Steve Izzo is the leader of ComSoc’s Pre-University STEM Education Working Group and will be the moderator for this webinar.  Steve retired from Nokia Bell Labs in 2019 after a long career with expertise in product management, software engineering and management consulting. He joined the ComSoc Educational Services Board in 2022 specially to work on Pre-University STEM education.

Steve will introduce the types of resources available to volunteers conducting local Pre-University STEM activities.

Maria De Los Angeles Rojas is a Logistics and Supply Chain Engineer from Panama.  She works in a fintech as a compliance officer.  Maria has a Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt. She is an enthusiastic STEM promoter in Panama and the Leader and founder of their local STEM SUMMER CAMP Program.  Maria has held several leadership positions in IEEE, many held in the IEEE Women in Engineering Group.  Maria was recognized as Outstanding Student 2021 in the Academic Category at Universidad Tecnologica de Panamá.  She earned Second place in the Hackathon 2020 at Universidad Tecnologica de Panama (UTP) as well.

Maria will describe  the STEM SUMMER CAMP for which she is a lead organizer.  This program’s objective is to encourage girls to consider STEM careers in the future and raise awareness about caring for the environment. Volunteer university mentors become the guides for the girls so that they learn about science, programming, technology, mathematics, and other fields in a fun and dynamic way.  Check out this video about their STEM SUMMER CAMP.

Víctor P. Gil Jiménez received the M.S in Telecommunication degree and the PhD. from University Carlos III of Madrid, in 2001 and 2005, respectively, all of them with Honors. He is with the department of Signal Theory and Communications at the University Carlos III of Madrid as Associate Professor. He has led several national and international projects. His interests are in the field of the advanced multicarrier systems for wireless radio and visible light communications. At IEEE, he was one of the founders of the IEEE UC3M Student Branch in 2001, vice-chair and treasurer. He has held the IEEE Spanish Signal Processing and Communications joint chapter chair 2015 – 2023. His team was awarded in 2022 with the second prize at the IEEE ComSoc Pre-STEM hands-on contest.

Victor will share information about some of the Pre-University / STEM activities carried out at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid along with his experience in organizing and participating in those activities.

Stefano Giordano is full professor at the Department of Information Engineering of the University of Pisa where he is the responsible of the Telecommunication Networks Laboratories giving lectures both at the University of Pisa and the Italian Navy Academy. He is senior member of the IEEE Comsoc and was Chair of the Communication Systems Integration and Modelling (CSIM) Technical Committee and at present vice-chair of the TACTILE INTERNET TC. He founded with Juniper Networks the first European Juniper Networks Higher Learning Center. He is author of more that 300 papers on peer reviewed international conferences and journals on the practical and theoretical aspect of modern networking including SDN, NFV and IoT. He was responsible for the participation of the University of Pisa to the Euro-NGI (Next Generation Internet in Europe) Network of Excellence.  From the research activities of his group two spin-off companies (Nextworks and Netresults) were created. He was co-founder of the CUBIT consortium where he is now President of the board.

Stefano will talk about the experiences in 2022 at University of Pisa for the Pre-University / STEM activities conducted within the Night of Researchers (“The internet of Tomatoes”) and the Internet Festival (“From Crystal Radio to 5G”). These events were organized in the framework of the Pre-University Action of ComSoc’s Educational Services Board and received the support of the Italian national IEEE Section and several local companies stimulating the set up of new future events also aimed to attract more students to the Telecommunications Engineering domain after high school (Pisa is one of the only 3 Italian Universities offering a bachelor degree in Telecommunications Engineering with Rome “Sapienza” & University of Naples).

We hope that you can join us for this unique opportunity.  Register now for this webinar.  Once you register, you will receive a confirmation email with instructions for joining the session.