News

News

Appointment of Prof. Nadia Ghazzali as new President of the UQTR

INWES is pleased to announce that Prof. Nadia Ghazzali has been appointed, on January 19th 2012, as the new President of the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (University of Quebec in Trois-Rivières), by the Council of Ministers of Quebec, Canada. She has taken office on February 1st 2012, for a mandate of five years.

Dr. Nadia Ghazzali is a Full Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Université Laval in Quebec City (Canada). Her research program deals with discriminant analysis, classification methods and artificial neural networks for modelling and characterizing large databases derived from the fields of Signal processing, Medical Imaging, Pattern Recognition, Astrophysics and Biostatistics. She is also very engaged with women in STEM as the NSERC-Industrial Alliance Chair for women in Science and Engineering in Quebec. She was the Secretary General of the International Network of Women Engineers and Scientists (INWES) from 2008 to 2011. Therefore, she is member of associations of women scientists and engineers, in Africa and in Canada. She is trying to set up, with the help of women engineers and scientists, an Arabic Network. During her career in the academia, Dr. Ghazzali received many research grants from federal and provincial agencies. She published many peer-reviewed papers and supervised more than thirty Master and PhD students. Dr. Ghazzali has held a variety of administrative offices at Université Laval, including Director of the Undergraduate Program in Statistics, Vice-Dean for Research and Development in the Faculty of Science and Engineering, and Associate Vice-President for Research. She also has been involved in many events as both invited speaker and organiser. More particularly, she was co-organiser for the International Symposium of Casablanca, held in at the Hassan II University of Morocco (2003), and of the First International Symposium of Applied Statistics for Development in Africa, held in Benin (2007). Finally, Dr. Ghazzali is a member of the Hassan II Academy of Science and Technology of Morocco and a member of the Expert Panel on Women in University Research Council of Canadian Academies. She has the INWES Distinguished Service Award (2011). She is the recipient of the Highest Distinction, Advancement of Women (2008) from YWCA-Quebec and of the Arabic Women of Quebec Trophy in teaching and research (2007).

The 16th International Conference of Women Engineers and Scientists - 2014

ICWES16 will be hosted in 2014, in Los Angeles, USA. For this 50th anniversary of the ICWES Conferences - the first conference was held in 1964, in New York, USA, under the theme "Focus for the Future. Developing Engineering and Scientific Talent"-, the 16th ICWES Conference will be held jointly with the Annual Conference of Women Engineers and jointly hosted by INWES and the Society of Women Engineers.

INWES – In official partnership with UNESCO

INWES is now an official NGO partner of the operational type with UNESCO. INWES has now been officially admitted into operational relations with UNESCO by Mr. Koïchiro Matsuura, Director-General of the UNESCO on December 2007, and it has been officialised at the 179th session of the Executive Board of the UNESCO, in April 2008. This will create more linkages between INWES and UNESCO.

Creation of the INWES Education and Research Institute

Monique Frize, Claire Deschenes and Gail Mattson founded this organisation and INWES’ lawyer applied to Industry Canada to have this incorporated as a non-profit corporation. Following the incorporation, the lawyer applied for charity status in Canada. If this is successful, then INWES can apply in the USA for 501c(3) status. Projects to be run by the Institute will be of charitable nature such as scholarships, essay contest for high school students; collection of best practices for outreach to under-represented groups to consider education programs in science and engineering; and the development of a gender resource tool.