Reflections on the 2021 IEEE WISC Scholarship Awards

The IEEE International Symposium on Women in Services Computing (WISC) was launched in 2020. It is sponsored jointly by IEEE World Congress on Services (SERVICES), IEEE Technical Committee on Services Computing (TCSVC), and CCF (China Computer Federation) Technical Committee on Service Computing (TCSC).

In 2021, with the goal of providing material support to students, the WISC Committee worked with the sponsoring organizations to offer scholarships to deserving students. This criteria for the scholarships included not only technical excellence, but also contributions to the local community, teaching, contributions to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and volunteering to help those less fortunate. Details are provided at: https://conferences.computer.org/services/2021/symposia/wisc_symposium.html

We received 50+ applicants from all over the world. It was difficult to decide on 12 winners from those competitive applicants. The applicants spoke eloquently in their essays, and during the presentation ceremony, about their passion to contribute to the world with their careers and have a lasting impact in science and technology.

The IEEE WISC Premier Scholarship was awarded to 3 students (1 award per geographic region), each of them with a USD 500.00 cash prize:

• Amani Abusafia who is pursuing her PhD at the University of Sydney
• Marah Talal Alhalabi who is pursuing her M.Sc degree in Electrical and Computer engineering at the Abu Dhabi university.
• Hadjer Benmeziane who is pursuing her PhD degree in Computer Science at the Polytechnic University of Hauts-de-France, LAMIH/CNRS, Valenciennes, France.

Each of the winners spoke of their technical pursuits, acknowledging professors, mentors and family who were with them always on their journey to technical excellence. It was very rewarding to the WISC scholarship committee to listen to each winner express her great thanks and honor for the award.

9 additional IEEE WISC Scholarships were awarded, each of them with a USD 300.00 cash prize:

• Balsam Alkouz, Fariha Tasmin Jaigirdar, Aishwariya Chakraborty and Urjoshi Sinha were the selected PhD students, who are focused on compelling research topics in security, automated software testing and data mining. They spoke about their work at the awards ceremony, acknowledging their supporters, families and professors, who had been guiding them along their way.
• Our Masters awardee, Maha Yaghi talked about her interest in Mobile applications and embedded design and the various competitions where her work was showcased.
• Our undergraduate awardees, Vaidehi Thakre, Snehal Khandve, Krisha Bhambani, Poorva Bedmutha also generously thanked all of their supporters, as they began their pursuit of technical careers.

All our attendees emphasized the support they received from the their various institutions, family and the community, including IEEE WISC and the WISC Scholarship judges.

The IEEE WISC Scholarship event was extremely successful, and brought many smiles and some tears of joy to both the recipients and the symposium attendees. It will be an annual event affiliated with IEEE World Congress on Services (SERVICES).