R8 WIE News

How many times have you been to an IEEE conference and didn’t see someone like you speaking on a panel—demonstrating leadership, explaining technology, and engaging with the engineering community? For women, this is a common and frustrating occurrence.

Read the full article by Lisa Lazareck-Asunta at IEEE Spectrum

Call for Proposals: IEEE Region 8 WIE Awards  2020!

Download the Detailed Application Guidelines for the Region 8 Women in Engineering (WIE) awards and the Clementina Saduwa Award for the year 2020 and submit your application now!

Deadline: 1st February 2020
We look forward to receiving your applications!

Congratulations for the R8 WIE Awards 2019 Winners!

(Picture taken at the awards ceremony taking place at the IEEE WIE ILS Portugal 2019)

• Region 8 Women in Engineering Section Affinity Group of the Year Award goes to IEEE WIE UK and Ireland Affinity Group.
• Region 8 Women in Engineering Student Affinity Group of the Year Award goes to IEEE WIE ENIM Student Affinity Group, Tunisia WIE SB AG.
• Region 8 Outstanding Women in Engineering Section Volunteer Award goes to Ms. Randa Hammami from Tunisia.
• Region 8 Outstanding Women in Engineering Student Volunteer Award goes to Mr. Khoubeyb Layouni from Tunisia.
  Please have a look at the awards’ Guidelines and previous Recipients. For more information, please contact us by email ([email protected]), on Facebook, or Instagram!

Did you know that the leading winners of the longest-running Region 8 contest, the Student Paper Contest, were always men until 2016? This year, Lucija Brezočnik is the first ever female SPC winner.
And she has a message, especially for the R8 WIE community. “Do not let a stereotype, that in the STEM fields one gender is better than the other, discourage you from taking this career path. It is easier to give up and convince yourself that STEM is not for you, but if you give it a try and then succeed, you can inspire others, regardless of gender. Therefore, go after your passion, dream big, work hard, learn from your mistakes, do not always take the easiest or safe way, and surround yourself with people who support you. And remember, success is not based on gender, but on your merit!”

After completing primary and secondary school, she enrolled in the university study program titled Informatics and Technologies of Communication, option Information Systems, at the UM FERI. She finished the undergraduate studies in September 2014 with a diploma work titled Development of a decision support system using the non-dominated sorting. Due to her desire to deepen and upgrade knowledge, she continued her studies by enrolling in the master’s study program Informatics and Technology of Communication in the same year. She successfully defended the master’s thesis entitled Particle swarm optimization in feature selection for classification in August 2016. She never used the year off.

During her studies, she was active in many fields. In 2013, she became an online technical editor of the Advances in Production Engineering & Management (APEM) journal, which is abstracted and indexed in the world’s leading bibliographic databases, including Web of Science (Thomson Reuters) and Scopus (Elsevier). A year later, she developed a website for SpinRCP, which is an integrated development environment (IDE) for the Spin model checker, and since then she has been an online editor for this product. At the invitation of the Institute of Informatics at UM FERI, she participated as a developer in the student project “Creative Path to Practical Knowledge,” titled Location-based mobile application testing approach, partially financed by the European Union.

During her master’s study, she received and accepted the offer for a job as a technical assistant at the UM FERI Institute of Informatics. After being elected to the title of an assistant in the subject area of Informatics in 2017, she has an assistant position.

In each academic year of her studies, she was ranked among the top 5% of the most successful students in her generation. In the academic year 2015/2016, she was recognized as the best graduate of second-degree study programs and received the award for outstanding student contribution at UM FERI. She was honoured also by the 2017 University of Maribor rector’s prize.

As a Ph.D. student of Computer Science and Informatics, her research covers the area of computational intelligence, machine learning, data mining, and swarm intelligence. In the past two years, as a young academic, she has prepared and presented seven scientific conference papers, two papers in professional conferences, one scientific conference contribution abstract, and the integral part of a monograph. Currently, one of her scientific articles is in the review process.

More about Lucija can be found on https://ii.feri.um.si/en/person/lucija-brezocnik-2/.

The Central European Student Branch Congress (CEuSBC) took place in Opole, Poland 13-15 May 2013. A few weeks later the Middle East Student Branch congress took place in Lebanon 28 May – 1 June  2013. The IEEE Region 8 WIE committee organized IEEE Women In Engineering (WIE) workshops for students at these congresses. The main objectives of the workshops was to increase the visibility of WIE for IEEE members at universities and student branches.

Simay Akar presented the workshops

• WIE Presentation delivered to attendees
• Importance of WIE discussed
• 2 groups designed WIE SBAG Action Plan based on “Best Practices”
• Some Great Ideas:
• Social Activities based on cultural interest: Talent Shows, Cooking Competitions. Importance of cultural interest in locals highlighted.
• Social Responsibility Campaigns and Projects
• IEEE WIE Day: Specific day all around to celebrate women achievement
• Pre University Activities: High School Visits, Orientation Days
• Professional Activities: Distance Learning for Women in Engineers, especially for those keeping far away her professional life for a while with the reasons like pregnancy

CEuSBC in Pictures:

MESBC in Pictures:

WIE@LYIT presents Selected Topics in Enterprise Applications Development

19^th June  2013, 1-30-4pm in Letterkenny Institute of Technology

Guest speakers include Dr. David Dampier on Security in Large Scale Applications, Ms Mary Tuite on Experiences with Mainframe Application Analysis for the Banking Sector and Ms. Sharon Greene on Quality Assurance in the Enterprise.

The event is free to attend but registration is required to aid with catering. This event provides a forum for discussion and networking on technical topics in enterprise scale networking. As a secondary but essential element the event aims to encourage more women to progress in the field through support and advice from others.

WIEatLYIT_19June2013

The Iberian Student Branch Congress 2013 (ISBC) took place in Porto, Portugal during 15 – 17 March 2013. The IEEE Region 8 WIE committee participated in organising an IEEE Women In Engineering (WIE) workshop for students at the congress. The main objective of the workshop was to increase the visibility of WIE for IEEE members at universities and student branches.

Simay Akar presented the workshop with great success.

During the workshop, the following activities were carried out:

• WIE Presentation delivered to attendees
• Importance of WIE discussed
• An interactive component of workshop was carried out
  • 2 groups designed WIE Student Branch Affinity Groups  activities based on: Pre-University Educational Outreach & Professional and Career Development topics
  • The Pre-University Educational Outreach group designed a project similar to TISP (IEEE Teacher in-Service Program) , with a focus of parents.  The project was named as “WISP”
  • The Professional and Career Development group designed WIE Student Congress (Global level);  to enable WIE members to develop their career and networking in this WIE Student Congress

Look out for similar workshops at future student events like this in Region 8.