WiTaR: Women in Telecommunications and Research
Wednesday, 4 June 2025, 11:00 – 12:30, room EH.B (level2)
Session Chair:
- Bahare Masood Khorsandi (Nokia, )
- Marie-Helene Hamon (Orange, )
- Irene Alepuz Benaches (iTEAM, )
- Ishita Mishra (Institute PIIU, )
- Pooja Mohnani (EURESCOM, )
- Audrey Bienvenu (EURESCOM, )
- Marja Matinmikko-Blue (University of Oulu, FI)
- Oluwatayo Yetunde Kolawole (Samsung, )
- Didier Bourse (Nokia, FR)
Women in Telecommunications and Research (WiTaR) is a 6G-IA working group founded in 2023 as an EU-level initiative to promote gender equality, inclusion and empowerment in the 6G Research & Innovation (R&I) community. WiTaR initiated from the European 6G flagship project Hexa-X with limited number of participant and expanded to 112 members from more than 22 SNS projects today.
This session will be the fourth edition of WiTaR convened session in EUCNC & 6G summit, aims at communicating the WiTaR initiative up-dates and plans to the European and global 6G R&I community, further raising awareness of gender inclusivity and engaging different stakeholders and EU projects to discuss possible actions to improve gender diversity and inclusivity in the R&I activities especially in the Smart Network and Services (SNS) Joint undertaking (JU).
Programme
The proposed structure is envisioned for the 90 minutes slot:
- Welcome from the WG chair and vice-chair
-> Bahare M. Khorsandi & Marie-Helene Hamon
- WiTaR introduction and update on the recent activities of the working group
(including the current status in SNS and EUCNC conference in aspects of women participation)
-> Bahare M. Khorsandi & Marie-Helene Hamon
- Video(s) from leaders around Europe stating the importance of gender inclusivity, including in deep tech and 6G
->Didier Bourse
- Introduction of this year’s theme “Women visibility/invisibility – Targeted SNS actions”
-> Didier Bourse
- Industry and academia’s view and practice to encourage gender diversity
- Accademia
- Ahmad Nimr (University of Dresden) TBC
- Industry
- Agnieszka Szufarska (Nokia Poland)
- Dinh-Thuy Phan-Huy (Orange)
- Bar camp on “Women visibility/invisibility – Targeted SNS actions”
Goal is to create an open, collaborative environment for sharing ideas, particularly amongst the Tech and the SNS community to promote and empower women researchers.
-> Pooja Mohnani
Groups formation + introduction + group discussion
Presentation of the results from each group
5 min conclusion
- Conclusion and next steps
-> Bahare M. Khorsandi & Marie-Helene Hamon
