WIE Tech Summit 2020 Exploring Challenges, Opportunities and solutions for WIE during COVID-19

August 16, 2020 | Arik Subhana

Organizers: WIE Affinity Group, IEEE Bangladesh Section and IEEE Bangladesh Section

Platform: Zoom

Date and Time: August 9, 2020. 7:00 P.M to 9:30 P.M BDT

Total Attendees: 78

Women in Engineering Affinity Group (WIE AG), IEEE Bangladesh Section, IEEE Bangladesh Section and IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES), Women in Power jointly organized the virtual event "Women in Engineering Tech Summit 2020" on 9th August, 2020, as a co-located event at International COVID Congress (ICC) 2020. The theme of the event was “Exploring Challenges, Opportunities and solutions for WIE during COVID-19”. Renowned international and national technical professionals from both industry and academia delivered talks in the event. Around 110 speakers, panelists and participants attended the three-hour long session. Among them, 78 were from Bangladesh, 1 was from China, 5 were from Hong Kong, 12 were from India, 1 was from Indonesia, 2 were from Japan, 6 were from Pakistan, 2 were from Sri Lanka and 1 was from USA.

Dr. Bozenna Pasik-Duncan and Dr. Ruomei Li were the keynote speakers and Dr. Paulina Y Chan, Dr. Dewi Yanti Liliana, Dr. Maheshi Dissanayake, Soumaya Jaber, Dr. Aarti Karande, Pramiti Alam, Shruti Jain and Sudeshna Choudhury were the eight panelists of the event. Dr. Celia Shahnaz, General Chair of ICC 2020, Professor at Dept. of EEE, BUET and Chair of IEEE BDS was the advisor of the event. Nafisa Tasnim, Vice Chair of WIE AG, IEEE BDS and Senior Engineer of Energypac Engineering Limited and Irtiza Haque, Treasurer of WIE AG, IEEE BDS and Lead Engineer of IT, Technology, The Grameenphone Limited moderated the whole session.

The session started with welcome speech from the Advisor of the session Dr. Celia Shahnaz. She thanked all the local and foreign speakers and participants from both industry and academia for joining the session. She suggested the women engineers to embrace the current pandemic situation as the “new normal” and requested the speakers and panelists to share their solutions to the challenges emerging in research and job sectors including academia and industries during this COVID-19 situation.

After the welcome speech, the moderator invited the keynote speakers and panelists to share their thoughts on the challenges, opportunities and solutions for WIE during COVID-19.

Firstly, speech was delivered by the keynote speaker, Dr. Bozenna Pasik-Duncan, who is currently working as the Chancellors Club Teaching Professor; she is a Professor of Mathematics, Courtesy Professor of AE and EECS, Life Fellow of IEEE and Fellow of IFACKU Women's Hall of Fame and past Chair of IEEE WIE. She noted that there exist challenges in evaluation of the students in the educational institutions during the COVID-19 situation via online platforms. She shared her ideas to overcome these challenges in light of her long teaching experience. She said that the students must be given flexibility and security to boost their confidence up which will help them to get jobs later on. She also mentioned the importance of collaboration and discussed on the difficulties arising while starting collaboration. Furthermore, she discussed on the techniques for effective science communication, especially with an audience having zero or minimal technical expertise.

Next, Soumaya Jaber, panelist of the session, delivered her speech. She is the current Chair of IEEE WIE, South Australia. She mentioned that positivity, optimism and unity between the women engineers will help them overcome the challenges they face. She suggested that we should continually educate ourselves and stay connected utilizing the digital technologies.

The next speaker was Pramiti Alam, Deputy General Manager, Energypac Engineering Limited and panelist of the session. She noted the challenges and risks that are imposed upon the working mothers and expecting mothers during this global pandemic situation. She proposed that extended maternity leave, work from home opportunities, flexible working hours and government protections and directives can be some effective solutions to these challenges. She also mentioned that WIE AG, IEEE can create online support groups, lobby on behalf of the women engineers and find alternative employment through their vast network who have been let go.

Afterwards, speech was delivered by Dr. Paulina Y Chan, Chair, IEEE Hong Kong Section, Chair, IEEE WIE Hong Kong (2018-19), Founding Chair, Imperial Women in World DSP and panelist of the session. She said that combating community spread requires collaboration efforts across multiple sectors including increased COVID-19 research efforts, work-from-home arrangements and adaptation to virtual teaching and event hosting. She also mentioned that in line with the social changes, IEEE HK has been lending its support to their member community by encouraging the sharing of COVID-19 based research, planning virtual IEEE events to maintain section member engagement (WIE, SP, YP), supporting the development of vaccine and test kit research and development, encouraging and maintaining new and existing memberships, providing virtual learning opportunities and solutions, highlighting new research through virtual conferences and providing mentoring and leadership opportunities to IEEE Student Branches and Young Professionals.

Thereafter, speech was delivered by the panelist Dr. Dewi Yanti Liliana, Department of Informatics Engineering and Computer, Politeknik Negeri Jakarta, Secretary of WIE Indonesia Section. She shared the overview of her project “Women Against Disruptive Information on COVID-19 Pandemic in Indonesia,” supported by IEEE HAC and IEEE SIGHT from its COVID-19 fund. COVID-19 hoaxes in Indonesia have spread out significantly because most people have low information literacy. WIE Indonesia seeks to prevent the spread of misinformation by collaborating with the community, communication media, doctor association and government in overcoming disruptive information.

At this point, the keynote speaker Dr. Ruomei Li, Chair, IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES), Women in Power delivered her speech. She mentioned that lack of self-confidence, lack of risk taking, high dependence and obedience to superiors and male colleagues are the limitations of women. They focus on details only, and not the key issues. However, women have natural intuitive quality, spark of innovative thinking, ability to accommodate different viewpoints, social skills, decisive qualities and reverse thinking capabilities. She suggested the ways to be successful and plead to foster self-confidence, win by strength, focus, do the important things first and try to get support from the family. She also urged to discover and encourage others, keep bottom line of conscience morality and professional ethics, forget and look forward to be successful. Finally, she suggested the women engineers to join international organizations like IEEE to broaden the horizon, get access to information, practice language and communication skills, enhance personal professional background and expand employment and promotion opportunities.

Then the panelist speaker Dr. Maheshi Dissanayake, Senior Lecturer, Department of EEE, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, Chair elect, IEEE Sri Lanka Section and Chair, WIE Sri Lanka delivered talk. She mentioned about the activities of WIE Sri Lanka during the COVID-19 outbreak. They organized numerous online events, such as, Coding Contest, International Women in Engineering Symposium and Webinar Series.

The next speaker was Shruti Jain, Associate Professor at Jaypee University of Information Technology, India and panelist of the session. She told that there are three essential factors that empower the women; they are self-confidence, exposure and independence. She spoke about the discriminations that women face in the society in their daily life. However, she noted that nowadays women are getting better opportunities to prove themselves in every field. She suggested that webinars should be arranged during the COVID-19 to motivate the women. Furthermore, she mentioned about her activities to educate the girls.

Afterwards, the panelist speaker Sudeshna Choudhury, Analytics and Insights Business Partner, Utilities at Tata Consultancy Services and Vice Chair, WIE, IEEE, Kolkata Section delivered her speech. She mentioned that due to COVID-19 outbreak, the “work-from-home” concept has been widely introduced and accepted which will provide better opportunity to maintain balance between work and family life. Furthermore, remote working will inspire more women to join the field force. Thus COVID-19 outbreak has paved the way for redefining workplace. She urged the women for enhancing skill, networking and being an author which will eventually motivate them in studying, growing thinking capabilities and also in decision making.

The last panelist speaker Dr. Aarti Karande, Assistant Professor, Sardar Patel Institute of Technology, Mumbai and Chair, WIE SPIT, then delivered the speech. She mentioned that during the pandemic, women are facing challenges in achieving resilience for and from all, strategic agility, organizational capabilities, digital leads and work from home. She stated that the pandemic offers opportunities in maintaining work balance, cross-sectoral collaboration and partnerships and remote learning. She suggested that to build themselves, women should channelize their communications effectively while maintaining transparency and honesty, plan the contingency fund, forget their long-term plans for now while planning for each day and fuel the catalysts for recovery. She spoke about the activities that WIE has planned during the pandemic, such as, panel discussions, workshops, webinars and also about the upcoming conferences.

Finally, Dr. Celia Shahnaz concluded the session with a word of thanks to the panelists, speakers, participants and volunteers for making the summit a success and wished everyone safety and good health in the pandemic situation. She also introduced all the participants who were present during the session and mentioned them as the future leaders.

The speakers and participants thanked IEEE Bangladesh Section and WIE AG, IEEE BDS for arranging the session and giving the scope for sharing ideas to overcome the challenges and explore the opportunities during COVID-19. All the speakers gave their valuable suggestions for the young professionals, student and participants how they can utilize their valuable time during this pandemic.

The Summit provided a great opportunity for the participants with promising ideas on different technologies and also provided a platform for networking and collaboration. There was also a live question answer session to address the theme of the meet-up.