WIE Mini-Workshop at iCEEiCT, 2015
Organiser: IEEE Jahangirnagar University (JU) and WIE Affinity Group, IEEE BD Section
Date: 22/05/15
A mini-workshop organized by WIE Affinity Group, IEEE BD Section and IEEE student branch of Jahangirnagar University took place at Banquette Hall, BRAC Centre for Development Management (BCDM) during the ICEEICT (International Conference on Electrical Engineering and Information & Communication Technology), on 22 May, 2015. 60 young female future engineers from different universities participated in the workshop. The main objective of the workshop was to inspire female engineers in both academic and professional levels and raise consciousness about humanitarian technologies involving disabled people. Dr. Celia Shahnaz, Professor, Department of EEE, BUET and Chair, WIE affinity group, IEEE BD section conducted the workshop with a great success.
The workshop had three segments: a technical talk, an interactive session and a session for humanitarian activities of engineering.
Technical Talk
The technical talk was delivered by Dr. Sushmita Mitra, Professor in Machine Intelligence Unit of the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. She is a Fellow of the IEEE, for her contributions to neuro-fuzzy and hybrid approaches in pattern recognition. The topic of her talk was ‘Some Applications of Soft Computing’. The understanding of the female participants about the progress of modern research was enhanced through technical talk on recent technologies.
Interactive Session
The second segment was an interactive session. In this session questions on some specific issues related to women were asked to know the opinion of the participating female students. Cyber security of women, gender equality in profession and entrepreneurship instincts of women engineers, perception of general mass regarding women in engineering were the few topics that were discussed during the session. Besides, to increase awareness, reasons for heart disease in women were also discussed. Participants took part in a spontaneous mutual discussion over the topics.
Session on Assistive Technology
The third segment was dedicated for the humanitarian activities of engineering. In this segment some very useful assistive technologies for disable people were discussed. These technological
aids are designed to facilitate the people with limited ability so that they can overcome their problems by some extent. Hand talk for dumb people, hearing aid and VV talker for the deaf one, screen reader and brail for people with visual impairment, AAC device for the autistic children are the examples of some technological improvement which were discussed in the workshop. The main goal for this particular segment was to let the young female engineers know about the humanitarian aspect of engineering.
The participating students found the event to be helpful for their academic work and also for professional work. At the end of the event, two open competitions were announced which were declared through online. One of them is Competition of ideas of new assistive technologies for the disabled people while another one is Opinion competition for WIE: A step towards awareness. Female undergraduate students of Engineering and Computer Science were eligible to participate in the completion. Winner of the competition was awarded with a certificate of recognition.
