Ana Garcia of UC3M

In this talk we discuss some tips that may guide the young researchers while they progress in their careers. The talk is based on the experience of the speaker and her work in the field of wireless communications. First some highlights of the speaker’s research work are provided. Then, some ideas are shared focusing on challenges and choices.

Biography:

Ana García Armada is a Professor at Universidad Carlos III of Madrid, Spain, where she is leading the Communications Research Group. She has been a visiting scholar at Stanford University, Bell Labs and University of Southampton. She is an IEEE Fellow. She has published more than 300 papers in international journals and conference proceedings and she holds seven granted patents. She was awarded the third place Bell Labs Prize 2014 for shaping the future of information and communications technology. She received the Outstanding service award from the IEEE ComSoc Signal Processing and Communications Electronics technical committee in 2019 and the Outstanding service award from the IEEE ComSoc Women in Communications Engineering Standing Committee in 2020. She received the IEEE ComSoc/KICS Exemplary Global Service Award in 2022.

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Address:Portugal

Isabel Trancoso of Instituto Superior Técnico

The Girls in AI project aims to share the paths of former and current Técnico students who followed a career in Artificial Intelligence (AI), showing the endless opportunities in this area and inspiring more girls to follow them. The participants talk about their work and what attracts them most in this highly interdisciplinary area that has such a strong societal impact.

Their journeys are very diverse both in terms of their initial background, as well as their application area. Healthcare is one of the most represented areas, from post-stroke rehabilitation to diagnosis of skin lesions or detection of pathologies from speech. Several students/alumnae also share their enthusiasm for robot interaction, either communicating with children with autism spectrum disorders or with visual impairments, or showing how social robots are capable of working (and playing!) in teams. Others devoted their work to teaching computers how to design programs. The area of natural language processing is also well represented, with its many applications, such as machine translation. Other alumnae share their paths in industry, in companies dealing with customer support, mobility disorders, or fraud detection in bank transactions. 

Despite this diversity, pursuing the so-called pillars of Responsible AI is a common thread in all of the journeys, with a particular emphasis on challenges such as security, explainability and modelling uncertainty. Another common thread is the contagious enthusiasm with which they all end their brief video clips, saying how great it is to be part of this AI community that is shaping our future.

Biography:

Isabel Trancoso is a Full Professor at IST, University of Lisbon (retired), and the former President of the Scientific Council of INESC-ID, the institute where she did all her career in speech research, with the exception of a period at AT&T Bell Laboratories. She was Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Speech and Audio Processing and had many leadership roles in IEEE and ISCA (International Speech Communication Association), such as chairing the IEEE Fellow Committee and being the President of ISCA. She was elevated to Fellow of IEEE in 2011, of ISCA in 2014 and of ELLIS (European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent systems) in 2025.  She was the recipient of the 2024 ISCA Medal for Scientific Achievement.

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Fernanda Coutinho of ISEC/IPC

In this talk, the speaker shares her personal journey in one of the fields with the lowest female representation — electrical engineering. From the choices that brought her here to the obstacles she faced along the way, this is a candid look at what it really takes to carve out a place in this field. But her story didn't stop with herself. Discover the initiatives she has been — and continues to be — involved in to make engineering, and robotics in particular, a more welcoming, diverse and inspiring space for girls who are still figuring out their path.

Biography:

Fernanda de Madureira Coutinho holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Coimbra and a Master's degree in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering from the University of Aveiro. She is a Coordinator Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Coimbra Institute of Engineering (ISEC), Polytechnic of Coimbra, where she teaches in areas ranging from embedded systems and robotics to medical devices.
She currently serves as President of the ISEC Council, Coordinator of the Master's Degree in Biomedical Engineering, National Representative to the European Committee for Standardization on active implantable medical devices, and co-founder and researcher at the Research Centre for Asset Management and Systems Engineering (RMC2+). She is involved in and leads some R&D projects, with research interests spanning medical robotics, adaptive control, and robotic telemanipulation.
Committed to promoting girls and women in STEM, she is Vice-Chair of IEEE Women in Engineering Portugal, a member of the Working Group on "Research, Gender and Diversity in Engineering Education" of the Portuguese Society for Engineering Education, and was the first Robotics Workshop Leader at the first TUMO Portugal centre.

Email:

Address:ISEC/IPC, Rua Pedro Nunes, Coimbra, Centro, Portugal, 3030-199

Helena Ramos