Speaker Information – Rabab K. Ward
Rabab K. Ward
Dr. Rabab Kreidieh Ward is presently the VP Education of IEEE. She is a Professor Emeritus in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of British Columbia, Canada. A Fellow of IEEE, Royal Society of Canada and Member of the USA National Academy of Engineering, she was the first woman holding a Ph.D. that was appointed as professor in electrical engineering in Canada. She has over 40 years of post-doctoral experience in education, research and leadership. Rabab holds a large number of top awards including the IEEE Fourier Award for Signal Processing. She has supervised around 50 Ph.D. and 50 Master students. Her research contributions are in broad areas of signal processing, including signal detection, image encoding, and restoration, and their applications in cable TV, HDTV, medical imaging, infant cry signals, and brain computer interfaces.
Dr. Ward has published over 600 refereed journal and conference papers, and holds eight patents related to monitoring, measurement, and noise reduction concerning cable television. Some of her work has been licensed to US and Canadian industry. She has served in leadership positions as Director of the (UBC) Institute for Computing, Information and Cognitive Systems (1996-2007) and as the Research Coordinator in UBC VP Research and International Office (2008- 2014). She was the 2016-2017 President of the IEEE Signal Processing Society, and on the IEEE Board of Directors (as Director, Division 1X).