Women in Engineering Webinar

Date: Wednesday, February 25, 2026

Time: 9:00 — 10:00 AM EST

Location: Virtual

Join us for a one-hour virtual panel discussion during National Engineers Week, hosted by Sarah Ostadabbas, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and director of the Women in Engineering program at Northeastern.

Building on last year’s successful conversation around career challenges and available resources, this year’s panel expands the discussion to explore the personal and professional journeys of women in engineering across academia, industry, and research. The session will highlight how careers evolve over time, how aspirations shift across stages, and how interdisciplinary experiences shape engineering pathway.

The panel will feature a diverse group of women from multiple engineering disciplines and career stages, including undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, faculty, and industry professionals, bringing a broader range of perspectives and experiences to the conversation. Please see the speaker bios below.

The discussion will center around three guiding questions:

Personal Journey in Engineering: What inspired you to pursue your field within engineering, and what impact do you hope your work will have?
Career Crossroads: Can you share a pivotal moment when you faced an important career decision? How did you navigate that choice, and what resources or support systems were most helpful?
Vision for Growth: How have your goals or definitions of success evolved over time, and how do you envision growth in the next stage of your engineering career?

Registration is required to attend this engaging conversation, which promises to inspire, inform, and connect participants across engineering pathways.

Panelists

SARAH OSTADABBAS is an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northeastern University, Boston, where she has been since 2016. She completed her postdoctoral research at Georgia Tech after earning her PhD from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2014. At NU, she directs the Augmented Cognition Laboratory (ACLab) and the Women in Engineering (WIE) program. Her research merges computer vision with machine learning, focusing on representation learning for visual perception challenges. She has co-authored over 130 peer-reviewed papers and has been recognized by the US government and major corporations for her research contributions.

RACHEL BARUME is a fourth-year undergraduate student pursuing a BS in computer engineering, with a specialization in software engineering. She previously worked as a software engineer co-op at Amazon Robotics, where she gained industry experience in large-scale, real-world systems. She is currently an undergraduate research assistant at Northeastern University’s Robotics and Intelligent Vehicles Research Laboratory (RIVeR Lab), where she collaborates with the research team on the development of an autonomous wheelchair, contributing to custom algorithms and robotics software for assistive mobility.

NAJME EBRAHIMI (Member, IEEE) received the PhD from the University of California, San Diego, in 2017. From 2017 to 2020, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is currently an assistant professor at Northeastern University, Boston, and was previously with the University of Florida. Her research interests include RF, mm-wave, and sub-THz ICs, wireless communications, IoT, and sensing. She is a recipient of the DARPA YFA (2021) and DARPA Director’s Fellowship (2023), and serves on multiple IEEE TPCs, including RFIC, CICC, IMS, MILCOM, BCICTS, and the steering committee of IMS 2026 (RFTT).

NEHA SARDESAI is a principal education application engineer at MathWorks and serves as the dedicated technical resource for universities across New England. She partners with faculty and researchers to understand technical and educational challenges and helps identify how MATLAB and Simulink can support curriculum development, research, and translational projects. Neha regularly demonstrates the value of MathWorks tools to expand their adoption in teaching, academic research, and industry collaboration. She earned her PhD in electrical engineering with a focus on biomedical instrumentation from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 2016 and has been with MathWorks for nine years.

ANA VARGAS NUFIO is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Cardiac Surgery at Boston Children’s Hospital, where she studies how cardiovascular tissues and patch materials behave mechanically, with the goal of supporting 3D modeling and preoperative planning for complex congenital heart disease. She earned her PhD in bioengineering from Northeastern University, where she studied how the thoracic aorta adapts during pregnancy by combining mechanical testing, imaging, and data analysis. Originally from Honduras, she is passionate about women’s health and supporting women in engineering and STEM.

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