Women in Signal Processing Committee Highlights

Starting in 2017, the Women in Signal Processing (WISP) Subcommittee became a standing committee of the Membership Board, rather than a subcommittee of the Member Services Committee. This means that the WISP chair now holds a seat on the Membership Board. Much has happened in 2017, and we look forward to an even more productive 2018. Most notably, we’re building a directory of all women in the signal processing fields, and we need your help in populating it. 

I would like to request all women members reading this article submit their information to the new WISP Directory. The WISP Directory aims to increase and promote visibility and recognition of women in signal processing fields, positioning them for awards, leadership roles, and more.

Powered by Google Forms, it allows anyone to submit or access information about women in the field. The purpose of the directory is to collect information about all women and their career stages, IEEE membership status, and research area and provides a link to their CVs. The goal is to position and identify more women for various awards and Distinguished Lecturer nominations, nominations for leadership roles at various levels [ranging from associate editor or technical committee (TC) member to editor-in-chief or TC chair], plenary and keynote speakers, and more. The directory will be shared with various TC chairs and other officers within the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) very soon. The same information should also help recruiters and job-seekers alike. The WISP Directory isn’t only for SPS members, however—all women in the signal processing community are encouraged to add themselves to the list!

The WISP Committee has also been working on creating an e-mail list of all WISP, which will be used to directly reach out to all women when calls for various nominations are open or if people want to advertise open positions within their university or company.