New South Wales Section
Naila Mukhtar has been contributing as IEEE volunteer since 2016. Currently, she is serving as Webmaster and social media coordinator of IEEE Region 10 Newsletter. She is also working as Chair of IEEE New South Wales (NSW) Women in Engineering (WIE) Affinity Group (AG); Vice-Chair IEEE Computer Society NSW Chapter and Treasurer IEEE NSW Young Professionals Affinity Group. Previously, she served in various roles at student branch and NSW section level. She is the WIE student representative of the local Macquarie University STEM and WIE committees. She is actively involved in IEEE Women in Engineering and MQ Women in STEM activities and is also helping in shaping the opportunities for other young women in STEM, who are willing to make the difference. As an acknowledgement of her efforts and contributions, she has received “IEEE WIE Inspiring student member of the year award”, which is one of the prestigious awards of IEEE WIE. She also received “Faculty of Science and Engineering Best Student Services Award 2018” at Macquarie University.
She received her BS and MS degrees from Pakistan in the field of computer engineering. She worked as R&D Engineer for integrated security solutions in defense sector. Based on her passion for research, she started her PhD from Macquarie University, Australia. Her research interests include Embedded System Security, Artificial Intelligence, Cryptography and Information Security.
She has actively participated in various IEEE technical and non-technical conferences and hosted/co-hosted the WIE track receptions, including IEEE Tensymp 2018, IEEE ANZSCON 2017, IEEE WIE International Leadership Summit Brisbane, and Macquarie University Leadership Summit. She has collaboratively organized prolific events to support students and young professionals, promote gender diversity and inclusion, and professional development. She has also organized events on entrepreneurship for postgraduate students to help them transform their research projects into marketable products.
IEEE NSW Section Chair Sasha Nikolic
She was part of the organizing committee for Australia New Zealand Student and Young Professionals Congress (ANZSCON) 2017 Sydney, where she helped to present WIE track and panel discussions on women empowerment, gender diversity and leadership. ANZSCON is an initiative of Australia and New Zealand councils for providing support to Student, YP and WIE members. She also served as a committee member of the IEEE Women in Engineering Leadership Summit (ILS) Brisbane, which was organized for the first time in Australia. This was a mega event with academic and industry participants from across Australian sections. As part of IEEE WIE ILS Brisbane media team, she was responsible for managing website and social media (including Facebook, twitter and LinkedIn). She is also part of IEEE NSW WIE “Share-to-Inspire” initiative. The purpose of this initiative is to organize activities to inspire high school young students to join STEM careers through project-based events, portraying the image of engineering, through role-model based events and through sharing the journey experiences of role models from STEM.
“Engineering for me has always been a way to do better. After joining IEEE I have been seeing, meeting and working with so many inspirational leaders and members, who have significantly impacted the humanity. I have made so many friends along the journey and met the mentors who inspired and supported me a lot.” Naila Mukhtar