Jan
28
Date: 28-January-2026
Time: 11:00 AM ET (New York Time)
Presenter: Dr. Namrata Vaswani
Abstract
We argue that fixing the early math skills of school students is critical for maximizing the likelihood of their future success in signal processing, or in fact, in any STEM profession, if they choose to pursue it. The reason is math learning is cumulative ("causal" in SP language): SP relies on good linear algebra and statistics, which rely on good basic scalar algebra and algebra cannot be understood without a strong grasp of basic arithmetic (fractions, decimals, ratios). The presenter will discuss three ways in which Signal Processing (or any STEM) educators and professionals can help – (i) tutoring and encouraging math practice at home (use of one of many existing AI-enabled math learning applications can makes this task easier and more reliable); (ii) raising awareness of the need/resources for building good early math skills via social or news media; and (iii) advocating for better K-12 math teaching at local schools. In the U.S. context, the presenter argues that many current U.S. education policies are based on short-term research and should be critically re-examined from a long-term college STEM student success perspective.
This talk is based on Dr. Vaswani’s 20 years’ experience teaching and researching signal processing and five years’ experience directing a K-12 math tutoring program called CyMath at Iowa State University https://cymath.iastate.edu/ which has had enormous success with (i), while being extremely low-cost and easy to run. A novel aspect of CyMath is that it partially relies on international and domestic SP or other STEM graduate students and faculty volunteering an hour a week to tutor young students, while also improving their own communication and teaching skills and wellbeing.
Biography
Dr. Namrata Vaswani
Namrata Vaswani received the B.Tech from IIT-Delhi in India and the Ph.D. degree from the from the University of Maryland College Park (UMD) in, in 1999 and 2004, respectively.
She is currently a professor at Iowa State University as the Anderlik Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Her research interests lie in data science, with a particular focus on Statistical Machine Learning and Signal Processing. Since 2020, she also directs the CyMath K-12 Math Tutoring and Support program at ISU
Dr. Vaswani has served as an Associate Editor, Area Editor, or Guest Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, and Proceedings of the IEEE. She has served one term on the Board of Governors of SPS and before that, as the Chair of the Women in Signal Processing committee. She is a recipient of the 2014 IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award, the UMD ECE Distinguished Alumni Award (2019) and the Iowa State Mid-Career Achievement in Research Award (2019). Vaswani is an AAAS Fellow (class of 2023) and an IEEE Fellow (class of 2019).
