I lead the Systems Engineering Team at Guardant Health. In the past I have worked on: Cancer Screening, Flow-cytometry, Robotic Pill, Neuronal Implant, Non-invasive blood testing and Fluid Percussion. My industry experience includes start-ups and large companies. I was a co-founder of Corvectra, then later joined Rani Therapeutics at an early stage, where I stayed through the full product life cycle. I later joined Becton Dickinson & Company as a Systems Lead for a Novel Flowcytometer, from product inception to market launch. I have also worked at FDA at the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH). As a leader in biotech, my work is to cross pollinate cutting edge technology with up-to-date scientific discoveries, to develop products that make a difference in people’s lives.

Shilpi Agarwal is a Data Philanthropist, Adjunct Faculty at Stanford and MIT $100K Launch Mentor.

Armed with the technical skills from her Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science, design thinking skills from her Masters in Design, combined with 20+ years of Business and Marketing know-how, Shilpi started DataEthics4All, troubled with the unethical use of data around her in Artificial Intelligence, business and in political campaigns.

DataEthics4All is a Community bringing the STEAM in AIᵀᴹ Movement for Youth pledging to help 5 Million economically disadvantaged students in the next 5 years by breaking barriers of entry in tech, celebrating Ethics 1stᵀᴹ Champions of today & tomorrow and working towards a better AI DIET World where DIET stands for Data, Inclusion, Ethics in Technology.

Donya Q. Amiri is the founder & CEO of AIM Engineering Consultants. Ms. Amiri holds an MS in Transportation Engineering from SJSU, is licensed as a Professional Civil Engineer and Traffic Engineer. She has 15+ years of experience working for local agencies where she led the transportation, traffic signal operations, and land development groups and managed a wide array of policies, programs, and projects. She is recognized for her passion and dedication to building innovative and equitable infrastructure. In 2021, Ms. Amiri launched her own consulting firm. AIM is founded on the core principle that we all play a role in the world we create, live in, and leave behind. Donya is proud to provide engineering expertise on projects that will create safe, reliable, and sustainable communities.

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 automation of beam alignment, calibrating coherent error in single-qubit gate operation, and installation and integration of hardware to facilitate two-qubit gate operations.

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 as a graduate student at Cal, she successfully lobbied the Physics department for a lactation room.

Christina Casler is a Water Manager at Meta. She has a Bachelors’ degree in environmental engineering from University of Florida and a Masters’ degree from UC Berkeley. Previously, Christina worked at Carollo Engineers in water/wastewater engineering, focusing on recycled water planning. At Meta, she works on a team to develop new data center regions with resilient water and wastewater infrastructure. She is passionate about sustainability and building responsibly. Outside of work, Christina plays a lot of ultimate frisbee, goes on runs with her Australian Cattle Dog mix, Pippen, and cooks as much as she can.

Rose Castanares is proud to lead a team of engineers (50% women!!) who are Sales Business Managers and Technical Managers. She joined TSMC in 1998 and is presently responsible for account management and sales for several systems and fabless customers. Before her promotion to TSMC Vice President in 2015, she served as Senior Director in TSMC North America’s San Jose office responsible for an account team and major, mid-size and emerging customers; in Austin as Central Region Director for Texas where she managed regional sales and support; and as Deputy Director in San Diego responsible for several customers in the region.

Prior to TSMC she was in account management with Chartered Semiconductor and National Semiconductor. She began her technology career as a manufacturing engineer with GTE and Siliconix.

Rose holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

Received Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering at SJSU in 2013. Received Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2020. I have worked as a Test Engineer, Design Engineer, and Systems Engineer in the Aerospace and Defense industry.

Aerospace Engineer for NASA Ames, specializing in biological micro fluidics payload design.
As a designer, I strive to balance compact design with ease of use for the payload team. Design for assembly and sterilization must be kept as a high priority even for single use biological payloads. Not only do I focus on ensuring the payloads on can survive the rigors of launch and load, but often they must survive in stasis for at least a year to over a decade in stasis.

UC Berkeley 2001 B.A. Molecular and Cell Bio
San Jose State University 2013 M.S. Mechanical Engineering

Yujin Cho is an experimental physicist, working as a Postdoctoral researcher in the Quantum Coherent Device Physics group at LLNL. Her research interests include understanding two level system defects on superconducting devices and quantum optimal control. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin in 2019 in Dr. Michael Downer’s group focusing on nonlinear optical properties of ferroelectric materials. Before joining LLNL, she worked at University of California, Los Angeles, setting up research environments for superconducting qubits and studying optical properties in magnetic topological insulators.

Becky Clark is a Sr Manager of Medical Device Engineering in the Advanced Technology Organization at Dexcom. Becky and her team are focused on the development of next generation products and technologies that support Dexcom’s mission statement: Empowering people to take control of diabetes. Becky earned her PhD in Chemical Engineering from Pennsylvania State University. Becky has over 14 years of industry experience that ranged from start-up to large corporation and process development engineering to management.

Rachel is a Canadian who moved to the Bay Area in 2019 to work on life-saving autonomous delivery drones. As the lead Field Support Engineer at Zipline International, Rachel helps implement and maintain aircraft hardware and software for operations. Rachel loves her area of work because it allows her to solve complex cross-functional problems, spend hands-on time in the field internationally, and to work on every part of the UAS.

Before switching back to engineering, Rachel worked in IT implementation consulting and aerospace strategy consulting, which is where she became interested in using autonomous systems for good. Rachel graduated from McGill University in Montreal with her bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 2016. She looks forward to sharing information with students and peers about the wide array of engineering paths available in the emerging technology and aerospace industry.

Smruthi Danda is an alumni from San Jose State University. She majored in computer engineering and graduated in December 2020. She is currently a software engineer at Microchip and works with the programming tools of field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Smruthi has a broad spectrum of interests including web development, machine learning and robotics, and she strives to keep up with the most updated technology.

Kalyani Deshmukh is currently working as a Data Engineering Consultant at Accenture AI, Kalyani holds 6 years of work experience with different roles and organizations. In her time at SJSU she pursued roles and responsibilities of a Research Assistant, Instructional Student Assistant, and Graduate Student. She graduated with a master’s in Software Engineering with a specialization in Enterprise Distributed Systems and Data Science in Summer’21. Kalyani is keen to meet new people and is passionate about her work. She recently won NA AI4Social Good Hackathon in Accenture AI as part of the winning team.

Marisa Diaz is an University Program Specialist for Hispanic Serving Institutes at Google. She grew up in Long Beach, CA and was a graduate of the California State Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo. Previously she worked as an event coordinator on Google’s Talent Outreach Team, which connects top tech talent with Googlers through events and experiences. She later worked on Google’s Employee Engagement team, which is responsible for diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives globally at Google. Marisa has worked at Google for four years and is an active member of HOLA- Hispanic & Latinx Googlers Network and Women@Google. Outside of work, she loves trying new recipes, golfing, hitting up the local record store, running, skateboarding, and searching for the perfect coffee shop.

Lenia Dritsoula is a senior software engineer at Google. She grew up in Greece and graduated from National Technical University of Athens, Greece before moving to California, USA to pursue her PhD in EE/Network Security at UCSC. Her interests lie in the intersection of security, machine learning and game theory. Since late 2015, she has been working at Google on anti-fraud machine learning projects. Outside of work, she loves solving puzzles, reading books and walking with her three children.

Natasha leads the Risk Platform Product for Wepay, J.P. Morgan’s Merchant Services Silicon Valley region, with a focus on developing state-of-the-art tools and technologies to monitor, measure and review ongoing risk trends and compliance laws to ensure a seamless merchant payment experience.

Since joining the firm in 2020, she has emerged as a strong leader – delivering results across her team, cultivating strong relationships, structuring new and innovative solutions, while designing and delivering enterprise-grade technology at scale. Prior to joining J.P. Morgan Chase, Natasha was the Perception and Data Infrastructure Product owner for Baidu’s US Autonomous Driving Team – Apollo.
Natasha holds a B.E in Computer Science and an M.S in Software Engineering from San Jose State University

Dr. Sarah D’Souza is a California native with a passion for aerospace and a proud graduate of the University of California at Davis in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department. She has led a vibrant career, allowing her to work in laboratory, engineering, and space operations environments at NASA Johnson Space Center and NASA Ames Research Center. She has worked on ISS Water Recovery Systems for sustainable living in space, Space Shuttle Mechanical and Robotics Systems training for astronauts, Ice Sensing & Electromagnetics Systems, Orion Flight Dynamics and Trajectory Design, and control system design for Deployable Entry Vehicles. Dr. D’Souza is currently an Associate Program Lead Engineer for the Orion European Service Module Integration Office at NASA Glenn Research Center.

Liv has been working on metaverse technologies since 2014. As the Sr. Manager and team lead for Hubs at Mozilla, she leads product strategy and development on next-generation web technologies that enable open, accessible, and approachable virtual worlds, and believes that “the metaverse” is simply an evolution of the internet. Throughout her career, Liv has worked as a developer, product manager, and policy advocate for digital 3D experiences at companies including AWS and Microsoft, aiming towards a goal of democratizing content creator tools so that anyone can build safe and individualized online spaces.

Alyssa Galvan is a Bay Area-based writer, editor and leader with 9+ years of experience leading teams and projects focused on developing help and education content for a global audience. Her specialties include storytelling, content strategy, project management and résumé development. Galvan is a passionate advocate for women of color in the workplace, working to remove bias from interviews, training peers on inclusive standards, and volunteering to support disenfranchised communities through multiple mentorship programs. Galvan earned a BA in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing from San José State University, where she was a top-performing tutor at the SJSU Writing Center. Currently, she creates content for high-profile product launches at Meta.

Manisha Gambhir is a Senior Principal Engineer (Technical Director) and a technology leader at Marvell Semiconductors. At Marvell, she leads cross functional projects and teams spanning geographies delivering high performance, mass production ready, complex mixed-signal IPs in advanced nanometric technologies. Her expertise in design of myriad analog circuits with special focus on architectural innovations spurred direct performance gains for Marvell customers. She is currently focused on design and development of Marvell’s 100G+ ADC based receivers and leading the development for Marvell’s Automotive Grade SerDes portfolio.

She has a PhD and MS degree from Texas A&M University in Electrical Engineering and holds several US patents and publications 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.

Mona Golababei received her BS in mechanical engineering with focus on solid and structural mechanics in 2005. She received her MS in mechanical engineering with research focus on structural and hydraulics design of turbo-machineries in 2008. She pursued PhD in mechanical and aerospace engineering at Rutgers University with a main research area in computational gas dynamics for characterization of plasma discharge in high-speed flow control (drag and maneuvering). In 2014, she graduated from Rutgers University and developed computational models of pressure wave transients in the fluid in drilling channels for the oil and gas industry as a postdoctoral research associate. In 2017, Mona joined a start-up (acquired by Dyson) and worked with the design team to develop mathematical models to improve performance of solid-state Li-ion batteries, a new technology product that brings high safety and energy density to the battery industry. In 2019, she joined Momentus Inc as an innovation engineer to develop new predictive models for thermal and fluid subsystems including the microwave-electrothermal thrusters for in-space transportation. Mona’s passion is developing mathematical and numerical models for innovative technology products involving multi-physics.

Elizabeth Gomes is an engineer who is passionate about addressing unmet needs in healthcare and creating products that will positively impact people’s lives. Throughout her education and career, she has gravitated towards developing medical devices and sensor technology. She is currently the Biomedical Engineer at Blumio, a startup developing a radar-based blood pressure wearable.

In my current role as Head of Prisma Cloud Customer Engineering, I am responsible for leading and managing a team of high performing engineers who bring in customer centric engineering within R&D. I partner with the Global customer success team for visibility and coordination of all customer engineering escalations. As a cross functional team, we help the customers in their journey to the public cloud by ensuring they have the best in class protection. We partner with all Engineering, SRE organizations, product management, program management and cross-functional teams to deliver business results with agility and high quality. I have lived and worked in the Bay Area for the last 20+ years.

Samantha Greene is a Senior Water Resources Specialist in the Water Supply Planning and Conservation Unit. She is responsible for leading and coordinating Valley Water’s water supply modeling and analysis efforts. Samantha brings over a decade of water resources management and planning experience to the position. Samantha joined Valley Water 6 years ago to help with water supply planning efforts and to help manage Valley Water’s water supply planning model. Prior to joining Valley Water, Samantha worked at the US Geological Survey on minimizing the impacts of land management on mountain streams and at a civil engineering consulting firm as a geomorphologist. Samantha has a Ph.D. and M.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a focus on water resources management and geomorphology.

Jennifer has over 17 years of experience in the life sciences industry, focused on mass spectrometry instruments, software and solutions, in the fields of chemical analysis, life sciences, and clinical research.

Jennifer joined Agilent in 2004 and has held a variety of roles in sales and marketing. Jennifer is currently responsible for leading the MS Marketing organization, including product marketing, applications marketing and MS solutions teams. Jennifer has a bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry (Bishop’s University) and a Ph.D. in Cell Biology (McGill University).

Aycan Hacioglu is a Customer Success Engineer at MathWorks. She holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Bogazici University, Turkey. She was jointly awarded a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Florida and Universite Lille1-Sciences and Technologies, France. Before joining MathWorks, she was an Assistant Teaching Professor at the Chemical Engineering Department of the University of Missouri for 3.5 years. She extensively used MATLAB for fluid dynamics and mass transfer simulations. She is experienced in mathematical modeling, process simulations, numerical methods, and perturbation theory. She also integrated MATLAB to separation processes and transport phenomena courses she taught. She is excited to share her experience and passion to use MathWorks products in academia.

Emily currently works as a Software Engineer at Flexport, a logistics start up based in San Francisco. Her work at Flexport is focused on designing solutions for Document management. She graduated from UC Berkeley in May of 2020 with a degree in EECS. Prior to graduating, she completed internships at Facebook, Microsoft, and State Farm Insurance. She also studied abroad at the University of Copenhagen Spring semester of 2019. She is passionate about bringing more women into engineering and volunteers with a nonprofit called Afro Fem Coders, which is teaching programming to women in the sub Saharan region of Africa.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/emily-hu/
https://afrofemcoders.org/

In her role as the Director of Offensive Security at Palo Alto Networks, Prajakta Jagdale leads the enterprise Red Team and Product Penetration Testing services. Prior to her current role, Prajakta’s career journey has spanned product security, security architecture and application security research. She loves dreaming up strategies for securing complex and large enterprise and product infrastructures. Her current focus also includes securing Cloud infrastructures at scale through an adversarial lens.

Dr. Jin Y. Jin oversees clinical M&S and data programming for all molecule types in all therapeutic areas. She also oversees overall clinical pharmacology support for Ophthalmology and Neuroscience molecules in Genentech portfolio as Head of Ophth/Neuro Clin Pharm. She has been actively involved in development and registration for many molecules across various therapeutic areas. Before joining Genentech, she worked at Eli Lilly after Ph.D. and post doc in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Dr. Jin is recognized for her scientific passion of using a wide range of quantitative approaches (population modeling, statistical modeling, system modeling, machine learning/artificial intelligence) leveraging diverse data sources to impact development of different molecule types across therapeutic areas. She has a strong scientific presence with 90+ publications, 40+ oral presentations worldwide, an invited panelist on diverse topics, and moderated many scientific conferences, workshops and sessions. Dr. Jin is a reputable leader in the global scientific community. Her recent society leadership roles included as the President (2018) and Board of Director (2014-19) for International Society of Pharmacometrics (ISoP); chair of the 2015 American Conference on Pharmacometrics annual meeting (ACoP); member of Editorial Board for journal CPT:PSP; and member of various committees for American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (ASCPT).

Byoungsok Jung is Vice President of Research and Development for GRAIL whose mission is to detect cancer early, when it can be cured. GRAIL is trying to change the trajectory of cancer mortality by enabling early detection using technological innovation in human genomics and machine learning. His team has developed cutting edge NGS assays in collaboration with bioinformatics and data scientists. Prior to joining GRAIL as a founding member, Byoungsok worked on various NGS assay research and development projects at Illumina Research department. Byoungsok holds a BS in Aerospace Engineering from Seoul National University in South Korea, PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.

Dr. Monica A. Kapil earned her Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from San Jose State University. She went on to earn a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from UC Berkeley and her doctorate in bioengineering via a joint program through UC Berkeley and UCSF as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow.

Monica is currently a Device Engineer at Gilead Sciences, a bio-pharmaceutical company, working on drug delivery systems across Gilead’s portfolio. There, she is involved with innovative, early development design of drug delivery devices from concept to successful clinical studies and launch for both large and small molecules.

Monica also actively works to increase access, diversity, equity, and inclusion in STEM education and careers through her outreach work.

Gurkiran is an Electrical Engineering Manager at California Water Service, third largest regulated water utility in the country with headquarters in San Jose. She is a licensed Electrical Engineer with more than 15 years of experience in the water industry. She earned her B.Tech from Punjab Technical University in India and M.S. in Electrical & Electronics Engineering from California State University, Sacramento. She began her career as a consulting engineer and has worked on a wide variety of water and wastewater projects throughout California. The most rewarding part of her career has been the huge impact her electrical design skills have made on providing sustainable water service to communities across California.

Elizabeth (Liz) Kukka is VP of Operations at Pngme, Co-Founder at Masa Finance, advisor at EdgeMode, consultant at Compute Coin Network, and board member at Digital Custody Trust Company. She brings 12+ years of experience and expertise as an operator, investor, and mentor and speaks internationally on blockchain, crypto currency, women in tech, future technology, and investing. Before joining the world of blockchain, she was Head of Operations at Plug & Play Tech Center, one of Silicon Valley’s earliest and most respected tech accelerators. There, she supported startups in Healthcare & Wellness, Insurance, and Risk & Fraud and expanded the Sunnyvale office to 6 additional global locations.

Liz has her MBA in Design Strategy and currently resides in San Francisco, California.

Denise Lainez is a Thermal Systems Integration Engineer at Lockheed Martin Space in Sunnyvale, CA. She earned her B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from San Jose State University in 2019, and is currently pursuing her M.Eng. 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 and most recently as a Thermal Responsible Systems Engineer (RSE-SI) in Special Programs. She is currently part of LM’s 2024 Engineering Leadership Development Program (ELDP), rotational program. In her free time Denise enjoys community outreach, spending time with friends, family and dogs, and doing outdoor activities.

Dr. Audrey Lee is Senior Director of Energy Strategy at Microsoft. She works at the intersection of policy, technology, and commercial opportunities on the Microsoft datacenter energy and sustainability team. She serves on the Boards of ArcLight Clean Transition II (NASDAQ: ACTD), a special purpose acquisition company, and Redaptive Inc., deploying energy efficiency-as-a-service across commercial real estate portfolios. She volunteers as a board member of Gridworks, Linux Foundation Energy, and Clean Energy for America Education Fund. She holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Princeton Univ and a B.S. in Applied Physics from the California Institute of Technology.

Dr. Yue Liang is a Senior Manager in Advanced Technology Group at NVIDIA Corporation. As an industry veteran, Dr. Liang is responsible for Si technology development programs and foundry management, ranging from semiconductor process, device, reliability, design methodology/DFM to test-chip and technology driver product bring-up. Prior to Nvidia, she was at IBM Semiconductor R&D center. She has been board members of various organizations, as well as technical program committee member of the IEEE Symposium on VLSI Technology and Circuits. She holds over 25 issued patents, has published more than 10 journal papers and given multiple invited talks at international conferences. Dr. Liang received Ph.D. and M.S. degrees from Stanford University, and B.S. degree from Tsinghua University.

Abby Liu received her PhD in Aerospace Engineering and Science from University of Colorado at Boulder. She worked as a research fellow at the University of Michigan for one year. After that She joined eBay’s New Product Team working on ShopBot and later joined the search and recommendation team. Abby is passionate about machine learning and NLP. She developed algorithms and solutions for extreme text classification, Named Entity Recognition, text summarization, etc. Outside work, She enjoys hiking, reading books and doing yoga exercises.

Francine is a licensed Civil Engineer with 8+ years of experience in both the private and public sectors. She graduated from UC Davis with a B.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering and began her career as a consulting engineer for BKF Engineers. At BKF, she worked as a Project Engineer, designing and managing a variety of projects throughout the bay area including residential, commercial, mixed-used, roadway and public works projects. In 2018, she moved to the public sector as an Associate Civil Engineer for the City of Foster City. Francine is currently the Senior Civil Engineer at Foster City and is responsible for management of the City’s largest projects, including the Levee Protection Planning & Improvements Project and the Wastewater Treatment Master Plan Improvements Project.

Prerna Makanawala is Vice President of User Experience & Engineering at Palo Alto Networks, responsible for building a Central UX and Engineering team to work with all the products to bring design consistency, operational efficiencies and inspire design innovation. Prerna has an excellent record of accomplishments in design and implementation of enterprise-level software applications. Prerna has worked in SRM, CRM, Real Estate and Cybersecurity domains.

Prerna is passionate about human-computer interaction, advocating for end-users and in making simple and easy to use digital products. Prerna believes in the power of design thinking to create a vision and engage design and cross-functional teams to achieve that vision.

Prerna has worked in startups as well as large software companies in the world. Prerna has worked in central UX teams as well as in product organizations and brings a wealth of knowledge in aligning user experiences across a large portfolio of products. Inspirational leader operating high-performing design teams that design engaging experiences, products & services, with focus and empathy.

Kelly Masegian is the career counselor liaison to the College of Engineering serving over 5000 undergraduate students. Previously, she worked with the Foothill/DeAnza Internship program at NASA Ames serving as an internship coordinator for 5 years providing career guidance and supervision to up to 125 interns each session. As the mother of four, she is used to a fast-paced environment, and deeply believes in helping students learn to navigate and be proactive in their career planning.

Dr. Parisa Mazrooei is a scientist at Genentech research and early development. Her focus is on applying diverse modeling and machine learning techniques to inform drug development in forward and reverse translation. Coming from a computer science and engineering background, Parisa has years of experience working with diverse data types from electronic health records to next generation sequencing multi-omics datasets in order to better understand mechanisms of disease progression, as well as identifying prognostic and predictive biomarkers. She received her M.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Alberta, Canada, and a Ph.D. in Computational Biology from University of Toronto, Canada. Before joining Genentech, she worked on developing machine learning models for disease onset prediction at Lydia AI.

Lisa McGill is the Director of High Resolution Mission Operations at Planet Labs PBC, where she is responsible for overseeing Planet’s high resolution satellite constellation, the SkySats, and supporting the next generation high resolution missions. Prior to joining Planet, Lisa worked at Skybox Imaging / Google as an Operations Engineer on the SkySat Constellation. She began her career as an Integration and Test Engineer at the NASA Ames Research Center on the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) satellite; she has left her mark on the moon. Lisa has a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering Mechanics and Astronautics from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

Neeta is an accomplished medical industry leader with over twenty years of global experience in diverse organizations from startups to large corporations. She joined Intuitive Surgical in Feb 2015 to form the Project Mgmt Office. Neeta was with Siemens for 12 years & had various leadership roles, from Business Head South Asia Cluster to Chief Information Officer within the Siemens Ultrasound Leadership Team, as well as, Senior Director of Product Management for Product, Portfolio & Strategy team at Siemens.

Neeta has an MBA from Santa Clara University and a BS in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Bombay, India.

Stephanie Moyerman is the Senior Director of Risk and Trust science at eBay Inc, where she works with a team of scientists and engineers to ensure a safe eCommerce Platform. Prior to eBay, Stephanie was a Senior Science Manager in Amazon’s Customer Trust and Partner Support Department and a Principal Engineer and Director within Intel’s Sports and Wearable Sensing Divisions. Stephanie holds a Ph.D. in Physics – Experimental Cosmology and M.S. in Computational Science, Math, and Engineering from University of California at San Diego. She holds dual B.S. in Mathematics and Physics from Harvey Mudd College. Stephanie enjoys many hobbies: running, hiking, surfing, snowboarding, judo, jiujitsu, glass blowing, flying airplanes and racing cars. She lives in Carlsbad, Ca with her husband and adorable dog.

Da Yoon No is a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford where she received her Ph.D..in Bioengineering. Her research is focused on human liver tissue engineering using 3d hydrogel scaffold for liver disease modeling and cell replacement therapies.

Emma is a numerical modeler that is interested in coastal and estuarine processes. Currently she is a PhD student at the University of Washington in the Civil and Environmental Engineering department studying rip currents and surf zone dynamics. Previously Emma worked at the San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI) where she assisted in the development of a hydrodynamic numerical model of the San Francisco Bay and worked on projects that aimed to better understand the controls on nutrient cycling and eutrophication. Prior to SFEI, she completed a masters degree at the University of Hawai‘i in Physical Oceanography where she developed a coupled microbial-physical model that predicts concentrations of a pathogenic bacteria in the coastal waters.

Mimi Audia Parker is a robotics mechanical engineer at Omron, a global factory automation company with its robotics division based in Pleasanton, CA. She earned her B.S. and M.S. in mechanical engineering from University of California, Berkeley, in 2015 and 2017 respectively. She became interested in robotics when she got an opportunity to intern at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA, while she was a student at Los Angeles City College. She spent 12 months and two subsequent summers at JPL, and transferred to UC Berkeley to earn her degrees. Prior to going back to school, she worked as a professional audio engineer for various recording artists in Los Angeles. She looks forward to talking to students and peers who are interested in expanding their horizons.

Devi Prasanna is a licensed Civil Engineer with more than 15 years of experience in the design and construction of water facilities. She started her career as Assistant Engineer and progressed to become Capital Delivery Manager for California Water Service, third largest private water utility in the United States. In her role, she leads a team of engineers that focuses on design and delivery of Capital Improvement projects for Cal Water. She has Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from Kerala University in India, and Masters in Environmental Engineering from San Jose State University. She has designed several water utility facilities for Cal Water, provided engineering support to district operations staff, and hydraulic assessments for new developments within Cal Water’s service area.

Danna Qian is a cell materials engineer at Tesla in Palo Alto, CA. She earned her Ph.D. degree in Nanoengineering specified in lithium-ion-batteries from UCSD and began her career as a materials scientist in Nanolab. After a year, she decided to move into the semiconductor industry as a process engineer in Lam Research. At Lam, she works on cutting-edge memory chips processing and development. In 2021, she felt the summon of batteries from Tesla and moved to Tesla to continue her passion for lithium ion batteries. She is a mom of two kids, 6 and 2, whom she spends most of her spare time with.

Jeanette Quinlan is Senior Program Manager of NASA and Civil Space at SpaceLink. In this role, she oversees NASA and Civil government activity, working closely with engineers, managers, and technicians.

Jeanette has 15+ years experience in the space industry, with expertise in analysis, design, testing, and on-orbit monitoring of RF and imaging satellites in LEO, MEO, and GEO orbits.

Jeanette began her career as a Satellite Thermal Engineer. Prior to SpaceLink, she was Director of Space Systems at Akash Systems, a startup selling a new material, GaN-on-Diamond, for Aerospace communication.

Jeanette has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Rochester in Rochester, NY. She actively promotes diversity in Aerospace and founded the Bay Area Women in Space and Aerospace.

Shobana Radhakrishnan is Senior Director of Engineering, Google TV – Google, leading next generation TV with product and research groups across Google. Prior to this, she has held various technical leadership roles at Roku, Mindflash Technologies, and Netflix (Video Metadata Platforms).

Shobana is an active conference and keynote speaker including international conferences such as Amazon AWS Reinvent, Streaming Media Connect, QCon, Grace Hopper, and Yahoo Conferences. Shobana is passionate about diversity in STEM and inclusiveness in products, and has led Diversity and Inclusion initiatives across Roku, Google, Netflix and Yahoo.

Shobana has a master’s in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and lives in Saratoga, California with her husband and two kids.

Daisy is a first-generation college graduate born and raised in the Bayview / Hunters Point district in San Francisco. She received a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Merced in 2018. As an Environmental Engineer at Pathways Climate Institute (formally Silvestrum), she is involved in a wide variety of projects, including the Waterfront Resilience Program with the Port of San Francisco. Currently, she is supporting the development of adaptation strategies targeting hazards such as coastal flooding and seismic risks. Her technical skills and knowledge of the area, led her to complete a review of development projects in the southern waterfront and update an interactive dashboard (Shoreline Explorer) with projected sea level rise elevations.

Geetha Rangarajan is a Senior Product Manager and Leader with 20+ years of experience in the semiconductor industry during which she has held design engineering, product marketing and business development roles for hardware IP and electronic design automation software. In her current role at Synopsys, she leads product management activities for AI-driven software solutions for chip design.

Geetha has a bachelors in electronics and communication engineering from India and a business certification( COBE) from Berkeley Haas.

Dhanya joined Apple in 2013 and has been an instrumental part of every Watch launch to date. She’s spent the past eight years enabling on-track launches and developing teams and processes across program management, technical operations, and quality functions.

Dhanya holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University and a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering and MBA from MIT. Prior to Apple, Dhanya worked at Stryker Endoscopy designing minimally invasive surgical tools.

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.

Ekta Sahasi is the Founder of spikeview, a global pre-professional portfolio platform for students and young adults. She is reinventing how Gen-Z represent themselves online, build meaningful networks, and effectively lean in on their diverse experiences and interest vectors to forge a pathway to success. Before spikeview, Ekta spent 20 years at large corporations and start-ups in Silicon Valley leading Corporate Innovation, Research, Digital Transformation, and start-up spinout efforts. Ekta is also a seasoned technology investor, a mentor, and an advisor, who is always excited to discuss ideas that will have a profound, positive impact on the global society. Among her peers, Ekta is known as a passionate entrepreneur who leads with confidence, candor, and courage.

With more than 20 years in Silicon Valley as an executive and engineering team leader, Merline has first-hand experience from within some of the most iconic companies in the tech industry, where she led large teams and engineering projects that contributed to the success of those companies. Earlier in her career, she held key executive and technical development roles at Joyent, PayPal, and Adobe and started her career as a software engineer at Sun Microsystems. Merline now serves as a board member for some of the next emerging pivotal companies within the tech and finance industries, including Rocket Lab, Evolv Technology, Alkami Technology, GitLab, Lightspeed Commerce, and TD SYNNEX. She has chaired all public and venture-backed boards committees except audit and was recently named Lead Independent Director of Rocket Lab. She advises on technology trends, innovation, strategy, enterprise risks, cybersecurity, talent management, and digital transformation, to name a few.

Merline received a Bachelor of Science in computer science from Florida A&M University and a Master of Science in software engineering management from Carnegie Mellon University, where she previously served on the Board of Directors of the alumni association.

Zahra is a licensed professional civil engineer working for the State of California Department of Transportation (Caltrans). She was born and raised in the Bay Area and received her B.S. in Civil Engineering from San Jose State University where she was heavily involved with the ASCE and SWE student chapters and held various leadership roles. Zahra very much enjoys her profession and promoting the civil engineering field.

Simone is general counsel to Agilent’s Order Fulfillment & Supply Chain Group. In addition, Simone’s team oversees Agilent’s litigation portfolio and employment law advice. Simone also serves as a core member of Women@Agilent Santa Clara and the Council of Black Employees. Previously, Simone managed Americas Legal as well as real estate, environmental health and safety, and ERISA legal teams.

Before Agilent, she served in various in-house and law firm roles from 2001 to 2014. From 1995 to 1998, Simone worked in Finance for the military aircraft and aerospace manufacturing industry.

​​​​​​​Simone holds a Juris Doctor from Loyola Law School, Los Angeles and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration/Financial Management from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

Anisha Seli is a Product Engineering Director at Analog Devices, where she leads a globally distributed team providing product engineering support for thousands of product lines and customers. She has over 10 years of technical leadership experience in silicon validation / debug and is a driver of strategic transformational changes in her organization. She believes strongly in mentoring junior engineers in her team and encouraging women in technology.

She graduated Summa Cum Laude from SJSU in 2010 with an MS in Electrical Engineering, and is pursuing Stanford Graduate School of Business’ LEAD program, graduating in 2023.
Outside of work, she is passionate about charity and has led fundraisers for education and cancer relief for underprivileged kids.

Margaret is a Staff Research Scientist at the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center. She holds a S.M. in Aeronautics & Astronautics from MIT, where she was an NSF Graduate Research Fellow, and a B.A. in Astrophysics from Princeton University with a minor in Planets & Life. She has worked on a variety of space science missions including the GOES-R Solar Ultraviolet Imager, the Solar Dynamics Observatory, and the Geostationary Carbon Cycle Observatory (GeoCarb). While not launching things into space, she enjoys hiking, camping, and making music.

Dr. Sarah Sheldon is a Principle Research Staff Member and senior manager of the Quantum Theory and Capabilities team at IBM Quantum. She received Bachelor of Science degrees in physics and nuclear science and engineering in 2008 and her PhD in nuclear science and engineering in 2013 from MIT. As a graduate student she studied quantum control techniques in magnetic resonance experiments. Since joining IBM in 2013, Sarah has focused on improving the physical operations that are the building blocks of quantum algorithms, developing techniques for characterizing quantum devices, and demonstrating and extending the capabilities of our current quantum systems.

Margi Shroff is a Technical Lead on a Data Analytics Team at KLA. She is a proud SJSU alum. At SJSU, Margi studied M.S in Software Engineering. She joined her current KLA team as the first full-stack Software Engineer and now leads 30+ engineers across different projects focusing on bringing data insights, connectivity and modeling forecasts across a wide user base. She enjoys working with different teams and customers to help solve business challenges across multiple domains. Margi is a strong advocate for Inclusion and Diversity. She is on the steering committee of Women in STEAM (WISE) at KLA. She leads the WISE Mentor Program to empower KLA employees to help reach their aspirations.

Dr. Amanda Stasiewicz is a wildfire social scientist with the Department of Environmental Studies and with SJSU’s Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center. Her research focuses broadly on the human dimensions of wildfire and wildfire policy. Dr. Stasiewicz conducts research with communities and organizations to explore how localities strive to become fire-adapted through pre-existing or novel policies or programs. Her work also focuses on wildfire evacuation planning and behavior, including how different segments of a population intend to evacuate, how they prepare for their chosen evacuation plan, and the impacts of these actions on first responders.

Uma Subramanian is a solution architect with IBM. She has spent the last 20 years helping large enterprises in their technology transformation journey. She is passionate about using technology to solve problems and loves the challenge of mapping technology to augment existing processes and setting the path for future growth. She has experience working in sales, engineering, services and technical support. This provides a unique perspective when addressing challenges at organizations where different end goals need to come together to meet the larger objective.

Jayanthi Subramani leads the development of Technology and Data solutions for Amgen Research. As the head of Research Informatics DTI – Digital, Technology & Innovation organization, she leads a team with scientific & engineering expertise to accelerate drug discovery & development for Amgen Research by creating and executing a Digital Transformation strategy. Jayanthi is a technology leader with an education in Computer Engineering with 20 years of experience architecting & building differentiated scientific data products & platforms that enable Early Discovery, Preclinical and Clinical stages of drug development and progression. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Govt. College of Technology, India and Masters degree in Computer Engineering from San Jose State University

Jen helps people cause trouble with code. She is currently independent, but in the past she has helped launch the Google Glass developer platform, taught computer science, and worked on robots at NASA. She is passionate about tech education and supporting underrepresented groups in tech. If she is away from her keyboard, she is probably playing ice hockey or hanging from aerial silks.

Bernie Valencia is the Vice President and General Manager for Matson in Guam and Micronesia and is responsible for overseeing the operations and sales activity of Matson’s Western Pacific including Okinawa, Japan. Bernie was recognized as an inaugural award winner of the 2020 Supply & Demand Chain Executive Magazine’s Women in Supply Chain Award that recognizes top female professionals in the shipping and supply chain industries worldwide.

Bernie plays an active role in improving her community. She is co-founder of iCAN Resources, a nonprofit organization that employs and provides life skills to Guam’s disabled community. Bernie also serves on the University of Guam’s School of Business Advisory Council to support future business leaders; vice president of the Guam Women’s Chamber of Commerce to elevate women-owned businesses; The Employer’s Council to protect workers’ rights; the Guam Area Maritime Security Committee to strengthen the safety in the region; the USO Advisory Council to support servicewomen and men; and on the iRecycle board of directors to promote environmental responsibility. Bernie graduated from San Jose State University with a degree in Aviation Maintenance.

Latha Venkatachari is the Vice President of Applications Engineering in the Silicon Realization Group at Synopsys. She joined Synopsys in December 1999 and held various positions at Synopsys. She has close to 30 years of experience working in EDA. She started her career as a Scientist in the Defense R&D organization in India and held R&D, management positions in 3 other companies.

She is currently responsible for Development & Product Engineering & Customer Collaborations/Services for multiple Synopsys key customers, working with several Synopsys Global teams. She drives Platform Operations across and Quality across the Business Units, Key Verification Technology initiatives & innovations from these customer collaborations.
Latha started in Synopsys as an R&D engineer, moved to applications engineering, managed field teams supporting key customers while building and climbing up the career ladder. Today she leads a team of 400+ engineers. Software engineering, quality and ensuring delivery of software working the first time is one of her passions.

Kim is a principal process engineer at Rigetti Quantum Computing. She has over 20 years of experience in micro fabrication technology and MEMS design. Kim held various technical leader positions at Intel and General Electric – Nova Sensors. She is passionate about building different nano-micro devices from CMOS high-K gate, MEMS catheter chips to the most fascinating superconducting Qubits.

Kim was born in Vietnam into a poor and unstable household along with her 7 siblings. Her mother was illiterate; and her father was an alcoholic. She strives for success upon her arrival in the US at the age of 20, speaking very limited English. After five years, she graduated from UC Irvine Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical engineering in 2000. She later went on to earn her Master of Science degree in Materials Science at SJSU in 2003.

Kim is happily married and has 2 children. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her family, gardening, and hiking.

Julie Willey enjoys shipping products that delight and inspire. She has close to 20 years of engineering experience; ranging from designing ASICs and systems design at Leapfrog toys and Neato Robotics, heading up the HW team at Tile, an internet of things, BLE key finder, and now a Sr Systems Engineer in Meta’s ARVR team. Having developed the love of great startups, Julie continues to provide technical and process mentor-ship for startups through their product definition, execution and team growth phases.

Fay is currently a part of the Y Combinator winter accelerator batch working on something new. She was previously a software engineer at Stripe and worked on fraud, disputes, in-person payments, and was most recently in Mexico City building the new Stripe Mexico office.

Dr. Lin Wu currently works at TSMC as Business Development Director for PMIC/BCD and Small Panel Display HV technology. She has been working in the semiconductor industry for more than 20 years with rich design experience in various technology platforms.

Prior to joining TSMC, Dr. Wu was the senior ASIC Design Director at UNISOC in Shanghai, China; Design Manager at Mstar Semiconductor (now a subsidiary of MediaTek); and member of technical staff at Texas Instruments Inc. Dallas, for developing various analog products.

Dr. Wu graduated from Tsinghua University, Beijing, with B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering in 1994 and 1996 respectively. She received her Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Iowa State University in 2000. She has published various papers at ISSCC etc. and holds multiple US patents.

Lucy Wu is a Geotechnical Engineer at WSP USA’s San Francisco office. After graduating with a BS from MIT in 2009 and MS from Stanford University in 2011, she has worked primarily in civil engineering design firms as an integral part of design teams delivering complex projects in the US and Asia. Her experience spans both public infrastructure (rail, bridges, highways, roadways) and private building development (residential, commercial, education, cultural).

She is passionate about connecting people both within project teams as well as professional societies. She has been a part of the Young Members Presidential Group, a Board Level Committee for the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering since 2013 and has served as Committee Chair since 2017.

I am currently a senior director in PayPal’s Global Fraud Risk leading data scientist teams across the globe to develop, implement, and automate cutting-edge AI/ML risk strategies. I believe in the value and revolution of data science in combination with technology to drive online payments platform safe, secure, and trustable, and keep us stay ahead of the games with ever evolving fraudulent actors. Overall I have 15+ years of expertise in fraud risk and credit risk management, statistical modeling, and business analytics & optimization across Payments, E-commerce, and Financial industry. I enjoy learning new things to keep myself up to date with the latest development. I received a Ph.D. degree in International Economics from UC Santa Cruz and Master degree from Fudan University in China.

Zhan Yu is the Senior Director of Engineering at Marvell Semiconductor. At Marvell, she built and led cross-functional cross-geographic R&D organizations to design, develop high-performance, mixed-signal IPs. Before that, Zhan was the Director of Digital Power at Monolithic Power Systems. She set up global design centers and led the team to prototyped MPS’ 1st digitally controlled DC-DC converters into products.

Zhan holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, UCLA, and MBA degrees 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.