Panel Session: Challenging a Divɘrsɘ Tomorrow – WCNC 2025
WCNC 2025 - Joint Event WICE/WIE/YP Panel Session WCNC 2025 - WICE/WIE/YP Mentoring Session WCNC 2025 – Joint Event WICE/WIE/YP Panel Session: Challenging a Divɘrsɘ Tomorrow Advancing Women in STEM by Fostering Inclusion and Meaningful Change TUESDAY, MARCH 25, 2025 - 14:00 - 15:30 Meeting Room: N4+5 Click here to join this session remotely. Moderator: Dajana CASSIOLI - University of L’Aquila, ITALY - Chair of the IEEE Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Committee and Past Chair of WIE Italy Panelists: Prof. Angela Yingjun ZHANG, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, CHINA Prof. Angeliki ALEXIOU, University of Piraeus, GREECE Prof. Renato LO CIGNO, University of Brescia, ITALY Prof. Zak M. KASSAS, Director, US Dept. of Transportation Center for Automated Vehicles Research with Multimodal AssurEd Navigation (CARMEN), and The Ohio State University, USA Prof. Miguel GUTIÉRREZ GAITÁN, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, CHILE Abstract: This panel brings together distinguished academics and emerging professionals in wireless and vehicular communications, networking, navigation and satellite systems, intelligent transportation, autonomous vehicles, optimization and learning in 5G and 6G networks and other emerging technologies, such as THz communications, reconfigurable intelligent surfaces and integrated sensing and communications. The panel will explore the advancement of women, young professionals, and early-career researchers as they shape their paths in STEM. While women continue to break barriers, meaningful inclusion requires collective effort, diverse perspectives, and structural change. This session will examine the challenges and opportunities that shape women’s and young professionals’ careers in STEM and the role of supportive environments in fostering long-term success. Speakers will also share their personal journeys, insights on leadership and career development, and discuss how diversity shapes the future of science and technology. Organized by: ● IEEE Women in Communications Engineering (WICE) ● IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE) and the IEEE Italy Section ● IEEE Young Professionals (YP) Session Agenda 1. Welcome and Opening Remarks (10 min) Introduction by the session moderator Overview of IEEE WICE, WIE, and YP initiatives 2. Panel Discussion – Navigating the Future of Women in STEM (50 min) Key Topics: Women’s and Young Professionals’ aspirations in STEM and the evolving landscape of opportunities The role of academia in fostering inclusion and leadership Addressing uncertainties and barriers in career progression The perspective of young professionals: expectations vs. reality Building a culture of support and mentorship in STEM fields Perspectives from diverse backgrounds on meaningful change 3. Q&A with the Audience (25 min) Interactive session with open questions to the panelists 4. Closing Remarks and Call to Action (5 min) Final reflections on fostering inclusion and meaningful change Opportunities to engage with IEEE communities Networking opportunities after the session Biographies Dajana CASSIOLI (moderator) is Associate Professor of Telecommunications Engineering at the University of L'Aquila, Italy, where she served as the elected head of the Study Program in “Telecommunications Engineering: Advanced Technologies and Services” (2021-2024). She co-authored more than 100 articles published in the most renowned international journals, magazines, and conference proceedings. Her main research interests are in wireless communications, 5G/B5G networks and cybersecurity. She is the Chair of the IEEE ComSoc RCC SiG on Propagation Channels for 5G&B, the Chair of the SiG on Distributed and Massive MIMO of the IEEE P1944 Standard for Channel Models of Wireless Systems (https://cpadhoc.standards.comsoc.org/) and the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Activity Coordinator of the IEEE Italy Section. She is Past Chair of IEEE WIE AG Italy Section (2016-2022) and IEEE VT06/COM19 Italy Chapter (2011-2017). Since 2015 she is the coordinator of the University of L'Aquila Node of the CINI National Lab of Cybersecurity, where she led the CyberEquality WG (2020-2021). She has been awarded the ERC StG VISION (Video-oriented UWB-based Intelligent Ubiquitous Sensing) - 2010 and the ERC PoC Grant iCARE (MobIle health-Care system for monitoring toxicity and symptoms in cAncer patients Receiving diseasE-oriented therapy) - 2016. She was the CEO (2014-2018 and 2019) of the spin-off of the University of L'Aquila “Smartly: Natives of Smart Living srl”, which designs and markets advanced ICT solutions to improve the quality of life. She served as ICC 2024 MWN Co-Chair, ICC 2023 CISS Co-Chair, PIMRC2018 Industry Co-Chair, RTSI WIE Chair in 2018, 2019 and 2020, MELECON2020 and MetroInd4.0, and TPC member of several International Conferences (ICC, PIMRC, VTC, GLOBECOM, etc). She is Associate Editor of IET Electronic Letters, and Executive Editor of Wiley Internet Technology Letters and Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technology and served as an Associate Editor of IEEE Communications Letters in 2018-2022. In 2000 she was Summer Manager at the Wireless Systems Research Dep. - AT&T Labs-Research, NJ, USA. She participated in the definition of the standard channel model for the IEEE 802.15.4 standard (2005). In Summer 2022, she was a short-term visiting scholar at the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, CA, USA, hosted by Prof. Andy Molisch. She serves as an expert evaluator/reviewer of research projects funded by the European Commission and other public institutions worldwide since 2009. Angela Yingjun ZHANG (panelist) is currently a Professor at Department of Information Engineeing, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She received her PhD degree from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2004. She is a Fellow of The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET). Her current research interests focus on optimization and learning in 5G and 6G wireless communication systems. She is currently a Member-at-Large of IEEE ComSoc Board of Governors, the Chair of the Steering Committee of IEEE Wireless Communications Letters, and a member of the Steering Committees of IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, and IEEE SmartgridComm Conference. Previously, she served as the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society, a member of the IEEE ComSoc Fellow Evaluation Standing Committee, the Chair of the Executive Editor Committee of IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, and many years on the editorial boards of IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, IEEE Transactions on Communications, and Willey Security and Communications Networks Journal. She was the Lead Guest Editor of IEEE JSAC Special Issue on Communications and Data Analytics in Smart Grid, and Guest Editors of IEEE JSTSP Special Issue on Advanced Signal Processing for Reconfigurable Intelligent surface-aided 6G Networks, IEEE IoT Journal Special Issue on Internet-of-Things for Smart Energy Systems, and IEEE Communications Magazine, Feature Topic on New R&D Tools for Communications Research. She has been on the Organizing Committees of many top conferences, including IEEE GLOBECOM, ICC, VTC, SmartGridComm, ICCC, etc. She was the Founding Chair of IEEE ComSoc Technical Committee of Smart Grid Communications, a Co-Chair of IEEE ComSoc Multimedia Communications Technical Committee, Interest Group of Wireless Technology for Multimedia Communications, and the Founding Chair of IEEE ComSoc Graduate Of the Last Decade (GOLD) Committee. She served as an IEEE ComSoc Distinguished Lecturer in 2018-2021. She is a co-recipient of 2021 and 2014 IEEE Comsoc Asia Pacific Outstanding Paper Awards, 2013 IEEE SmartGridComm Best Paper Award, 2011 IEEE Marconi Prize Paper Award on Wireless Communications and a recipient of 2011 Young Researcher Award of The Chinese University of Hong Kong. As the only winner from Engineering Science, she has won the Hong Kong Young Scientist Award 2006, conferred by the Hong Kong Institution of Science. Angeliki ALEXIOU (panelist) is a professor of Broadband Communications Systems at the department of Digital Systems, ICT School, University of Piraeus, Greece. She received the Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens in 1994 and the PhD in Electrical Engineering from Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of London in 2000. Since May 2009 she has been a faculty member at the Department of Digital Systems, where she teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Broadband Communications and Advanced Wireless Technologies and supervises PhD and Postdoctoral researchers. Her research has recently focused in the areas of THz Communications, Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces and ISAC. Prior to this appointment she was with Bell Laboratories, Wireless Research, Lucent Technologies, (later Alcatel-Lucent, now NOKIA), in Swindon, UK, (January 1999-April 2009). Professor Alexiou is the Chair of the Working Group on Radio Communication Technologies and of the Working Group on High Frequencies Radio Technologies of the Wireless World Research Forum. She is the project coordinator of the (H2020) TERRANOVA project, the technical manager of (H2020) ARIADNE project and of the (SNS JU) INSTINCT project and the coordinator of the TeraWireless MSCA Doctoral Network. Renato LO CIGNO (panelist) is full professor of Computer Networks at the Information Engineering Department of the University of Brescia, Italy. He received a degree in Electronic Engineering with a specialization in Telecommunications from Politecnico di Torino; in 1998/9, he was Visiting Scholar at UCLA; from 2002 to 2019 he was with the University of Trento, Italy. He is currently Area Editor for Elsevier Computer Communications, and has served as Associate Editor for IEEE/ACM TNET and Elsevier Computer Networks. He is Chair of the Steering Committee of the Wireless On-demand Network systems and Services (WONS) Conference, and has served in several IEEE and ACM conferences at all levels of responsibility. His current research interests are in performance evaluation of wired and wireless networks, modeling and simulation techniques, vehicular networks and networks beyond 5G, and networked systems in general. Renato Lo Cigno is senior member of IEEE and ACM and has co-authored more than 200 papers in peer reviewed journals and conferences. Zak KASSAS (panelist) is the TRC Endowed Chair in Intelligent Transportation Systems and a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The Ohio State University (OSU). He is the Director of the Autonomous Systems Perception, Intelligence, and Navigation (ASPIN) Laboratory. He is also the Director of the U.S. Department of Transportation Center: CARMEN (Center for Automated Vehicle Research with Multimodal AssurEd Navigation), focusing on navigation resiliency and security of highly automated transportation systems. He received from President Biden in 2025 the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on outstanding scientists and engineers early in their careers. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the Institute of Navigation (ION), and a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Aerospace & Electronic Systems Society and the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society. He was ranked in 2024 by ScholarGPS as the top scholar in the world in the field of Navigation. He authored more than 200 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers, 12 magazine articles, 3 invited book chapters, and 24 U.S. patents. His awards include the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award, Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Program (YIP) award, Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) YIP award, IEEE Walter Fried Award, ION Samuel Burka Award, ION Col. Thomas Thurlow Award, and IEEE Harry Rowe Mimno Award. His students have won several awards, including three Best Ph.D. Dissertation awards (from IEEE, ION, OSU); two US DOT Graduate Student of the Year awards; and 35+ best paper, student paper, and paper presentation awards. He started his academic career in 2014 at the University of California, Riverside; then was an Associate Professor at University of California, Irvine; then was very early promoted to Full Professor and joined The Ohio State University in 2022. Since starting his academic career, his research has attracted more than $27 million in competitive federal grants from ONR, NSF, AFOSR, DOT, NASA, NIST, Sandia National Laboratories, the Aerospace Corporation, among others. His research was featured in dozens of national and international media outlets (Science, BBC, Forbes, IEEE, ACM, Ars Technica, MIT Technology Review, among others) and appeared on 7 magazine covers. He has given 120+ invited presentations, keynotes, and plenaries, and served as a subject matter expert to DOD, GAO, DOT, and NSF. Miguel GUTIÉRREZ GAITÁN (panelist) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC) in Santiago, where he leads the IoT-UC Research Lab. He received his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Porto in 2023. His research focuses on real-time wireless networked systems and IoT, with expertise in channel modeling, overwater communication, and AI/ML-based wireless network design. He has co-authored more than 50 peer-reviewed publications in leading IEEE and ACM journals and conferences, including IEEE Sensors Journal, ACM TECS, IEEE VTC, IEEE WF-IoT, and IEEE GLOBECOM, and has received several honors and awards, such as the 2024 IEEE ComSoc YP Latin America Award, the Best Paper Award at the RAGE Workshop at DAC 2022 in San Francisco, and the Best Work-in-Progress Paper Award at IEEE WFCS 2021 in Linz. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and currently serves as Chair of the IEEE ComSoc Chile Chapter, a Board Member of IEEE ComSoc Latin America (Region 9), and a Member-at-Large of the IEEE ComSoc Young Professionals Standing Committee. He also serves as an Associate Editor for IEEE Communications Letters.