita’s research currently focuses on the topics of Global Software Development and Connected Health. Her research is funded from a variety of sources including Science Foundation Ireland, European Union, Irish Research Council and Enterprise Ireland. Her research collaborators include University Hospital Limerick, University Maternity Hospital Limerick, Bon Secours Hospital Tralee, Ocuco Ltd, and IBM. Throughout her career, Ita has supported women’s issues, particularly within Science and Engineering disciplines. From 2017-2020, she held the position of Special Advisor to the University of Limerick President on Equality and Diversity, with responsibility for developing the Equality & Diversity strategy for UL. In this role, she was a member of the Irish University Association Vice-Presidents’ group on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. She represented the University of Limerick on the Higher Education Authority Athena SWAN committee, is currently a member of the Athena SWAN University and Science & Engineering committees and chair of the CSIS-Lero Athena SWAN committee. Ita leads the Johnson & Johnson funded WiSTEM2D (Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, Manufacturing and Design) project within UL, working with undergraduate students through a variety of initiatives.

Prof. Siobhán Clarke

Professor in Computer Science,
Trinity College Dublin.
SFI Centre Representation: LERO, INSIGHT, CONNECT, ENABLE

Bio:

Siobhán Clarke is a Professor in the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College Dublin. She joined Trinity in 2000, having previously worked for over ten years as a software engineer for IBM. She is Head of the Networks and Distributed Systems Discipline in the School. Her current research focus is on software engineering models for the provision of smart and dynamic software services to urban stakeholders, addressing challenges in the engineering of dynamic software in ad hoc, mobile environments. She has published over 200 papers including in top conferences such as ICSE, OOPSLA, AAMAS, PerCom and ICSOC, and journals including multiple IEEE/ACM Transactions papers. She sits on the editorial boards of IEEE Transactions on Services Computing and ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems. In 2020, she co-launched the Smart Technologies and Cities section of the Frontiers in Sustainable Cities journal. As of 2020, she has supervised 23 PhD candidates to graduation. Prof. Clarke is a Science Foundation Ireland Principal Investigator, exploring an Internet of Things middleware for adaptable, urban-scale software services. This work has produced a new approach to software engineering for Internet of Things devices with new edge-based service placement decision-making combined with predictive modelling and decentralised reinforcement learning techniques for optimising service orchestration, all of which adapt to real-time changes in the environment. She is also Co-Principal Investigator of the CONNECT, Insight and Lero Research Centres. Prof. Clarke is the founding Director of Future Cities, the Trinity Centre for Smart and Sustainable Cities, with contributors from a range of disciplines, including Computer Science, Statistics, Engineering, Social Science, Geography, Law, Business and the Health Sciences. She leads the Enable SFI Research Programme on Connecting Communities to Smart Urban Environments through the Internet of Things. ENABLE is a national, multi-disciplinary collaboration between 8 HEIs, multiple companies (both MNCs and SMEs) and Dublin and Cork City Councils. Enable is a collaborative SFI Spoke between the CONNECT, Insight and Lero Research Centres. Prof. Clarke was elected Fellow of Trinity College Dublin in 2006.

Dr. Susan Rea

Principal Investigator Nimbus Research Centre in Cork Institute of Technology,
Ireland.
SFI Centre representation: SFI CONNECT, ENABLE.

Bio:

Dr. Susan Rea is a principal investigator at the Nimbus Centre in CIT and is currently serving as the Vice Chair of the IEEE UK and Ireland Blockchain group and leads research programs in the area of networks and distributed systems for smart cities applications & energy sustainability with more than 14 years of research management experience. Her current research interests focus on IoT & CPS, specifically distributed, dynamic and automated trust management using distributed ledger technology for large scale next generation networks. Susan as part of the Athena SWAN program actively promotes and supports female representation and leadership within the STEMM sector.

Ms Urja Pawar

PhD Student, Cork Institute of Technology,
Ireland.
SFI Centre representation: SFI Centre for Research Training in Advanced Networks and Sustainable Societies (ADVANCE) in CIT

Bio:

Urja graduated as B.Tech(Honors) in Information Technology from a National Institute in India. During undergraduate, she was heavily involved in hackathons and conferences and soon she initiated her state’s first National level hackathon, CodeUtsava. She also did internships with various startups during summer vacation. One of the internships was with Fourth Frontier which involved her to detect arrhythmia from ECG signal provided by their device. After completing the internship, she continued the project of arrhythmia detection and published a paper in her final year. During this period she got her interest in machine learning and decided to pursue a Ph.D. in this field. Currently, she is enrolled in a Ph.D. program with CIT in partnership with Mckesson.



Who organised this event?

Dr. Donna O’Shea

Chair of Cybersecurity in Cork Institute of Technology,
Ireland

Bio:

Dr. Donna O’Shea holds the position of Chair of Cybersecurity in Cork Institute of Technology, is co-Principal Investigator at the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) research centre CONFIRM and Investigator at the SFI research centre CONNECT and ENABLE and group lead of Ríomh – Intelligent Secure Systems research group. Donna’s research expertise lies in the area of enterprise security (i.e. SDN and NFV security) and network and service management with a specific focus on the design, analysis and optimisation of wired and wireless communication systems, networks and services. During her PhD she made a significant contribution in the area of service provisioning for Beyond 3rd Generation (B3G) networks. On completion of her PhD she spent five years working for IBM and this work exposed her to the rigorous design discipline that is a prerequisite for the successful development of large, complex systems across several sites, multiple design teams and various target platforms. Donna is passionate about promoting science and technology as a career for women and men, is a director of IT@Cork a not-for-profit independent business organisation representing the interests of the IT industry in Cork and is an IEEE Senior Member.

Prof. Ellen Zegura

Regents’ Professor and Fleming Endowed Professor,
School of Computer Science
Georgia Tech.

Bio:

Dr. Ellen Zegura is a Regents’ Professor and Fleming Endowed Professor in the School of Computer Science at Georgia Tech. She works in two primary areas, computer networking and computing for social good. In computer networking, she is known for her work on the GT-ITM suite of Internet topology tools, which remain in use 20 years after release (2200+ citations for primary publication). In mobile wireless networking, she and colleagues invented the concept of message ferries to facilitate communications in environments where network connectivity is unreliable and/or sparse (1600+ citations for primary publication). Her work in computing and social good includes work in Liberia with the Carter Center, with Native Americans in Southern California, and with residents of the Westside of Atlanta. She is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Fellow of the ACM. Since Fall 2014 she has been an elected member of the Board of the Computing Research Association (CRA), and she is currently Chair of the CRA Board.

Sponsor

IEEE Computer Society