Future of the Workforce Roundtable 

This complimentary live, 90-minute virtual event was held on 7 December 2022. During this special event, Dejan Milojicic, Distinguished Technologist and Director System Architecture and Management Lab, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, served as the moderator. A panel of subject matter experts, including Mercy Chelangat, Roxana Saint-Nom, Phillip Laplante, and Nita Patel, joined Dejan Milojicic. This event in the IEEE Future Tech Forum series was jointly organized by IEEE Future Directions and IEEE Computer Society.

Over the past two years, the IEEE Industry Engagement Committee reached out to over 10,000 engineering professionals and heard from over 200 panelists from all over the world to gain an understanding of the workforce challenges the community is facing. Leading technological organizations risk not meeting their future needs unless leaders of today understand where action is needed. Click here to learn more and download the report.

Moderator: Dejan Milojicic, Distinguished Technologist and Director System Architecture and Management Lab, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

 

 

Featured Panelists:

• Mercy Chelangat,
• Phillip Laplante, Computer Security Division of NIST and a Professor at Penn State
• Nita Patel, Engineering Lead Design Center – Farmington at Otis
• Roxana Saint-Nom,

 

Event Moderator:

Dejan Milojicic, Distinguished Technologist and Director System Architecture and Management Lab, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Dejan Milojicic is a distinguished technologist at Hewlett Packard Labs, Palo Alto, CA [1998-present]. Previously, he worked in the OSF Research Institute, Cambridge, MA [1994-1998] and Institute “Mihajlo Pupin”, Belgrade, Serbia [1983-1991]. He received his PhD from the University of Kaiserslautern, Germany (1993); and his MSc/BSc from Belgrade University, Serbia (1983/86). His research interests include systems software, distributed computing, systems management, and HPC. Dejan has over 200 papers, 2 books and 79 patents. Dejan is an IEEE Fellow (2010), ACM Distinguished Engineer (2008), and HKN and USENIX member. Dejan was on 8 PhD thesis committees, and he mentored over 50 interns. Dejan was president of the IEEE Computer Society (2014), IEEE presidential candidate in 2019, editor-in-chief of IEEE Computing Now (2008-2012) and IEEE Distributed Systems Online (2008-2009) and he has served on many editorial boards and TPCs. Most recently he co-founded workshop on Programming Environments for Heterogeneous Computing at SC’2021. Dejan led large industry-government-university collaborations, such as Open Cirrus (2007-2011) and New Operating System (2014-2017).

 

Panelists:

Mercy Chelangat Koech is an electrical engineer with a passion for sustainable community development. She leverages emerging technologies to bring electricity, education and enterprise to underserved communities across Africa.

She chaired IEEE PES Day 2022, this year’s theme being “Powering a Sustainable Future”. She also recently commissioned a solar microgrid water pumping system for drip irrigation in northern Kenya with the support of IEEE Smart Village and Bright Hope International.

Chelangat and her team work to improve the capacities of rural villages to be self-sufficient and use electricity to create sustainable micro-enterprises that have a long-lasting impact on local families and future generations. These projects are a real demonstration of how energy can be a key enabler to community development.

 

Phillip Laplante is a Computer Scientist in the Computer Security Division of NIST and a Professor of Software and Systems Engineering at Penn State. His research interests include computer security, safety critical software systems, artificial intelligence and software quality. From 2010-2017 he led the effort to develop a national licensing exam for software engineers. He has published 37 books and more than 300 scholarly works. Laplante received the B.S. degree in systems planning and management, M.Eng. degree in electrical engineering, and the Ph.D. degree in computer science from Stevens Tech and an M.B.A. from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. He is a licensed professional engineering in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

 

Nita Patel, P.E., is Senior Director, Engineering Lead Design Center – Farmington at Otis leading a critical part of the global engineering development, providing new capabilities in connected, smart, IoT-based platforms. Nita is a Director of the IEEE Foundation and is 2023 President of the IEEE Computer Society. Nita has served in many industry development teams and in strategic IEEE volunteer roles. She founded and led the first five years of the IEEE Women in Engineering International Leadership Conference (WIE ILC), served as Women in Engineering International Chair, served on the Eta Kappa Nu Board of Governors and was IEEE-USA VP of Communications & Public Awareness. Nita received her MS Computer Engineering, BS Electrical Engineering and BS Mathematics from Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

 

Roxana Saint-Nom, is a Telecommunications Electrical Engineer with post-graduate studies in Speech Signal Processing. 25 years of an academic career at ITBA, a prestigious Argentinian University, reaching to EE Department Chair. 9 years in Industry, as a consultant and Project Manager oriented to the development of technological products involving Software, AI, and Hardware.

IEEE volunteer involved in several leadership positions at Argentina Section, Women in Engineering, and Signal Processing Society. Nowadays she is Region 9 Industry Engagement Committee Chair (2021-2023) and Member at Large of the SPS Board of Governors (2020-2022). She was elected VP Education of the Signal Processing Society for 2023-2025.

 

Click here to access the event on-demand.