WIE/YP Session LAEDC 2022
Title: The role of women in STEAM fields
Date: Monday, July 4th, 2022
Time: 6:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m (UTC -5)
Plenary Speakers
Jenna Ward Brennan
Senior Director, Product Management, GE Healthcare
Biography
Jenna Ward Brennan is Senior Director, Product Management for Interventional Imaging at GE Healthcare. Before being named Product Management Head in January 2021, Jenna led Sales, Marketing, and Engineering teams at Siemens Healthcare where she drove market share growth in intensely competitive, fast-paced segments including Healthcare IT, Medical Device, Imaging, and In Vitro Diagnostics. In addition to startup experience as Vice President of Marketing at Imalogix, Jenna spent the early part of her career in product and account management roles of progressively increasing responsibility at both Oracle and Digitas Health.
Jenna is an accomplished strategist and business development executive specializing in new product launch having commercialized over 15 game-changing innovations throughout her career. She is also well versed in directing highly visible programs and big budgets, creating account-specific targeting plans, leveraging VOC insight, and developing go-to-market strategies that optimize brand visibility and ROI.
Jenna is passionate about assisting and advocating for the advancement of women in business. Whether those women share experiences like her own in a corporate environment or are trying to establish their own business, her goal is to champion women so they can achieve their entrepreneurial goals, which in turn connects, lifts, and engages communities for good. Her pro bono work includes serving as Legal Coordinator for GE Girls, a program designed to encourage girls to explore the world of STEM and STEM-based careers. She will also spend the summer working for Community Transformation Partners, a non-profit community development corporation that promotes public health, holistic wellness, and economic mobility for groups in Philadelphia who have been historically marginalized.
Jenna earned her MBA from St. Joseph’s University and a Bachelor of Arts at Villanova University. She is currently pursuing her JD at Widener Commonwealth Law School.
Magaly Sandoval Pichardo
Senior Analog & Mixed Signal Methodology Engineer and Project Manager at the Solutions Group, Synopsys
Biography
Magaly is a Sr. Analog & Mixed Signal Methodology Engineer and Project Manager at the Solutions Group in Synopsys. Born and raised in Costa Rica, she was one of the 1st two women with a mechatronics engineering degree in her country. Even though her undergrad is in large scale automation, she found her passion in the VLSI industry, where she has been for the past 7 years. She enjoys dynamic, fast paced environments, and gets quickly bored with repetition. Magaly enjoys finding ways to work smarter, not harder and automate as many mundane activities as she can. During her off-workhours she’s been attending night school to get her master’s in engineering management at Tufts University and relaxes training agility with her dog Maki, jumping out of airplanes or chilling with her cats and boyfriend in Boston, MA.
Jeewika Ranaweera
Principal Hardware Engineer, Oracle
Biography
Jeewika Ranaweera is a principal hardware engineer working on high-speed microprocessors at Oracle. She received her Bachelor’s in Computer Science and Engineering from ISPJAE in Havana, Cuba and her Master’s and PhD degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) from the University of Toronto, Canada. She is an IEEE Senior Member and a steering committee member for IEEE Future Directions and Digital Reality Initiatives. Jeewika authored an eBook about her engineering journey for IEEE Women in Engineering to inspire others to follow STEM careers and illustrated the 1 st children’s book published by IEEE.
In Feb 2020, she delivered a Keynote on “Successful Leadership Development in STEAM Careers,” at the IEEE LAEDC 2020, Women in Engineering/Young Professional Networking session in Costa Rica. She is passionate about delivering talks on Quantum Computing, and the need to have a diverse environment to eliminate “Bias in AI” that discriminates minority. She also shared her unique insight via a podcast on areas where immersive technologies benefit humanity. In addition, she has been a speaker at the Drive World Conference, ChipChat, IEEE VTS, IEEE CCNC, AWE, IEEE TTM, Grace Hopper Conference, IEEE WIC Summit, and FB Developer Circle.
As a Program Evaluator for ABET, she helps guide the content, quality and delivery of ECE degree programs around the world. She volunteers as a female technologist through the Oracle Education Foundation and organizes International Day of the Girl events to ensure a world free of discrimination. In 2020, she received the "a; Outstanding member who promoted women in engineering & quote; award from IEEE WIE SCV. She has authored and co-authored many papers published in technical journals or presented at international conferences. Jeewika holds five US Patents.
Morgan Kiani, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, TCU University
Biography
Morgan Mozhgan Kiani (S’06–M’09) received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX, USA, in 2009., She was an Adjunct Faculty Member with the University of Texas at Arlington. She has been a Faculty Member with the Department of Engineering, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX, since 2011. She has authored several scientific articles in peer reviewed journals and conference proceedings. She holds one patent on active control of doubly fed induction generators used in wind energy harvesters.
Her research interests include modeling and analysis of energy converters, numerical methods in power system simulation, integration of distributed generators in smart grid, fault detection in wind farms, energy harvesting, energy diversification, and power electronics. Her teaching interests include electric circuits, power systems, power electronic systems, and electromechanical energy conversion.