Brain Fuel: Issues, Opportunities, and Challenges Facing Young Technology Professionals in Industry - 2017

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The latest installment of the IEEE Brain Fuel series, this panel discussion focused on young professionals and the issues, opportunities, and challenges they face as they embark on their technology careers. The event featured three guest panelists working in industry in different parts of the world: Shraddha Chaplot from Cisco, Alex Osana from iKnowHow, and Ana Luisa Santos from Udacity. They discuss their career paths and progression, as well as where IEEE fits into their work and career.

PANELISTS:

Shraddha Chaplot

Brain Fuel: Panelists Shraddha Chaplot Photo

Shraddha works in California, USA, for Cisco as a Greengineer and Machinegineer (fun titles she created herself). She currently creates and demos Internet of Things (IoT) technology solutions for customers across all industries at Cisco. Shraddha joined the company as a hardware engineer in the Accessibility Team, where she tested products to ensure they met global accessibility requirements and standards. During her time in the team, she grew more passionate about accessibility and spearheaded the acquisition of a $100,000 Cisco Research gift for National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID), as well as bringing on Cisco's first two interns who were deaf. She went on to build Cisco's Energy Star Compliance Lab from the ground up and qualified the first set of products for the company.

Shraddha is a huge enthusiast of being your authentic self, combining her love for engineering, STEAM, hands–on projects, and wacky ideas to inspire and empower anyone and everyone, and in doing so, enabling them to realize their true potential. She graduated from University of California, San Diego, CA, USA, with a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and depth in Machine Intelligence. Follow Shraddha on Twitter @shr_plus_ha, take a peek into her playful brain, and join in on her spontaneous adventures!

Alexandros Osana

Brain Fuel: Panelists Alexandros Osana Photo

Alexandros works for Innora, a robotics deep R&D company situated in Athens, Greece. A recent graduate of the University of Patras with a Dipl. Ing in Electrical Engineering and fresh from a brief stay at ETH Zurich for his senior thesis. His senior thesis investigated the optimal area of coverage using a robotic swarm. His varied activities include business development to machine vision algorithms and control systems design. He has co-authored and coordinated the preparation of multiple European grant proposals for large international projects. His core academic interests lie in autonomous robotics, while AI and machine learning come in a close second.

Alexandros joined IEEE during his early undergraduate years, back in 2012. He has served IEEE as a local student volunteer, Section Student Representative for Greece Section, Region 8 Student Branch Chapter coordinator, liaison between Region 8 Action for Industry Committee and Greece Section. He is very interested in topics involving sustainable development and in May 2015, along with Region 8 director Costas Stasopoulos, formed the first Region 8 humanitarian activities committee, which he presently chairs. Alexandros’ ambition is to see IEEE Humanitarian Activities grow rapidly within the vast area of Region 8, with engineers becoming more and more aware and sensitive to community needs. Alexandros is an amateur piano and tennis player.

Ana Luisa Santos

Brain Fuel: Panelists Ana Luisa Santos Photo

Ana Luisa works at Udacity as a Business Developer Manager in São Paulo, Brazil. Udacity is a Silicon Valley–based, $1-billion valuation, startup offering open online learning programs on AI, data analytics, mobile and web development, VR, and self-driving car development. The company’s top course development partners are Google, Facebook, GitHub, IBM, and Amazon. Ana Luisa’s purpose is to disseminate hands-on education in technology, helping young people use technology to solve practical problems and also unleashing amazing work opportunities.

She has been an IEEE volunteer since 2002, leading a Student Branch, organizing regional student conferences, serving on several committees such as the New Initiatives Committee, Operations, Entrepreneurship Ad Hoc, and others. She graduated with a Media Technology MS (MIT Media Lab) and Electrical Engineering MSc and Bsc (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro UFRJ).

MODERATOR: 

Randi Sumner

Brain Fuel: Moderator Randi Sumner Photo

Randi Sumner, Senior Director, IEEE Strategy & Entrepreneurship, will act as moderator and lead the Q&A session following the discussion.

Throughout her more than 20-year career, Randi has successfully envisioned and initiated new, uncharted and profit-driven “bootstrap startup” projects within a wide variety of mission-driven organizations. The impact of her role in several projects helped to transform business models as well as drive energy into stagnant organizations.

In her role at IEEE, Randi spearheaded the launch of IEEE’s Entrepreneurship initiative. This first-of-its-kind IEEE initiative inspires a global community for technology founders, engineers working in startups, and vendors and funders helping to scale these businesses. Her efforts have brought IEEE’s global resources to technology entrepreneurs while inspiring new style events, virtual communities, and a video channel dedicated to startups.

 

The latest installment of the IEEE Brain Fuel series, this panel discussion focused on young professionals and the issues, opportunities, and challenges they face as they embark on their technology careers. The event featured three guest panelists working in industry in different parts of the world: Shraddha Chaplot from Cisco, Alex Osana from iKnowHow, and Ana Luisa Santos from Udacity. They discuss their career paths and progression, as well as where IEEE fits into their work and career.

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