IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2022 - 31

the industry network for continued
expansion of WIE programming into
industry, and a collaboration with the
IEEE Foundation's 50th anniversary
in 2023, with the support of Abigail
Teron from WIE.
For Castillo, the future brings a
return to leadership with her beloved
Region 9 as director-elect for 2022-2023
and then director in 2024-2025. As she
shared with the membership when she
was first elected WIE chair, this role
was a dream for her and an important
moment of responsibility as the first
Latina to hold the leadership position.
She encourages others in the membership
to dream big and says they should
" reach for the stars. "
" WIE staff and IEEE in general are
aligned to make sure they are embracing
diversity and inclusion, " she says.
" If you propose an idea with the right
approach, you will get the support that
you are looking for. Allow me then to
specially thank all of the members of
the committee that were not included
in this article, and Charmain Williams
and Georedna Onyesoh, our amazing
staff without whom we could not have
achieved so much in only two years. "
Thanks to Castillo for her support and
leadership these last two years, and we
wish her well in what comes next!
-Leslie Zucker
of IEEE Members and their colleagues,
especially due to the impact of
the COVID-19 pandemic on
women in particular, participants
from all IEEE Societies
and affinity groups
were invited to present
solutions that would
tackle issues in these areas:
smart childcare and education;
elderly communication
and senior safe living; medicine, mental
health aid, and security for women; and
sustainable environment solutions in
rural and urban areas.
Komal Shah
Women, which is a wearable device to
support women experiencing urinary
incontinence, proposed by
Komal Shah and Dr. Manish
Arora. " The problem was
very well described, and the
solution had a great combination
of ingenuity and
feasibility, " says Da Vià of the
winning idea. " We see how
much publicity has been genMembers
from across the globe presented
innovative ideas that truly shed
light on the realities women are facing
around the world. What really stood out
to Chair Cinzia Da Vià is the fact that
many of the projects submitted proposed
solutions for problems being experienced
by that very community. For
example, Da Vià recalls that ideas for
issues related to climate change came
from countries where climate change
is affecting the lives of women more
strongly than others. " I remember an
interesting proposal where water could
be tracked in databases for women
to access, " she shares. " Of course,
because women in certain regions are
still the ones who need to go out and
collect water. "
In the end, the committee received
Celebrating the
Women-to-Women Tech
Ideas Dedicated to
Women Competition
Bridging gaps, changing lives
o
One of the core pillars of this year's 25th
Anniversary Celebrations was the Women-to-Women
(W-to-W) Tech Ideas Dedicated
to Women competition, and the
results were astounding. A new endeavor
intended to celebrate the ingenuity
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MWIE.2022.3203199
Date of current version: 7 November 2022
A prototype wearable and app welcome
screen for winning project Ikshana.
DECEMBER 2022
34 proposals and had the hard job of
selecting a winner and three runner-up
projects to be recognized at this year's
IEEE Women in Engineering International
Leadership Conference (ILC). The
winning idea is named Ikshana: An Integrated
System for Adaptive Stimulation
Treatment of Urinary Incontinence in
erated for solutions which are
simple, such as pads or
underwear. These are
methods to control
but not to solve
the problem. "
According to
Shah, an entrepreneur-in-residence
at
So ciety for Innovation
and DevelopDr.
Manish Arora
ment, Indian Institute of Science (IISc),
and Arora, an assistant professor at the
Center for Product Design and Manufacturing
at IISc, who are in Bangalore,
India, " urinary incontinence affects one
in every three women above the age of 30
around the globe. " Although pelvic floor
muscle exercises are typically the first
line of treatment, these can be difficult for
women to identify and exercise correctly.
The i r recommendation, Ikshana,
originated during a course run by Arora
in late 2019, " with a vision to make it
easy for women to take control of their
pelvic health. " An extensive literature
study and interviews with more than
120 patients and clinicians helped
identify that existing portable devices
for electrical stimulation of the pelvic
floor muscles have not been as
effective as clinic-based treatments
because they lack the ability to adapt
to the changing pelvic floor dynamics
of the user.
Unique Solutions
Shah and Arora's solution uses an
adaptive simulation approach to identify
and respond to the changing pelvic
floor dynamics of the user in real time
and deliver the treatment via a portable
system that can be used by a woman
anytime, anywhere. Currently in a
IEEE WOMEN IN ENGINEERING MAGAZINE
31
IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2022

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