Topic: Semiconductor Chips: the New Oil Powering the World 

Tsu-Jae King Liu is Dean and Roy W. Carlson Professor of Engineering at UC Berkeley, where she has been a professor in the EECS department since 1996. She is best known for the development of polycrystalline silicon-germanium thin film technology for applications in integrated circuits and microsystems, and for co-developing the three-dimensional “FinFET” transistor design that is used in all leading-edge microprocessor chips today.

She earned her B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. Before joining the UC Berkeley faculty she worked at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center as a Member of Research Staff. Her awards include the DARPA Significant Technical Achievement Award (2000) for development of the FinFET, the IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award (2010) for contributions to nanoscale MOS transistors, memory devices, and MEMs devices, the Semiconductor Industry Association Outstanding Researcher Award (2014), and the Semiconductor Research Corporation Aristotle Award (2016).  She has authored or co-authored over 500 publications and holds over 90 patents. Liu is a Fellow of the IEEE, an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Inventors.  She also serves on the Board of Directors of Intel Corporation.

Topic: The Future of Work

Erica Lockheimer has been at LinkedIn since 2010. She held the role of Sr. Director of Engineering heading the Growth Engineering team for over four years, with a focus on increasing growth in new members and deepening engagement with members across LinkedIn’s products.  Erica started the Growth Team from the ground up to a 120-person team.  She is also responsible for founding LinkedIn’s Women In Tech (WIT) initiative, focused on empowering women in technical roles at LinkedIn. 

In 2018, she took on the role of VP of Engineering for the LinkedIn Learning team, formerly known as Lynda.com.  She continued to expand her role and began to oversee LinkedIn’s Glint engineering team in 2019.  Most recently in 2021, she took on the additional role of running LinkedIn’s Talent Solutions/Careers team that connects LinkedIn members to career opportunities and helps recruiters find the best candidates for their companies. 

Erica loves the challenge of starting with something nascent and carving out the right strategy, hiring the best people, and plotting a course to drive results.  In 2014 and 2015, Erica was voted amongst the top 22 women engineers in the world by Business Insider.  Erica is a San Francisco Bay Area native, has 2 kids, loves to run and is a graduate from San Jose State University with a B.S. in Computer Engineering.

Topic: Engineering Out of This World – The International Space Station and Beyond

Heather is the first female to hold the position in the more than 20-year history of the ISS. In that role Mrs. McDonald is responsible for integrating the work of about 20 different engineering units involving hundreds of engineers across NASA. Her purview covers all space station engineering responsibilities plus eight additional spacecraft transporting crew and cargo to and from the ISS. These include US commercial as well as internationally developed spacecraft. She is also responsible for the safe execution of crew spacewalks external to the ISS.

Mrs. McDonald is an internationally recognized expert and leader in rendezvous and docking operations and technologies, ultimately leading a successful international effort to develop rendezvous standards for future exploration missions. She has spent her career at the NASA Johnson Space Center. Throughout her career she has served in key roles for several Space Shuttle flight tests, was a successful flight software and flight hardware developer, and project manager. During her NASA career, Heather has received numerous prestigious awards including a Silver Snoopy (NASA’s highest award from the Astronaut Office for contributions to crew safety and mission success), some of the Agency’s top awards like the Space Flight Awareness Launch Honoree and the Exceptional Achievement Medal. 

Mrs. McDonald received a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics from the University of Minnesota in 1992. She is married, with three adult children and two adult stepchildren.

Shalini Agarwal is the Senior Director of Engineering at LinkedIn, responsible for LinkedIn’s Skills First Initiative. Before this, she was responsible for building Sales Intelligence Enterprise product, Search and Data Applications while managing a global team at LinkedIn. Shalini spent nearly a decade at eBay where she shaped buyer experience. She is passionate about building great software, and creating opportunities. In addition to her day to day role, she is leading LinkedIn’s REACH apprenticeship program since its inception, a program to hire non-traditional talent to LinkedIn’s engineering team.

Leena Bagwe is a Sr. Technical Program Manager Data Infra SRE with LinkedIn. Previously, she has worked at ChargePoint, Netskope on a number of software engineering programs including data management, enterprise software management and cloud security. She obtained her Master’s degree in Engineering Management at San José State University and her undergraduate at Mumbai University, India. Outside of work, she loves traveling, exploring places with her spouse, and networking with industry professionals via various meetups and conferences.

Nathalie Baracaldo leads the AI Security and Privacy Solutions team and is a Research Staff Member at IBM’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, CA. Nathalie is passionate about delivering machine learning solutions that are highly accurate, withstand adversarial attacks and protect data privacy. Her team focuses on two main areas: federated learning, where models are trained without directly accessing training data, and adversarial machine learning, where defenses are designed to withstand potential attacks to the machine learning pipeline. Nathalie is the primary investigator for the DARPA program “Guaranteeing AI Robustness Against Deception” (GARD). In 2020, Nathalie received the IBM Master Inventor distinction for her contributions to the IBM intellectual property and innovation. Nathalie also received the 2021 Corporate Technical Recognition, one of the highest recognitions provided to IBMers for breakthrough technical achievements to the Trusted AI Initiative, which has led to notable market and industry success for IBM. Nathalie co-edited the book “Federated Learning: A Comprehensive Overview of Methods and Applications” Springer, 2022. Nathalie received her Ph.D. degree from the University of Pittsburgh, USA in 2016.

Sharon is a biotech professional with 3.5+ years of experience in sales and business development of the analytical life sciences industry. She graduated from the University of Delaware in 2020 with a Bachelors in Biomedical Engineering. During her time at undergrad, she participated in organizations such as SWE and SASE, and had internships at Innospec and Agilent Technologies. After graduation, she accepted a full time role at Agilent as an Instrumentation Inside Account Manager where she provides chromatography and mass spec solutions to clients in life sciences, pharma/biopharma, clinical, environmental, chem/energy, academic, and government industries. In late 2021, she moved from Delaware to the Bay Area to continue pursuing her career at Agilent on the sales team to support her clients in the Southwest US.

Kristi Beck (she/her/hers) is a staff scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). Kristi conducts research in quantum computing with trapped ions and with superconducting qubits, both in designing, building and testing quantum hardware and in using these devices to perform calculations and simulations. More broadly, she is interested in quantum control, quantum-limited measurement, and laser cooling techniques. Before moving to LLNL, Kristi spent a few years at the quantum computing startup IonQ and was a Joint Quantum Institute Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Maryland from 2016-2018. Kristi received her Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2016, her M.Phil. from the University of Cambridge as a Churchill Scholar in 2010 and her B.S. in Physics and B.A. in Mathematics from the University of Rochester in 2009.

Tripti Bhanti joined TSMC in 2009 as part of TSMC Europe team and is a Senior Program Manager in TSMC North America in her current role. At TSMC, she has enabled multiple customer design-wins and products in various applications like Smartphone, IoT, Consumer and Automotive. She has around 25 years of experience in the Semiconductor Industry. Prior to joining TSMC, she has led global design teams and designed multiple successful IC products at NXP Semiconductors- Netherlands, National Semiconductors-Bangalore and Texas Instruments-Dallas. Her expertise and area of interest is in Analog/Mixed Signal/RF designs. She has a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Clemson University, South Carolina. She strongly believes in empowering Women to increase female representation in STEM. In addition, she is very passionate about conserving Nature and protecting our Planet.

Nishtha Bhatia is a Product Manager at Google, where she leads language and computer vision efforts on the AR Glasses team. Prior to this, she spent two years working in product strategy in the Office of the CEO at Google, and before that, she was one of the early product managers on Google Lens. Nishtha got her M.S. and B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University, where she focused on understanding Human-Computer Interaction. She is fascinated by the increasingly interwoven relationship humans have forged with technology, and is curious about how to shape this relationship in a way that’s beneficial for both humanity and society. In her free time, you can catch her running, journaling, dancing, reading, and writing!

Neha is a Software developer and joined Amazon 2.5 years ago. At Amazon she works with the Retail ordering team, and had previously worked with Alexa for a year. She completed her Master’s in Computer Engineering from San José State University in May 2020. She also has a degree in Master’s in Business Administration from India and worked as Marketing manager and later Talent acquisition specialist before switching to a new career in Technology. She is really passionate about mentoring upcoming engineers especially women and how to navigate through the challenges that may come across.

Charlotte Blanck is a Senior Staff Product Owner at Dexcom Inc, an innovative company that makes Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGM) to help people with diabetes improve their quality of life and keep them safe by providing them with real-time blood glucose readings. When her daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes at age 8 she transitioned from a 17-year career at Hewlett Packard to apply her skills as a Product Owner to the very product that now plays a huge role in her family’s lives. Charlotte looks for any opportunity to be involved with the diabetes community including serving on the Board of Directors for the JDRF Southern California chapter, raising money annually in the JDRF One Walk and volunteering to work at diabetes summer camps. She has been lucky enough to be able to combine her passion for improving life with diabetes with her interest in working in R&D as a software application Product Owner.

Hilal Cansizoglu received her PhD degree in Applied Physics from UALR (Little Rock, AR) in 2014. She holds B.Sc./MS degree in Physics Education from Middle East Technical University (2007, Turkey), and M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from SMU (2010, Dallas, TX). She has worked in Integrated Nano and Micro systems group as a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, UC Davis, CA. Hilal has studied light trapping by micro-/nanostructures for sensing and energy harvesting applications at UALR and developed surface-illuminated high speed Si photodiodes with micro-/nanostructures at UC Davis. After her academic studies, Hilal joined Rigetti Computing in 2019 and she is currently working as Lead Integration Engineer in Josephson Junction (JJ)-Module at FAB-1, first dedicated fabrication facility for superconducting qubits used in quantum processing units (QPUs).

Kayleigh Cassella is a Senior Quantum Engineer at Atom Computing, a Bay Area quantum computing company pioneering platforms of nuclear-spin qubits. Kayleigh has worked on a variety of projects at the forefront of this technology including automating calibration routines, benchmarking single-qubit gate operations and the installation and integration of hardware, optics and laser systems. Prior to joining Atom in 2020, Kayleigh was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California Berkeley building an apparatus to laser-cool and magneto-optically trap titanium. She earned her BS from Indiana University South Bend in 2011 and her PhD from the University of California-Berkeley, studying atom interferometry with warm lithium, in 2018. As a mother of three, Kayleigh knows well the societal barriers faced by women and mothers in the STEM education and the workforce. Kayleigh is passionate about recruiting, supporting and retaining a diversity of people from a diversity of backgrounds in STEM. She has been involved in a variety of mentoring and outreach programs and most recently was involved in starting up a summer internship program at Atom’s Berkeley location.

Haley Cummings is the Principal Investigator for the Early Career Initiative project entitled Rotor Optimization for the Advancement of Mars eXploration (ROAMX) at NASA Ames Research Center in California, which is seeking to computationally optimize and experimentally validate helicopter rotors for flight on Mars. She is also the Deputy Test Director and Mechanical Designer for the Side-by-Side wind tunnel test conducted in the U.S. Army 7-by-10-Foot Wind Tunnel. The test was conducted to demonstrate the performance of side-by-side rotors at varying degrees of separation for application in Urban Air Mobility vehicles. She started working at Ames in 2014 as an intern, came back again in 2016 as an intern, was hired as a Pathways intern in 2017, and has worked full time at Ames since then. She earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s in mechanical engineering from Northern Illinois University in 2016 and 2018.

Dr. Misty Davies is the Project Manager for the System-Wide Safety Project in the NASA Airspace Operations and Safety Program. The System-Wide Safety Project has a goal to explore, to discover and to understand how safety could be affected by the growing complexity of advanced aviation systems. In particular, the System-Wide Safety project is leading the development of the In-Time Aviation Safety Management System (IASMS) and is working on tools and techniques to enable the assurance of increasingly autonomous systems. Prior to SWS, Dr. Davies was the Ground System Development manager for the TESS mission. Dr. Davies previously was a researcher focused on predicting the behavior of complex, engineered systems early in design as a way to improve these systems’ safety, reliability, performance, and cost. She has a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and a Master’s Degree in Aerospace and Astrospace Engineering from Stanford University. She is an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Sandra De Leon is the career counselor and liaison for Diversity & Inclusion and Program Lead for Career Readiness at the SJSU Career Center. She’s worked at the Career Center for over 6 years, where her focus has been to support diverse students with their career journeys. She graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a Bachelor’s degree in Cultural Anthropology and received her Master’s degree in Counselor Education from San José State University. Outside of work she enjoys hiking, traveling, and going to concerts.

Alice Diao, PhD, is the Staff Cell Materials Engineer at Tesla. She graduated from University of Tennessee in 2017 with a major in Materials Science and Engineering. She is leading the raw material research and development for Tesla next generation big factor cylindrical battery cells. Her background is physical metallurgic of engineering materials by finite-element modeling and hands-on experience in mechanical property and microstructural characterizations. She wrote 1 book and 20+ journal paper with > 1700 google scholar citations. Besides work, she loves to spend weekends with her husband, Ken, 9 years-old daughter and 7 years-old son together in exploring the beautiful Bay area.

Jeri Ellsworth is an inventor, product creator, chip designer, and system-level engineer. Her love for invention began with building race cars before working with hardware design, creating a complete Commodore 64 system on a chip housed within a joystick, called C64 Direct-to-TV. Her combined passion for gaming and invention has fueled the creation of many cutting edge technologies, culminating in the creation of Tilt Five®, the world’s first augmented reality tabletop gaming system. Her vision for the future of gaming is driving innovation for the entire Tilt Five team.

Dr. Becca Fenwick is the founding Director of the UCSC CITRIS Initiative for Drone Education and Research (CIDER). This program brings together diverse students, researchers, and industry partners from many sectors to fuel research and innovation and develop a diverse drone workforce. CIDER trains a cohort of diverse undergraduates annually to fly drones, process and interpret drone data, and also supports student and faculty research, partners closely with industry. She and the CIDER Team are working closely with UCSC partners, Hartnell Community College, Digital Nest, Monterey Bay DART, and many other regional partners to create multiple pathways for developing the varied drone and automation workforce that will be needed around the region. Working with drones unites Fenwick’s varied skill sets: her geospatial expertise from a marine geology and geophysics doctorate from Scripps Institution of Oceanography UC San Diego, her land conservation expertise from almost a decade as a reserve director for the UC Natural Reserve System, and her 15 years of environmental IT, tech and sensor network experience as the director of environmental IT for the UC Natural Reserve System.

Manisha Gambhir is a Distinguished Engineer and a technology leader at Marvell Semiconductors. At Marvell, she leads development of complex mixed-signal Integrated-Circuits with advanced nanometric technologies. She leads cross functional teams and projects spanning geographies and delivering key solutions for Marvell’s leading products in Storage, Networking, and Automotive space. She has a PhD and MS degree from Texas A&M University in Electrical Engineering and holds several US patents in the field of circuit design and architectures. She is also passionate about mentoring and coaching budding engineers and serves as a liaison for key university collaborations incubated through Marvell.

Isela Garcia, (She/her) has been a Marketing Recruiter on the Google Marketing Recruiting team for the past 4 years, which helps identify and engage marketing talent to help shape the products Google builds and to ensure the best of Google reaches everyone. Throughout her core role, she has leveraged her passion for diversity, equity, and inclusion work as an HOLA committee member, and a Campus Outreach lead. Isela is a graduate of San Francisco State University and has previously worked in various startups within tech and retail. Outside of work, she enjoys good eats in the Bay Area and mothering her two naked cats, Enoch & Moira.

Michelle currently leads a personalization team in Roblox. This is both a product team and an applied research team. The research focus is on recommendation systems and visual understanding. Previously, Michelle led applied ML research teams in Facebook AI and DeepMind. Michelle received her PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Virginia Tech.

With over 20 years of experience in the life sciences industry, Jennifer Gushue’s career has been focused in the field of mass spectrometry, and its uses in chemical analysis, life sciences, and clinical research. Jennifer leads a global team responsible for product marketing and commercialization. Her team has worked closely with R&D to launch numerous products that have contributed to advances in mass spectrometry. Jennifer has a bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry (Bishop’s University) and a Ph.D. in Cell Biology (McGill University).

Dr. Marie Haverfield is an interpersonal and health communication scholar. Her research explores the intersection between relationships and health. She received her PhD from Rutgers University, completed an advanced postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University in partnership with Veteran Affairs Research and Development, and has published numerous studies on features of communication that enhance well-being. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at San José State University.

Dr. Jane Huang is a Senior Manager at Nvidia, responsible for qualifying advanced logic technology from leading semiconductor foundries including TSMC, Samsung, UMC. In her 15 years course at Nvidia, Dr. Huang has taken Nvidia’s multiple GPU and SOC chips to successful volume production. Before joining Nvidia, Dr. Huang worked at IBM Research and Sun Microsystems. She received her B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degree in Material Science from Zhejiang University, Tsinghua University and Duke University, respectively.

Renu (She/her/hers) is a Senior Systems Engineer at Illumina Inc. In her current role, Renu works in the Lifecycle management department, supporting on-market products as well as NPI (New Product Introduction). A normal day at work includes interacting with cross-functional teams, vendor management, technical SME, & being a people leader. She received her Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from SJSU with a background in R&D and exposure to industry processes. She started her career at a start-up, Purigen Biosystems, wearing every hat in the bag and gaining experience in R&D, Systems integration, data analytics, microfluidics and so on. Renu enjoys being an active problem solver and a lifelong learner, an expert hobby starter (not finisher). Outside of work, she enjoys being a mom, loves to travel, hike, listen to true crime podcasts and one day hopes to adopt many dogs.

Janet has over 20 years of experience and is currently leading the Critical Utilities Infrastructure Revitalization project at SLAC, a Department of Energy directly funded line item project. Prior to joining SLAC, she worked as a geotechnical consultant leading large-scale public projects including the California High Speed Rail – San Francisco to Merced Segment and the BART Interlocking Replacement project. Janet earned her BS in geological engineering from University of British Columbia, Canada. She obtained her MS at UC Berkeley and recently received her MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Mrinal leads Intel® Developer Cloud for the Edge, a platform that provides instant remote access to deploy AI applications on the latest Intel hardware and software platforms. She manages an engineering organization responsible for driving Telemetry, AI Solutions, Security, and Infrastructure functions. She has managed teams that developed innovative solutions in AI and contextual awareness and led the development of the world’s first presence-aware PC experience with Intel® Context Sensing Technology. As an Ethical AI Champion, she provides leadership and clarity on responsible AI practices for her organization.

Anuradha Kodali received PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from University of Connecticut. She started her career at NASA Ames Research Center and worked in Intelligent Vehicle Systems and Data Science domains. Later, she worked at Allstate innovating for automotive and insurance applications. Currently, she is a Data Science Manager at Lucid Motors building products in areas like CyberSecurity, Diagnostics and Predictive Maintenance and Battery performance and Range prediction.

Denise Lainez is a Systems Engineer Sr. at Lockheed Martin Space based out of California currently supporting Deep Space Exploration in Colorado. She earned her B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from San Jose State University in 2019, and is currently pursuing her MEng. in Systems Engineering from Cornell University. Denise’s first role with LM was as a Systems Integration Engineer with the AEHF program. She then went on to work in an Electromechanical/Packaging Engineer role supporting multiple programs. She is currently part of LM’s 2024 cohort for the Engineering Leadership Development Program (ELDP), an LM rotational program. Denise completed her first rotation as a Thermal Responsible Systems Integration Engineer (RSE-SI) in Special Programs, currently she is supporting Deep Space Exploration and Advanced Programs out of Colorado where she develops proposals to bring new business to LM. In her free time Denise enjoys community outreach, spending time with friends, family and dogs, and doing outdoor activities.

Dr. Laurel Larsen is an Associate Professor at UC Berkeley with appointments in the Departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Geography. For 2020-2024, she is on leave to serve as the Delta Lead Scientist, a USGS position housed within the Delta Stewardship Council in Sacramento. In that capacity, Dr. Larsen leads the Delta Science Program, tasked with providing unbiased science to inform decision-making for the Delta. Dr. Larsen runs the Environmental Systems Dynamics Laboratory at Berkeley, which has a focus on understanding the interactions and feedbacks among the physical, biological, and social variables constituting ecosystems, and to apply that understanding to restoration and management challenges. Dr. Larsen has a bachelor’s degree from Washington University in St. Louis, with dual majors in Systems Science and Mathematics and Environmental Studies, a master’s degree from Washington University in Earth and Planetary Sciences, and a PhD from the University of Colorado Boulder in Civil and Environmental Engineering. She has worked in the Everglades, Chesapeake Bay and coastal Louisiana before transitioning to the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta.

Anhthuy Le is currently a Design and Estimating Supervisor at Pacific Gas and Electric. Prior to this role, Anhthuy has done multiple technical engineering and project management positions. She holds a master’s degree in Civil Engineering from San Jose State University. She passed her Civil Professional Engineering exam and also received her Project Management Professional certificate. She is passionate about embracing and promoting women in engineering. Anhthuy and her husband have a daughter and a son that they love so much and spend every second of their free time with.

Born and raised in Venezuela, Marilenis moved to the US in 1999 to pursue graduate studies at Cal State East Bay. After graduating, she joined Leapfrog Enterprises as a software engineer, where she programmed interactive books for the LeapPad, which sold millions of copies worldwide. Marilenis has also worked in higher education as an Academic Technologies Specialist at Stanford University and as a Computer Science Professor at different universities in the Bay Area. She is currently working at Google as a Data Analytics and Metrics Lead. When she is not coding or learning a new technology, Marilenis enjoys spending time outdoors with her family.

Yanbing Li, Ph.D Senior Vice President of Engineering, Aurora Dr. Yanbing Li is a business and technology leader with extensive leadership experience building market leading products and hyper-growth businesses of $1B+. Yanbing is currently a Senior Vice President of Engineering at Aurora, the company building self-driving technology to deliver the benefits of the future of transportation safely, quickly, and broadly. She leads all software development for Aurora, and is responsible for delivering the Aurora Driver, Aurora’s flagship self-driving product. Prior to Aurora, Yanbing was a Vice President of Product and Engineering at Google, responsible for the commerce platform for cloud, and operations management and service infrastructure powering both Google Cloud and Google. Prior to Google, Yanbing was the Senior Vice President and General Manager for the Storage and Availability Business Unit at VMware. She led product development, engineering, and go to market and built one of the fastest growing businesses and a new $1B category for VMware. During her tenure with VMware, she held multiple executive leadership roles including VP of Engineering for Storage, VP of Central Engineering, VP of Global R&D Sites, and Managing Director of China R&D. Yanbing worked at Synopsys (a leading Electronic Design Automation software maker) for nine years in various research, development, and engineering leadership roles. Yanbing holds a Ph.D. degree from Princeton University, a Master’s degree from Cornell University, and a BS degree from Tsinghua University (Beijing), in Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering. Yanbing was a member of the Board of Directors at Neophotonics (NYSE: NPTN) from 2019 to 2022 and served on the Audit Committee. She was named one of the Most Powerful Women Engineers multiple times by Business Insider. She was inducted to the Women in Technology International (WITI) Hall of Fame in 2018.

Lianli Liu is a faculty medical physicist at the department of radiation oncology, Stanford Medicine. Prior to joining Stanford, she received her PhD degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and completed clinical training at Michigan Medicine. Her clinical duty involves treatment plan review, radiation machine calibration and clinical consultation to ensure the safe practice of radiotherapy. Her research interests in on developing new medical imaging techniques that can be incorporated into clinical workflow for improved treatment outcomes.

Dr. Jessica Marquez has been working at NASA Ames for 15 years as a space human factors engineer. She currently leads a team of designers, developers, and researchers developing the next generation of software tools for planning, scheduling, and execution of space missions.

Isadora is a BioPharma Account Manager at Agilent. She has been with the company for 5 years and has moved across different roles within sales, starting as an intern during her time at SJSU! She graduated as a Chemical Engineer form San José State University and uses her technical knowledge to communicate with her customers. She utilizes this technical background to consult & guide her customers as they find innovative solutions in their laboratories. While at SJSU, she started & co-found the Beta Upsilon Chapter of Alpha Omega Epsilon, a sorority for women in engineering and technical sciences. She has always been passionate about mentoring students. Today, she’s active in the Agilent community, participating in a few employee networking groups, where she gets to create mentorship programs for students and give back to the academic community!

Dhanya attended Johns Hopkins University and graduated with a degree in Biomedical Engineering. She then worked at Stryker Endoscopy as a Design Engineer on minimally invasive surgical tools and then went on to earn a Masters in Mechanical Engineering and MBA from MIT’s Leaders for Global Operations Program. She has been a part of the Apple Watch Product Operations organization for almost a decade and has been an integral part of every generation of Apple Watch.

Melinda Danielle Mendolla, a native of San José, graduated from San José State University in 2012 with a Bachelors of Science in chemical engineering. Melinda transferred to San José State in 2008 and quickly joined the MESA Engineering Program (MEP), and other STEM organizations such as Society of Latino Engineers and Scientists (SOLES), Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) and Society of Women Engineers (SWE). She is a former president and counselor of San Jose State’s SWE Section. Melinda also served on the MEP Industry Advisory Board for multiple years as a student and professional. 

Melinda has planned outreach events like SWE’s “Wow! That’s Engineering” event, where she encouraged the high school girls to pursue engineering by showing them that engineering is both hard work and a lot of fun! At San José State, Melinda was selected to participate in Global Technology Initiative (GTI) where the College of Engineering sent Melinda and 16 other engineering students on an all-expense paid study tour of China & Taiwan to learn about Chinese business and culture. 

As a student, Melinda was awarded a Women in Engineering scholarship from Applied Materials for her dedication to the success of women in engineering which she continues to pursue as a professional. Melinda became a hiring manager just three years after graduation and her first team she hired was 70% SJSU students and alum and 34% female. 

Melinda’s son, Mateo, grew up in the halls of the Charles W. Davidson College of Engineering and she now has two more children, Mila and Lila that keep her busy! She loves spending time with her family, especially while traveling the world. Melinda hopes to remain a great leader and role model for her children and her community.

Katrina Mikhaylich, Ph.D., joined Applied Materials in 2013. She is currently a Senior Director of Technology in the Chemical Mechanical Polishing Business Unit, responsible for technology development for Dielectric CMP and post-CMP Cleans. Katrina’s team is focused on the defect reduction approaches in CMP through the development of new cleaning modules to address emerging trends. Her team is also focused on the polishing head technology development and advanced applications in dielectric CMP. Prior to joining Applied Materials, Dr. Mikhaylich has been working for 15+ years at Lam Research. Dr. Mikhaylich has a Ph.D. degree in Physical Chemistry from the University of Southern California. She has been granted over 100 patents.

Fern Morrison is currently a Product Manager at Mitra Chem, a battery materials start up. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Bucknell University. Prior to joining Mitra, Fern spent time at Apple in the battery materials space and was an Investment Banking Analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. Fern grew up on her family’s organic dairy farm in Maine and enjoys spending time outdoors, running, traveling and skiing.  

Kiran is a technology enthusiast with focus on Big Data Analytics. She is a Big Data Cloud Consultant with Google Cloud but considers herself as a software engineer first. She has spent the majority of her career with data and analytics from information security to audience measurement for companies like Verizon, Nielsen and now Google. Her objective is to help everyone make the most of data for better decisions. Apart from technology, she loves playing Roblox and Legos with her 9 year old nephew. As a strong introvert, she finds solace in nature on hikes or on the beach.  If she could invent anything, it would be a robot-chef. She loves good food but doesn’t have her mum’s gene of cooking well.

Elizabeth is part of the sustainability team at Applied Materials, where she works on analyzing and identifying opportunities to reduce the carbon footprint of semiconductor manufacturing equipment. She received her Bachelor’s and Master’s in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University. In her free time, she enjoys trying out new recipes and volunteering in the community.

Dr. Alison Nordt is the Director for Space Science and Instrumentation at Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Center. She is responsible for developing and operating missions that provide observational data to advance space science knowledge. Her work involves maturing technology to support current and future space-based telescopes and instruments. She is currently the Principal Investigator for TechMAST (Technology Maturation for Astrophysics Space Telescopes) and related internal research and development efforts. Previously, Dr. Nordt was the senior manager for Astrophysics and held several roles on the NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera for the Webb Telescope) program including Program Manager, Integrated Product Team Lead and Principal Engineer. Dr. Nordt holds Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University and a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University. She is an AIAA Associate Fellow, member of the International Academy of Astronautics and serves on the Board of the Planetary Science Institute.

Kimberly Ota is a Project Engineer at PARADIGM Structural Engineers. She designs and manages a wide range of projects including mission critical, life sciences, commercial, and residential work in both new and existing buildings. She is a licensed Structural Engineer with 8+ years of experience with wood, steel, and concrete buildings and structures. Kimberly received her Bachelor’s degree from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo in Architectural Engineering and her Master’s degree from San José State University in Civil Engineering.

Cynthia currently works in the Robotics & Digital Surgery Division at Ethicon, Inc. Born in Cameroon, my diverse upbringing abroad and the United States has imbued me with a deep sense of cultural respect, and opened my eyes to the health disparities that exist both abroad and in the United States. As I continue my journey in life, I wish to work on innovative technologies that drive down the cost of healthcare, improve quality of care, and/or make quality healthcare more accessible for underserved communities and those in developing countries.

Deepa Paranjpe is a seasoned leader in growth engineering and innovation at Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), where her team focuses on using technology to retain customers and minimize churn. She joined Discovery in early 2022 and played a key role in developing the data and ML strategy for the company’s merger with Warner Bros, which includes brands such as HBO, CNN, Cartoon Network, Food Network, HGTV, and others. With over two decades of experience at leading technology companies such as Google, Amazon, Yahoo, IBM, and Motorola, Deepa is passionate about leveraging ML and AI to drive automation and growth for businesses.

Before joining WBD, Deepa spent nearly a decade at Google and held a diverse range of strategic positions, including ML research, ads, YouTube, and Search. She started her career as a research scientist at IBM Research and Yahoo! Labs, and holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science from IIT Bombay. In addition to her professional pursuits, Deepa is an active member of the Women in Tech community and is dedicated to mentoring and supporting women who are beginning their careers in technology.

Sonali is a Senior Engineering Manager leading the Catalog Selection and Quality Teams at Instacart in-charge of creating and maintaining the quality of the world’s largest grocery product inventory – with nearly 5 million unique products, spanning over 25,000 locations across North America. Prior to Instacart, she was leading the ML Platform Teams at Dropbox, building developer tools and infra services for MLOps. Sonali was the co-lead for the Women@ ERG at Dropbox and on the Vibe Committee for the Namer West Region. Prior to Dropbox, she spent 10 years at Accenture Labs architecting big data platforms, specializing in data ingestion, data management and governance. While at Accenture, she also led the Tech4Good Initiative for the Americas, championing and implementing pro-bono technology projects with societal and environmental impact. She was also a Girls Who Code (GWC) Instructor and Relationship Manager working with middle and high school girls, teaching them to code. Sonali has an Executive Leadership Certification from MIT Sloan, a Masters in Computer Science from University of Virginia and a Bachelors in Computer Science from George Mason University. Sonali loves to spend time with her husband and 16 month baby boy. She also enjoys dancing, traveling, painting, cooking and working out!

Joyce Pepper is a Director of R&D Product Owners at Dexcom. She joined Dexcom in 2021 and her team’s focus is to define, drive and grow Dexcom’s product practice in the space of software delivery and data products. These best-in-class products strive to fundamentally improve the lives of the patients that use Dexcom’s Continuous Glucose Monitoring wearable solutions including, most recently, the global launch of the flagship Dexcom G7 product. Joyce is a seasoned product and engineering leader, with deep experience in scaled software delivery and technical product management. In her prior role at CoreLogic, she was responsible for all next-gen business to business software solutions. In addition, she was an integral part of a small leadership team that established the CoreLogic Innovation Lab and implemented lean development practice using the Extreme Programming (XP) methodology with a strong focus on maturing product practice. Joyce earned her Master of Science in Technology Management from the University of Maryland.

Xina has spent the last 4 decades turning research projects into products. She has built interdisciplinary teams at a wide range of companies, from behemoths (AT&T Bell Labs) to fledgling (PyrAmes). Her current interest is to develop wearable devices to monitor blood pressure for patients from 1-day old preemies to 98-year old seniors. Xina has degrees in Chemical Engineering from MIT and Princeton.

Dr. Costanza Rampini is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at San José State University in California. Her research explores the human dimensions of climate change, particularly the ways in which human communities adapt (or fail to adapt) to environmental change and risks. Dr. Rampini ’s work has focused on two regions: the Brahmaputra river watershed in Northeast India and the California Santa Cruz coastline, where she has worked with flood affected communities to understand their fears and hopes in the context of uncertain climate futures. Through her work, Dr. Rampini aims to ensure that climate change adaptation efforts benefit the most vulnerable and underprivileged communities.

Radhika works at CapitalOne as Product Security Leader and leads the product security for their applications focused on the secure development lifecycle. She is also responsible for partnering with the development teams to create the shift left and a cyber-aware culture.

Before CapitalOne, she worked at Cisco Systems, leading the application security for the Customer and the Partner cloud, and managed the cyber risk across the products. She is a certified AWS Security architect, holds an Advanced computer security certificate from Stanford University, BS in Computer Science, and has an MBA.

On a personal note, she loves hiking, reading non-fiction books, playing badminton, and spending time with her daughters. She is actively engaged in the community and mentor’s students exploring cybersecurity careers.

Katie Riles (she/her) is an environmental scientist with background and expertise in GIS and data analysis. She combines python, GIS, and web tool integration to develop interactive online maps and dashboards to distill and communicate complex information to decision-makers and the public. Katie develops python-based tools to wrangle geospatial climate hazard data (including coastal flooding with sea level rise, riverine flooding, and wildfires) in order to inform risk assessments on human and resource impacts in the San Francisco Bay Area. Katie received her Bachelors degree in Earth and Environmental Science from the University of Michigan, and outside of work enjoys skiing, hiking and cooking a variety of cuisines.

Charu Sardana joined TSMC in 2019 as a Program Manager where she empowers customers to successfully drive various semiconductor products from concept to volume-production. Prior to joining TSMC, she worked at Altera / Intel as an FPGA Technologist. She has over 20 years of experience in process technology, device, and high-volume IC manufacturing. Having worked with leading semiconductor fabs such as TSMC, Intel & Sharp, Charu has in-depth understanding of FinFET transistors, High-k Metal Gates, and state of the art CMOS technologies. A graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (India), Charu’s passion for silicon design rules, product scaling, reliability, failure analysis and yield enhancement has enabled her to deliver record low-defect densities in leading-edge ICs. When she is not immersed in the world of semiconductors, she loves listening to music, experimenting with cuisines from different parts of the world. A self-proclaimed “Dessert Specialist,” she aspires to compete in Top Chef in the not-too-distant future.

Elsa Sebastian, an aerospace systems engineer, currently works as a Systems Engineering Lead at Xwing, an aviation company that specializes in autonomous flight technology. With a profound passion for systems engineering and human system integration, she worked on the flight deck design of various business jets during her tenure at Honeywell Aerospace. Elsa Sebastian’s expertise lies in the system design and certification of cockpit products, which she has honed over the years through her different roles in the aviation industry. She has designed human-machine interfaces for multiple cockpit display products widely used by pilots. In her current role at Xwing, Elsa Sebastian is responsible for designing the ground control station for remotely piloted aircraft, a critical component that ensures the safe and efficient operation of autonomous aircraft. She oversees the design, development, and certification of the ground control station, ensuring that it meets the highest standards of safety and performance. Elsa Sebastian holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering and a master’s degree in Aerospace Business Administration. Outside of work, she enjoys keeping up with the latest industry advancements through reading.

Usha Subramanya is a principal engineer at QuantumScape corporation working on groundbreaking solid-state battery technologies. Her main responsibilities include scaling up the manufacturing process, bringing up new processes, and sustaining the battery separator production process. She also works on projects that target yield improvement and reliability of battery separators. Prior to starting her career in energy storage systems Usha received her Master of Science degree from San José State University with a specialization in batteries. Before starting her graduate studies, she worked as a process engineer in water and environment management solutions at GE technologies and Ion exchange(I) Limited. She has more than ten years of experience working in the process engineering field managing the technical aspects of key process steps. Usha currently manages a team consisting of dynamic engineers and process technicians guiding and mentoring them to navigate through the engineering challenges that arise on the lab floor. She has been awarded the competent communicator award from toastmasters international and is passionate to be working with technology, solving interesting technical challenges, helping people, and making a difference in people’s lives. Outside of work, Usha enjoys reading books, listening to songs, watching TV series, and spending time with her family.

Dr. Gelareh Taban is a Software Security Engineer with Cash App, based in the Bay Area. Previously, she has worked at Netflix, IBM Research, Apple, and Samsung on a number of security and applied crypto areas including identity and access management, data protection, threat modeling, and security protocols. She obtained her Ph.D. at the University of Maryland, College Park, and her undergraduate at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Outside of work, she loves sports, spending time with her family, and keeping her dog out of trouble.

Nisha Talagala is the CEO and founder of AIClub.World which brings AI Literacy to K-12 students, professionals and other individuals worldwide. Nisha has significant experience in introducing technologies like Artificial Intelligence to new learners from students to professionals.  Previously, Nisha co-founded ParallelM which pioneered the MLOps practice of managing Machine Learning in production for enterprises – acquired by DataRobot. Nisha is a recognized leader in the operational machine learning space, having also driven the USENIX Operational ML Conference, the first industry/academic conference on production AI/ML. Nisha was previously a Fellow at SanDisk and Fellow/Lead Architect at Fusion-io, NVM Software Lead and Intel and CTO of Gear6. Nisha has more than 20 years of expertise in enterprise software development, distributed systems, technical strategy and product leadership. Nisha earned her PhD at UC Berkeley in Computer Science, holds 75 patents, over 25 refereed research publications, is a frequent speaker at industry and academic events, and is a contributing writer to Forbes and other publications.

Aakrati Talati is an ML/AI Engineer working on building the Feature Store for the Machine Learning Platform at Databricks. Prior to Databricks, she has worked on building distributed systems at Google Cloud Platform and ML Infrastructure at Google Research.

Aakrati has a Masters degree in CS from Stony Brook University. She is passionate about encouraging women to pursue careers in STEM. Towards this effort, she has actively participated in teaching young girls to code in remote communities in India.

Outside work, she enjoys hiking, reading books and dancing.

Denise Li is the author of The Ocean Accepts All Rivers: Life and Money Lessons from my Taiwanese American Upbringing. She is a money coach and educator, and her mission is to financially empower by sharing her wealth of financial knowledge, cultural insights from her background, and mindset tips for growing wealth passively. She presents her knowledge at webinars and fireside chats, and emphasizes emotional health as foundational to financial health. She is in the coasting phase on the path to Financial Independence/Retire Early (FIRE), a growing movement. Her plan is to retire herself and her spouse, and to provide her child a trust fund by the time she is 50.

She holds a Bachelor of Science in General Biology from University of California, San Diego and worked in scientific research and biotech for almost a decade before pivoting to information security and getting Certified in Risk and Information System Controls (CRISC). She now assesses companies for information security best practices and compliance. She is active in her company’s employee resource groups (ERGs) and is the chair for the women’s ERG subgroup for Belonging.

Soledad Antelada Toledano is the Security Technical Program Manager at Google. She previously worked for Berkeley Lab, one of the most prestigious scientific centers in the world and one of the first nodes of ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet. Soledad was the first woman in the history of the Cybersecurity department at Berkeley Lab. After specializing in ‘penetration testing’ for several years, Soledad also develops research and advancement tasks for intrusion detection systems, monitoring of high capacity networks and vision and research exercises on how cybersecurity will evolve in the next 10 years adopting techniques of Artificial Intelligence for intrusion detection and handling of BigData generated by monitoring tools.

Irene is a technologist who loves to untangle thorny problems. Irene worked at NASA designing and building mission software for scientists and engineers from the International Space Station to the Mars Rovers program. She established the HCI capability for the Agency and her team’s work transformed assumptions about how software should be developed. Since leaving NASA, Irene has scaled startups across multiple domains including healthcare. She co-founded Acre for the incredible opportunity to re-design the home ownership experience. Irene graduated from Vassar and has a masters in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon.

Dr. Meltem Tolunay is a Research Staff Member in the Quantum Applications group at IBM Research – Almaden. She is currently working on the development of quantum computing algorithms for quantum chemistry applications. She is also interested in the design of machine learning algorithms at the intersection of quantum computing and quantum chemistry. Meltem received a B.S. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Koc University, Istanbul, in 2017. She obtained her Ph.D. in 2022 in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, in collaboration with IBM Research. Meltem’s graduate research includes the design of near-term quantum algorithms for spin chemistry systems and for combinatorial optimization.

At my core, I am an artist. As a transportation planner, engineer, and creative strategist, centering the humanity of others serves as the foundation of my work. I employ urban planning and engineering to generate solutions in communities where they once furthered inequity. I am devoted to change – not comfort. As a practitioner with over ten years of expertise in the private and public sectors, my experience spans from project management, community-based transportation planning, design for active transportation projects, and youth engagement. At the center of justice is seeing those who have been, and continue to be, marginalized as human. Transportation is a critical pathway for connecting people to people, resources, and opportunity. I am dedicated to increasing mobility for all – regardless of the circumstances of their birth or background.

Wendy Young is Director of Design Quality at Stryker Neurovascular. Her teams focus on the development of lifesaving products used to treat both ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke and then sustains those products after commercialization. Prior to joining Stryker, Wendy worked at Johnson & Johnson in both the pharmaceutical and medical device sectors, specializing in drug-device combination products for a variety of disease states, from pain management to coronary artery disease. She has worked in a variety of functional roles, including those in R&D and project management. Wendy is passionate about mentoring the next generation of women engineers and currently leads the Stryker Women’s Network chapter at the Fremont, CA site. She holds a M.S. in Materials Science & Engineering from the University of Florida and a B.S. in Ceramic/Bio Engineering from the University of Illinois.

Dr. Amanda Youssef is a staff cell engineer at Sila Nanotechnologies, a company engineering and manufacturing next-generation battery materials. Amanda works on cell design and engineering, prototyping and integrating silicon anode material as a drop-in replacement to graphite in various Li-ion battery form factors used in EVs. Prior to joining Sila, Amanda was a senior staff engineer at SunPower where she focused on driving silicon wafer cost down by improving ingoting and wafering yield, as well as improving solar cell efficiency through silicon defect engineering. Amanda earned her PhD and M.S. in mechanical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and her Bachelor’s of Engineering from the Lebanese American University. Amanda was the recipient of the Fulbright scholarship.

Zhan Yu is the Associate Vice President at Marvell Semiconductor’s Central Engineering Group. At Marvell, she built and led cross-functional cross-geographic R&D organizations to design, and develop high-performance, mixed-signal IPs. Zhan holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, from UCLA, and an MBA degree from INSEAD and Tsinghua University in Tsinghua-INSEAD EMBA program. She founded the Coaching Center at Tsinghua x-lab and has been an avid mentor for women’s leadership development and coaching young entrepreneurs.