Tech Talks

Science keeps me walking in high heels and travel the world (in them)

presented by Milica Djurić-Jovičić

4th of October, 11:00 – 11:30, Nikola Tesla B

Description:

Pursuing your passion is one of the prerequisites to become successful and feel good about your work. For curious and hardworking person, science can get you as far as you can imagine. But what does it mean to be a scientist today? Do you have freedom to research whatever you like? Which life standard can the science provide? And how does it go, globally? This talk will provide answers to these questions. I will share some of my most significant impressions from my career, also reflecting milestones that marked transformation from a “curious girl” with a research idea to study walking in high heels from the engineering perspective to becoming a “boss lady” as the head of the faculty’s Innovation center.

 

Milica Djurić-Jovičić
Brief Bio: Milica Djuric-Jovicic is Director of Innovation Centre at the School of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade. Her education background is in electrical engineering and computing from the School of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade, Serbia, where she received her BSc, MSc, and PhD degrees. She has 10 years of experience in research and innovation related to different fields of electrical engineering and data science. She is the author or co-author of 47 scientific publications, as well as a reviewer for international journals and research and innovation grants. Her research activities are focused on development of wearable systems for human movement analysis and advanced signal processing algorithms for motion assessment and differential diagnostics.
Milica has been coordinator of national and international R&D projects, funded by grants, but also public or private companies. As the Director of the Innovation Centre, she has gained experience in leading and participating on numerous projects that combine academia and industry, and contribute to society through innovations, applied science and new technological solutions. The implemented projects included development of ICT and IoT technologies. She is also a technology transfer manager, and a consultant and innovation specialist within United Nations Development Programme. Member of IEEE Women in Engineering and active promoter of Girls in ICT.

 

Giving the World a Place to Work Together

presented by Astha Agarwal and Rachel Gauci

4th of October, 14:00 – 14:30, Nikola Tesla B

Decription:

Come learn about the journey of two software engineers at Facebook, and how they are helping people all around the world work better together via Workplace. Workplace is a collaborative platform run by Facebook, Inc., started on October 10, 2016. It can be used to communicate via groups, to chat with colleagues and offers the social networks features in a corporate environment.

 

Astha Agarwal
Brief Bio: Astha Agarwal is a Software Engineer at Facebook. She was previously a Research Intern at Facebook and, before that, at Inria, working on Nano-D Team, where she analized protein structures using Pymol. Astha graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.
Rachel Gauci
Brief Bio: Rachel Gauci is a Software Engineer at Facebook. She was a research fellow at the University of Edinburgh. Before that she had been working at Ascent Software as a Senior Software Developer. Rachel graduated from the University of Malta, and has a Master’s Degree from the University of Edinburgh.

 

ACM Chapters and Celebrations of Women in Computing

presented by Reyyan Ayfer and George Eleftherakis

5th of October, 17:15 – 18:15, Nikola Tesla B

Description:

ACM Chapters and Celebrations of Women in Computing are wonderful ways to connect.  Getting a new Celebration or Chapter started can seem to be a large and confusing task. This talk will provide valuable information and resources that will help those considering creating a new conference or student chapter to get organized and be successful. There will be plenty of time for questions from the audience.

 

Reyyan Ayfer
Brief Bio: Reyyan Ayfer is working at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey with a multitude of responsibilities including teaching, leading a volunteer group of faculty to support use of technology, preparing an online history archive of the university.
Ayfer has held several leadership positions within ACM to improve computer science education and increase the representation of women in the field. She received the Anita Borg Change Agent Award in 2008 after serving as the ACM-W Ambassador of Turkey for 8 years. For the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE), she organized 15th annual European conference Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE). For ACM’s Council on Women (ACM-W), Ayfer recently became the Vice Chair, and she was the founding Chair of ACM-W Europe. She is also the faculty advisor for the ACM-W and ACM student chapters at Bilkent University.
George Eleftherakis
Brief Bio: Dr George Eleftherakis is a Reader in Computer Science and the Director of the PhD program at the  University of Sheffield International Faculty, CITY College, located in Thessaloniki, Greece. He received the Senate Award for Sustained Excellence in Learning and Teaching from the University of Sheffield in May 2014. He is a Senior member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) since 2012 and the Chair of ACM’s Committee of European Chapter Leaders. He is a member of the administration board of the Greek Computer Society since 2002. Since 2009 he is a member of the Faculty’s Research Committee, and since 2017 a member of the University PGR Committee.Dr Eleftherakis is  very active in teaching at any level having taught 20 different modules over the last 15 years. Very significant and important contribution is his initiative on extra-curriculum activities, and overall his passion over all these years to inspire students to participate and continue their education outside of the curriculum especially improving their professional and employability skills.