School of Technology and Computing
Invited talks are recurring educational forums where industry pioneers, seasoned engineers, and specialized researchers are brought into the academic environment to share their frontline expertise. These sessions serve as a vital link between classroom theory and professional practice, offering students a window into the current state of the global technology landscape. By rotating speakers from diverse niches ranging from Artificial Intelligence to Cybersecurity the program ensures that students are exposed to the newest tools, methodologies, and ethical challenges that are currently shaping the industry.
Speaker: Winter Wells, Mary Oh & Gabby WarGin
Winter Wells is a Digital Asset Security Analyst at the University of Washington. She develops and implements digital asset management strategies to support her organization’s enterprise initiatives. A graduate from the University of Washington with a bachelor’s in Asian Studies, she later earned her MSCS in Cybersecurity from City University, embracing lifelong learning and continuous improvement.
Mary Oh works as a Cybersecurity Engineer at Spacelabs Healthcare, focusing on risk management for patient monitoring and connectivity systems. She transitioned to this role in December 2023, shortly after receiving her MSCS from City University, having started as a Product and System Specialist in 2021.
Gabby serves as a Help Desk Technician at the Allen Institute. With no prior tech experience, she shifted careers and obtained an MSCY from CityU in 2022. Despite initial job search challenges, a referral helped her secure this role, where she tackles diverse technical issues daily, enhancing her tech skills and her teamwork and communication abilities.
Time: 4:30 – 5:30 PM PT – Thursday, May 23rd, 2024
Speaker: Patrick , Machine Learning Engineer and Scientist @ Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence
Patrick is a machine learning engineer and scientist with a deep passion for leveraging artificial intelligence for social good. He currently leads the environmental AI team at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2). His professional interests extend to enhancing scientific rigor in academia, where he is a strong advocate for the integration of professional software engineering practices to ensure reliability and reproducibility in academic research. Patrick holds a Ph.D. from the Center for Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition at Carnegie Mellon University, where his research focused on neural plasticity and accelerated learning.
Time: 4:00 – 5:30 PM PT – Tuesday, April 23rd, 2024
Speaker: Seyoung Nam , Software Engineer @ Splunk
Seyoung Nam is a Software Engineer at Splunk, focusing on application-layer traffic engineering and management. He helps service teams expose their APIs to the ingress gateway so customers can access the new service. He is also responsible for debugging, fixing, and developing a better solution for application layer traffic issues. Before
this, he worked as a Credit Analyst in an asset management firm for five years and as Chief Strategy Officer in a cryptocurrency exchange for one year.
His talk is mainly about job-seeking strategies as a non-CS major student. He will share what he did the same with CS majors and also what he did differently with them to stand out among my peers. He will also mention the changing job market in the tech industry and suggest a new job-seeking strategy for current students to consider.
Time: 4:30 – 5:30 PM PT – Thursday, February 29th, 2024
Speaker: Joanne Marime , Senior Program Manager | Career & Confidence Coach @ Microsoft
Joanne Marime is a dynamic leader in Cloud Solutions and Customer Experience, bringing a wealth of experience from diverse sectors. Currently, she serves as a Senior Program Manager, CCX, Azure Core, at Microsoft, demonstrating her adaptability and expertise in the tech industry.
Beyond her corporate success, Joanne is an accomplished entrepreneur and Career/Confidence Coach with a global reach. Her coaching services empower ambitious professionals to secure dream jobs, elevate their income, and lead fulfilling lives. In a testament to her thought leadership, Joanne authored the book “Interviewing with Confidence, 6 Steps to Ace that Interview,” published in the fall of 2022.
Click here to view the recorded meeting.
Time: 4:30 – 5:30 PM PT – Thursday, January 18, 2023
Speaker: Masaki Itagaki, Director of Technology @ One Code Club
Masaki Itagaki is the Director of Technology at Kids Code Club (KCC), an NPO in Japan that helps financially and socially underserved kids experience and learn digital creation. He develops web systems for the organization to manage weekly metaverse events. One Code Club is KCC’s US body that researches and develops EdTech solutions.
Before joining KCC, Masaki worked at Microsoft for over 16 years as a program manager and a linguistic engineer. During his time at Microsoft, he managed a large scale of speech data to be used for machine learning and product/service metrics. He also designed data management processes to protect users’ privacy, including GDPR solutions. Masaki managed the process and engineering of building acoustic/language models for speech recognition as well as web-based terminology management system for software localization.
Click here to view the recorded meeting.
Time: 4:30 – 5:30 PM PT, Thursday, Oct 12, 2023
Speaker: Steve Riley,Field CTO@
Netskope
Steve Riley is a Field CTO at Netskope. Having worked at the intersection of cloud and security for pretty much as long as it’s been an actual topic, Steve offers that perspective to field and executive engagements and also supports long-term technology strategy and works with key industry influencers. A widely-renowned expert speaker, author, researcher, and analyst, Steve came to Netskope from Gartner, where for five years he maintained a collection of cloud security research that included the Magic Quadrant for cloud access security brokers and the Market Guide for zero trust network access. Before Gartner, Steve spent four years as Deputy CTO of Riverbed Technology and held various security strategy and technical program management roles at Amazon Web Services and Microsoft. Steve’s interest in security began all the way back in 1995, when he convinced his then-employer that it would be a good idea to install a firewall on their brand new internet connection.
Time: 4:30 – 5:30 PM PST, Thursday, AUG 03, 2023
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Speaker: Apiwat Chuaphan, Software Developer Engineer @ AWS
Apiwat is a developer at AWS with Global Services team where he works on modernizing various software applications for customers and partners across different industries utilizing cloud services to build applications to be architect scalable and highly available that drive feature innovation based upon customer needs.
In this talk, Apiwat will delve into his journey through the AI or I dilemma in software development, sharing how initially the two seemed unlikely companions and ultimately become close friends. It all started after his discovery of the ability to accomplish more with less through his workplace and a book called “The 80/20 Principles” helping him to be more productive and more effective balancing both his professional and personal sphere.
Click here to watch Apiwat’s recorded meeting.
Time: 4:30 – 5:30 PM PT – Thursday, May 2nd, 2024
Speaker: YuChe Liu , Software Engineer @ Google
YuChe Liu is a Google software engineer with several years of experience. He focuses on software architectures and large-scale systems. YuChe has experience in full-stack and Android mobile development for banks, governments, and businesses.
In this talk, he will share his journey to becoming a software engineer. He will discuss the steps he took, from education and foundational skills to practical experience and building his portfolio. We will also explore what’s on the horizon for his learning, diving into the exciting areas that are shaping the future of software engineering, like AI/ML, and cybersecurity. Join this presentation as we explore the path to a rewarding career in software engineering and the ever-evolving landscape of this dynamic field.
Time: 4:30 – 5:30 PM PT – Thursday, April 11th, 2024
Speaker: Douglas Cavit , CISO @ Containn
Doug Cavit has over 20 years of IT security experience. He has been the CIO of McAfee, the chief Security Strategist at Microsoft, and is currently serving as the CISO for start-up company Containn where he is focusing on automating cybersecurity in the cloud.
He has been involved in setting security standards for financial services and utility industries as well as the ISO process for secure software development. Mr. Cavit has helped Global Fortune 1000 organizations and governments around the world with security and is a noted industry leader and speaker. He holds 4 patents in IT infrastructure.
Click here to watch the recorded meeting.
Time: 4:30 – 5:30 PM PT – Thursday, February 8, 2024
Speaker: Nate Stemen, Quantum Software Developer @ Unitary Fund
Nate is a quantum software developer working at Unitary Fund where he helps to create a diverse, and flourishing open-quantum ecosystem. He holds a masters degree from the University of Waterloo where he studied quantum circuit compilation, with an interest in quantum error mitigation. Previously, Nate has worked as a (classical) software developer at Overleaf where he helped make LaTeX more accessible to those with an internet browser. At Unitary Fund, Nate’s work revolves around making Mitiq (python toolkit for quantum error mitigation) more usable, and effective.
Click here to view the recorded meeting.
Time: 4:30 – 5:30 PM PT, Thursday, November 2, 2023
Speaker: Dr. Joon-Ho Choi @ University of Southern California
Dr. Joon-Ho Choi primary research interests are in the areas of bio-sensing controls, human-computer interaction, building systems, including systems integration, advanced control systems, and environmental sustainability; and comprising POE (post-occupancy evaluation), indoor environmental quality and human health and work productivity. He is very interested in interdisciplinary research across architectural, mechanical, computational, and any other engineering, and in design research on building environment and human health & productivity, as well as green building technology applications.
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Time: 4:30 – 5:30 PM PT, Thursday, Aug 24, 2023
Speaker: Ivette Bayo | Information Leader | Privacy Champion | Advocate for Technological Diversity
Ivette is the Secretary and Privacy Champion for the Information Systems Security Association – Puget Sound Chapter (issa-ps.org) and incoming Deputy Director for the WA Chapter of RaicesCyber (raicescyber.org). In both of these Ivette supports outreach and development efforts for growing the community outreach, cybersecurity awareness and education in the Pacific Northwest area and supporting Latinxs in Cybersecurity. She is an Information Scientist and Born Digital Critical Public Scholar focused on the human and physical aspects of Cybersecurity Risk, Privacy for both industry and nonprofits. She was the visionary behind Latina Tech: Starting Where We Are, an integrated collaboration at the University of Washington’s Information School. Ivette is about bridging theory and practice, and her processes center ethics, building trust, safety and integrity across the spectrum of human and technical systems to reduce enterprise risks.
A lifelong learner, Ivette continues to educate themself on the latest threats and to learn from their peers, mentors, colleagues and collaborators. Ivette operates with a servant leader mentality; she serves as a bridge between learning in formal and informal learning environments, two essential elements necessary for leading successful cybersecurity strategies.
Time: 4:30 – 5:30 PM PT, Thursday, July 13, 2023
Click here to join the meeting.