W-STEM

AICCSA Women & Computer Science & STEM

The Women in Computer Science & STEM session highlights concrete opportunities female have to carry on successful careers in Computer Science and STEM in general. The aim is to bring together junior and senior women computer scientists/STEM encourages collaboration through formal and informal discussion and provides a perfect opportunity for young researchers to discuss their research and get valuable feedback in an open and friendly environment. Besides, this event promotes networking opportunities and a support network comprising role models, mentors, and peers. The event is devoted to all scientists – male & female - it includes talks by distinguished women speakers from industry and academia who will share their experiences with the participants. Together with young computer science engineers working in the industry, senior speakers will share a panel where they will exchange their experiences and vision of their professional careers, and how the “new normal” in the pandemic era has had an impact on their activities.

Program

8:00 – 8:15

Welcome & Opening

Chirine Ghedira Guégan, University Lyon 3, France
Genoveva Vargas-Solar, CNRS, France

Keynotes Session

Chair: Chirine Ghedira Guégan, University Lyon 3, France

8:15 – 8:45

Keynote 1, Karamjit Kaur, University South Australia, Australia

8:45 – 09:15

Keynote 2, Eli Katsiri, IMSI/ATHENA, Greece

 

Panel
Moderator: Genoveva Vargas-Solar, CNRS, France

9 :15 – 10 :00

How to be a successful professional in Computer Science & STEM
in pandemic times?

Keynote Speakers

Keynote speaker 1: Eli Katsiri, IMSI/ATHENA, Greece: https://www.imsi.athenarc.gr/en/people/member/50
Dr. Eli Katsiri is Scientific Collaborator at IMSI/ATHENA specializing on middleware for ubiquitous computing systems and sensor networks. She is also Assistant Professor-elect (under appointment) at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Democritus University of Thrace. From October 2007 to October 2010 she was a lecturer in Computer Science at the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, at Birkbeck College, University of London, where she supervised several MSc and BSc students including one PhD student. From 2005 to 2007 she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Imperial College London in distributed Software Engineering. Eli has a PhD from Cambridge University's Engineering Department (2005) and she has done research in Cambridge University's Computer Laboratory working on Pervasive Computing (2000-2004). Eli has an MEng in Computer Engineering and Informatics from the University of Patras, Greece (1998). From 1998 to 2000 she worked as a systems analyst in Procter&Gamble, in Belgium. She has also worked as a developer for Velti dR Ltd in London and Cetrus Inc in CA, USA, as well as a consultant in e-Government for the Hellenic Deputy Minister of Education, Religious Affairs and Lifelong Learning, Prof I Panaretos. Her research is broadly concerned with programming abstractions and models for real-time, efficient management of sensor data.

Keynote speaker 2: Karamjit Kaur, University South Australia, Australia: https://people.unisa.edu.au/Karamjit.Kaur
Karamjit Kaur is a Research Fellow in AI and Software Engineering Laboratory since May 2017. She was awarded my PhD in 2015 on the topic "A Novel Framework for Querying Multi-paradigm Databases". Her research interests include data integration, systems interoperability, polyglot persistence and investigating big data storage solutions such as NoSQL and NewSQL databases.

Panellists

hanene Hanêne Ben-Abdallah received a BS in Computer Science and BS in Mathematics from the University of Minnesota-USA, an MSE and PhD in Computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania-USA. She worked as Professor of Computer Science at the University of Sfax-Tunisia and King Abdulaziz University-KSA. Since 2018, she has been serving as Executive Dean of the Faculty of CIS & Applied Media at the Higher Colleges of Technology-UAE where she is actively involved in faculty professional development, promoting applied research, and curriculum development. Since 1997, Professor Hanene has been conducting research in formal methods, software design quality, reuse techniques in software and business process modelling, with application to the development of information and decision support systems, and web/cloud-based applications. Within these topics, she has advised more than 30 MS students and 20 PhD students, 90% of whom are female students.
sofia Sofia Bekrar is an information security and vulnerability researcher bringing more than ten years industry and academic experience. Currently, she works at Apple as a senior security researcher. Sofia is an advocate for proactive security. In her career, she has implemented various fuzzing techniques which uncovered thousands of vulnerabilities in widely used software to protect billions of users.  During her research at VUPEN Security, the world leading firm in vulnerability research, she developed outstanding smart fuzzing techniques combining static & dynamic binary code analysis. 

Sofia Bekrar obtained her PhD in Computer Security from Grenoble university (ENSIMAG engineering school - LIG & VERIMAG Labs at UJF). She also received a national habilitation for teaching at graduate level in Computer Science as Mcf. Maître de Conférences (Assistant Professor), from the French Ministry of Research and Education (Section 27, Computer Science). Her PhD research was quoted as "Strategic for the Defense of France".

Sofia is an active participant of the Security community as a trainer, events organizer and program reviewer. She is a member of the program committee of some world class leading conferences (Hack In The Box, IEEE Security & Privacy - LangSec Language-theoretic Security, Springer Journal in Computer Virology and Hacking Techniques (Editorial Board), etc. She was also co-chair of the GreHack, offensive security conference which attracted more than 250 attendees and world class speakers worldwide (from Google, IOActive, etc). She has been teaching security testing at graduate level at Grenoble INP Ensimag and Joseph Fourier University (UJF), France. 

Sofia is a board member of Women in Cybersecurity (WiCyS) Silicon Valley. She is interested in supporting women in security and encouraging more women to join the community.
gabriela

Gabriela Montiel Moreno, Software Engineering Manager, LinkedIn
Women@LinkedIn HQ Office Co-Lead
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabrielamontielm/

Gabriela Montiel-Moreno is a Software Engineering Manager of the Graph Infrastructure team at LinkedIn and also a office Co-lead of the Women@LinkedIn ERG Community at LinkedIn for Sunnyvale/Mountain View. She is responsible of the user frameworks for the next generation of the Graph technologies on the Economic Graph. She previously worked as both and individual contributor and manager at the Oracle Mexico Development Center where she built the Graph Technologies for Oracle Database and Oracle Big Data Appliance. She received her Master in Computer Science from the Universidad de las Américas-Puebla (UDLAP) in Mexico. Her interests include Knowledge Graphs, Data and Knowledge representation, Data Integration, and User Experience. She is based at LinkedIn HQ in Sunnyvale, California.

claudia

Claudia Flores Saviaga, Research Fellow Facebook
PhD student HCI Lab in the Computer Science Department at West Virginia University
https://www.linkedin.com/in/saviaga/

My research involves the areas of HCI, Machine Learning, Crowdsourcing, and Social Computing. I am interested in understanding how “bad actors” organize misinformation and propaganda messages, and how other citizens organize to debunk those rumours and influence campaigns. I started my exploration of online spaces analyzing how political trolls were organizing during the 2016 US presidential elections. My research has been covered by the Associated Press, Newsweek, Salon, among others. Recently, I used quantitative methods to study at scale how the Latino community was being targeted across social media platforms during the 2018 midterm election as part of a collaboration with the Institute for the Future (IFF). My research has caught the attention and has received funding support from different think tanks in the US such as the Atlantic Council and the National Democratic Institute. Previously, I worked as a technology consultant, project manager, and strategy adviser to the Lieutenant Governor of the State of Veracruz in Mexico. I've also collaborated with Mexico’s presidency and top universities in Latin America, such as the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).