On the 23rd of October 2018, at the wonderful conference center of the Water museum in Marrakech, the WIE Affinity Group of the IEEE Morocco section celebrated alongside the 5th IEEE International Congress on Information Science and Technology (IEEE CiSt’18), the Women In Engineering International Leadership Summit. The event provided national and international networking opportunities to foster communication and collaboration between members of the WIE groups, empower and inspire them.

The IEEE Women in Engineering Leadership Summit was an opportunity to provide a platform for women researchers, professionals, innovators and entrepreneurs working in ICT to learn from each other, share their knowledge and experience and create an inclusive community that commonly innovates to the benefit of the society; as well as promote the sense of collaboration, leadership, innovation and entrepreneurial spirit among attendees. The summit enabled the presentation of more than 8 research papers where first authors are all women, and featured two keynote plenary sessions in the domain of Big Data and Smart Systems.

A panel session under the topic Research,” Innovation and Entrepreneurship: What opportunities & challenges for women in Technology? and What perspectives for tomorrow” took place at the end of the event with speakers from academia/Research and IT industry to discuss the main challenges and benefits related to technological transfer and transformation of research innovation conducted at the university level into entrepreneurial project that benefits our societies.