Silicon Valley Bangladeshi Women in STEM

 

The group's objective is to unite Bangladeshi women currently pursuing STEM careers in Silicon Valley and encourage them to share their knowledge and passion for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.  The group will plan, and host events aimed at networking, offering career guidance, mentoring young adults and working professionals, building lasting professional connections and supporting Bangladeshi STEM women worldwide in their search for STEM jobs.  Through this initiative, STEM professionals who have accumulated a wealth of knowledge and experience will have the opportunity to give back to the Bangladeshi community. 

SVBW STEM is an inclusive group that welcomes all individuals who meet the membership requirements. We believe in creating an inclusive and supportive community where everyone can share their passion for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics and contribute to our Bangladeshi community's growth and development. -Currently working in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics) field in Silicon Valley -BS or higher degree in a STEM discipline from an accredited university -Bangladeshi by origin living in Silicon Valley We would also like to add that STEM women who are or have been in STEM careers in Silicon Valley but have recently been laid off, or on maternity leave, or taking a small break to take care of children, or taking a small break for personal reasons are welcome to become a member. We understand that personal circumstances can affect career paths, and we want to ensure that all women in STEM feel supported and included in our community. *No membershi...

Tahmida Mahmud is the Director of Engineering, AI at Nauto, Inc leading both the Perception & Data Science teams. The teams develop AI-based algorithms related to critical external safety features (ADAS) and driver monitoring system (DMS) for automotive fleets focusing on development, large-scale deployment, and monitoring of machine learning/deep learning solutions to mitigate distracted driving, prevent collisions, model risk, coach drivers, and contribute to the advancement of self-driving technology. She received her Masters and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from University of California, Riverside. Her research focus is computer vision and machine learning and she has several publications in her field. She finished her Bachelors in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET).  She was listed as one of the 30 influential women advancing AI in 2020 by ReWork. Apart from her passion to use technology to have a real i...

Fariba Khan is an engineering manager at Apple. She has been an engineering leader for 10+ years of demonstrated excellence. She drives cloud efficiency and security initiatives at Apple for 5 years GHC Career co-Chair, ex-Google, and VMWare. Fariba is an author of several published papers on DDoS defense and IAM policy In the past, Fariba has worked in Google as Software Engineer. She  wrote the Safe Browsing API client (github.com/google/safebrowsing). Safe Browsing protects more than two billion browsers and devices such as Android, chrome, firefox from phishing and malware. This is what makes Chrome show a big red warning for unsafe sites. She has also contributed to the large-scale system that detects the badness. This means collecting data internally and externally, scoring items for badness, storing the information and monitoring the services -- all through smart design.  She has been a Member of Technical Staff at VMware and Software engieer at Telenav. Fariba has obta...

Fariah Mahzabeen is a Co-Founder and COO at Tackle. She is also an assistant professor at San Jose State University. Previously, she worked at Google as Technical Program Manager and at Verily Life Sciences (Alphabet) as Hardware Engineer. Prior to that she was a lecturer at San Jose State University. Fariah is an entrepreneur and mentor, with a vision to build meaningful products that elevate the human experience! She loves to be at the intersection of tech, people, and creativity. Fariah obtained her Ph.D. and Master’s in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. She is the author of numerous publications and posters. Her most notable publication includes "Multifunctional, integrated, photonic lab-on-a-chip for Astronaut Health Monitoring" in TechBriefs.

Sachi Ahmed is a senior scientist at Merck & Co. working on ADCs and bispecifics. With a background in chemical engineering, she has been a researcher in the field of cancer for 20 years and is a published author in scientific journals, including a publication in Nature magazine on nasal delivery of an IgM drug for SARS-CoV-2 variants . Sachi is also a key inventor on a US patent for glyco-engineered IgMs .  Prior to Merck, she was at IGM biosciences for 7 years where she led the research antibody production team focused on novel approaches in cancer and Covid-19 therapeutics. She has also previously worked for biotechnology companies such as Abbott, Abbvie, and Merck and has expertise in in-vitro glycoengineering and antibody production to support the development of innovative biologics. Sachi was a founder of the PTPS (Peers Teaching Peers Science) program at the FAME Charter School in Fremont, CA, aimed to inspire children to gain confidence and interest in science and engin...

  Tahrina Ahmed is a director at Cadence. She is an experienced computer architect, excellent technical manager with outstanding leadership abilities, able to coordinate and direct all phases of project-based efforts while managing, motivating and leading teams. She provides strategic insight and landing zones for roadmap planning and design wins. She also identifies value propositions for upcoming technologies and opportunities to introduce new cutting-edge projects across different Business Units. In the past, Tahrina was a  Principal CPU Architect and Sr. Engineering Manager at AMD where she led the  cross-geographical CPU performance architecture team towards the vision of achieving best-of-class performance and determining future roadmap. She has also worked for Intel as Software Engineering Manager. She was at Cisco as ASIC design Engineer. Tahrina obtained her PhD and Master's degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. She obtained her Bachelor...

Sarah Rahman is a Director at Silicon Valley Education Foundation (SVEF). Previously, she worked as a Program and Technology Manager at the 49ers STEM Leadership Institute which provides multi-year STEM enrichment, skills training, and leadership development across middle and high school. She also served as a director of STEM Leadership Institute (SLI) Program. Sarah has been in STEM leadership roles since 2016.  Sarah attended the 49ers Foundation Fundraiser Dinner on the field at Levi’s Stadium along with the 49ers players. The fundraiser was organized for donors and members of the local nonprofits involved with the 49ers Foundation.  Sarah was also interviewed and featured in the Silicon Valley Voice for her role as a director of the 49ers STEM Leadership Program, demonstrating her expertise and passion for empowering students for success in STEM education,  https://www.svvoice.com/ .  As a director of SVEF, she was also given a shout out to in the Levis Stad...

Marufa works at Cisco Systems as CX Product Management Finance Manager.  Marufa has been working at Silicon Valley for over 21 years, with extensive knowledge and demonstrated history of working in the computer networking industry. She is skilled in Business Process, Requirements Analysis, Data Analysis, and Cross-functional Team Leadership.  Marufa completed her Bachelors in Science with Computer and Information Systems concentration.  She attended  New York Institute of Technology for her Bachelors degree and graduated with a Magna Cum Laude honor.  Later, Marufa completed Master of Business Administration (MBA) focused in Information Technology  from Golden Gate University.

 Mithila Rahman is an e xperienced accountant with demonstrated history of working in the accounting industry. Skilled in Accounting, Microsoft Office, Auditing, Financial Accounting, and Financial Reporting.  Prior to that she has worked at Vasona Construction as an accountant. She has a Master's degree in Accounting and Information System from Virginia Tech.

Dr. Tomalika Paik is an Anesthesiologist at Case Anesthesia. She has been practicing anesthesiology at Kaiser Permanente Panorama City Medical Center since 2013.  Dr. Paik obtained her Medical Degree from Boston University and completed her residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital. She also holds a BS degree in Molecular Biology from UC Berkeley. In addition to her medical career, Tomalika is also a trained Rabindra Sangeet (Tagore) singer.

Salina Ahmed is a Technical Project Manager at Google Inc. She has been working at Google for nearly a decade as TPM and Business Analyst and currently focuses on implementing end-to-end reporting processes from design and data manipulation, data engineering, dashboards, and ongoing operations to provide fast and effective insights to the executive leadership teams. She also creates data pipelines and executive reports for Firebase, YouTube, Stack Overflow, GitHub, and Google Analytics.  Prior to joining Google, Salina gained experience at high-profile companies such as the Federal Reserve Bank, Thomson Reuters, GE, and Rogers Communications in Canada.  Salina holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of North Texas, where she received multiple awards and scholarships, including being on the President's and Dean's lists. In her free time, Salina enjoys reading and is a talented painter.

Farzana Mistee currently works as Program manager at NVIDIA. She has been in the Technology industry for 15+ years.  Mistee has her Bachelors degree in Economics from University of Massachusettes, Boston.

Rahima Akter is a highly motivated and skilled researcher at Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS), a leading pharmaceutical company in oncology. She has 10+ years of experience in immuno-oncology drug discovery, serving as a biology co-lead of different early-stage drug discovery programs. Prior to BMS, she worked at Stanford University as a life science researcher in basic immunology lab with a group of dedicated scientists in the field of immunology. She did her MSc degree in Experimental Medicine at McGill University, Montreal, Canada.  She is a physician who did her Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) at Chittagong Medical College, Chittagong, Bangladesh.

Farida Islam is a seasoned Product Manager at National Mortgage Insurance Corporation. With over 11 years of experience in Product Management, Project Management, Software Testing, and Quality Assurance, she is well-versed in the Insurance, Financial, Healthcare, and Retail industries. Farida excels in coordinating with cross-functional, geographically dispersed teams and has previously worked at companies such as Kaiser Permanente, FICO, Peet’s Coffee IT, Credit Agricole Indosuez, and Commercial Bank of Ceylon in Dhaka, Bangladesh. She is a member of the Institution of Engineers, Bangladesh. Farida holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Stevens-Henager College in Utah and a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from Rajshahi University of Engineering & Technology (RUET) in Bangladesh, where she also served as the Vice President of Debating Society. In her free time, Farida loves spending time with her family and enjoys outdoor activities, particularly hiking.

Shumona Qaosar is a Senior Digital Product Manager at Wells Fargo. She is involved in Treasure management and her job entails being lead Business Systems Analyst, Project Management, Product Manager, Production support, Requirement Analysis, System Design, Functional System Document (FSD), GUI prototype, SIT/UAT testing, test data conditioning, Project coordination, Change Control, Release Management, SDLC, Mentoring new team members, Interviewing & selecting new team members, Safety & Soundness initiatives.  In the past, she has worked for Chevron as Business Analyst, and Sprint as Software Engineer. Being in a customer centric job, she always started with what the customer needs and then work backwards. She strongly believes in the quote “Always have empathy for your customers.” Shumona obtained her Bachelors degree in Computer Information System from University of Central Missouri, and MBA from Webster University. Shumona is a painter and her painting "Village Girl...

  Sadia is a Senior Engineer at Apple and an experienced automation engineer interested in automating challenging problems. Previously she has worked for Splunk where she was responsible for  automation, developing automation framework libraries, creating ova, ami and packages of Splunk UBA (user behavior analytics) product and feature testing. She has automated the upgrade and Installation process of UBA product on various OS (Rhel, Centos, Ubuntu) platforms in VMware and AWS environment. She has also worked at VMware. Sadia obtained her MS degree in Computer Engineering from Santa Clara University.

Sohani Ahmed is a Director at Morgan Stanley. Previously she was Vice President at Citi Corp. At Morgan Stanley, she is the SEC line owner for secured funding products,  FED/Y9C and SEC/10Q & 10K disclosures reporting. She has p roduced daily and month end Listed Derivatives Margin Actual and Economic P&L, daily and month end Global OTC risk P&L, reported Balance Sheet, P&L variance/commentary and provided sign off on sub-ledger. She has supervised teams in Europe (Glasgow, Scotland) with daily and month end P&L process / issues.  She has also worked at JP Morgan Chase.  Sohani completed her Masters in Finance from Zichlin School of Business, Baruch College, New York. Sohani has been a mentor at Girls.Inc, iMentor, and Columbia University's Double Discovery Center.

  Arifa Reshmin is a senior manager at Pure Storage which designs  next generation Data Storage Solutions with intelligent software that enables companies to maximize the value of their Data.  She is r esponsible for managing company owned inventory with 100% accuracy, initiated and facilitated projects to monetize EOL products and increase revenue. Arifa is the point of contact for WEEE Management.  She d esigned various auto reports, alerts and analytic dashboards across multiple tools to aid cross functional communication and increase efficiency. Always strive to find a way to improve towards the next level. In the past, she has worked for SunPower Corporation managing Operations planning. She has obtained her MBA from San Jose State University and Bachelor of Architectural Design and Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET). 

  Khan A Lopa is currently an IT specialist at Western Digital where she is part of Workspace Services and Technologies. In the past, she has worked at Elfin Research where she led developer of web projects in all stages from planning, design, implementation, testing to staging, production and maintenance. She was a software engineer at CallidusCloud where she d eveloped and customized PHP code base for large SAAS applications for marketing and sales professionals in a cross functional engineering team in an ‘Agile’ environment. Khan A Lopa obtained her Bachelors degree in Architecture from Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology (BUET). She obtained a second Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from San Jose State University. 

Liz Haque is the Director of IT Global Operations at Western Digital, where she leads the IT Procurement team and the Enterprise Application Training team, overseeing a global team based in the U.S., India, Japan, China, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines. With over 15 years of experience in implementing cutting-edge technologies in Cloud Software as a Service, Automation, and Workflow, Liz has transformed business processes for large manufacturing and technology companies. She is a highly collaborative and team-oriented leader, responsible for delivering source-to-pay process and technology transformation and enterprise-wide training for ERP programs.   Prior to her role at Western Digital, Liz worked as a software engineer at Hitachi, where she supported MM and PP modules of SAP and Procure+. She holds a Master's degree in Computer Science from San Jose State University, a Bachelor's degree in Computer and Information Sciences from Strayer and a degree in Computer En...

 Zarin Tasnim Pulam is working as Senior RF Design Engineer in Meta Reality Lab. She is responsible for RF and Microwave Board Level System design which includes technologies like LTE, Wi-Fi, BT/BLE, NFC, GPS, LORA, Zigbee, UWB etc. Prior to working in Meta, she has worked in Amazon Lab 126 and Cisco Systems as RF design Engineer. In her 8 years of career, she has worked as design engineer on products like Cisco Aironet (wireless Access Point), Alexa (Echo Dot, Echo Show, Echo Studio, Echo Glow), hearable and wearable devices (smart watch, Echo frame and Echo Buds), Ring security products, Oculus etc.  Her alma matter is University of Texas at Dallas (Electrical Engineering dept majoring in RF and Microwave). Before coming to US, Zarin did her Bachelor’s from Military Institute of Science and Technology and served as a lecturer in Aeronautical Engineering Dept. She was a faculty advisor in “NASA lunabotics Mining Competition” held in NASA, Orlando, Florida where her team parti...

Sharika Prioty is a Product Manager at Lucid Motors.  In her current role at Lucid, she is a Product Manager and is responsible for products that are used by the global sales organization. More specifically in the recent years she has specialized in the internationalization and localization of systems/software and lead market launches in multiple countries in North America, Europe, and Middle East.  Sharika’s first job was at a law firm, though her role was similar to what she is doing now, she soon realized the structured 9-5 was not for her. Since then she has worked at leading EV technology companies: Tesla and Lucid. Where many struggle to keep up with the workload, chaos and ambiguity that comes with start up culture, Sharika thrived and gained skills essential for success. Both these companies have provided her with tremendous opportunities and potential for growth.  Sharika double majored in University and pursued higher education in both the disciplines (Masters i...

Afroza Ahammed is a Senior Clinical Laboratory Scientist (CLS) at Kaiser Permanente. She has been providing quality patient care, which complies with local, state and federal requirements, for a decade now.  Born in Bangladesh, she resided and grew up in Qatar since three months of age; after finishing High School, she came to the US for higher studies. Afroza graduated from San Jose State University (SJSU) with a Bachelor's in Microbiology, later completed the SJSU Clinical Lab Scientist internship program in affiliation with Santa Clara Valley Medical Center (SCVMC). Upon passing the CLS (ASCP-BOC) exam, she joined Kaiser Permanente clinical laboratory as a generalist in 2008. She had already completed most of the MA course works in Molecular and Microbial Biology at SJSU before joining the CLS program. The MA degree was conferred in 2010. Kaiser Permanente recognized her outstanding qualification and efforts in 2015 and she was promoted to a Senior CLS II classification. Recentl...

Shamema Nasrin is a research scientist at Gilead Sciences who specializes in designing, executing, and interpreting in-vivo and in-vitro systems to predict the pharmacokinetics, disposition, and metabolism of small molecules. She has over six publications and has received multiple awards for her leadership and research presentations.  Before her current role, she worked in the pharmaceutical industry for five years in global regulatory compliance analytical method development, which has given her a solid foundation in regulatory compliance and honed her analytical method development skills. She holds a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences & Molecular Medicine from Washington State University and a Bachelor of Pharmacy degree from Khulna University in Bangladesh. 

Fahima Amin Bhuyan has worked as an Adjunct faculty member at Diablo Valley College. Fahima Amin Bhuyan completed her PhD in Computer Science and Engineering from Wayne State University. Her research focus was on scalable and secure provenance querying for scientific workflows. During her time at Wayne State University, Fahima promoted engineering excellence and innovative ideas and was part of a team that was selected as one of the top 10 finalists in Microsoft Imagine Cup for 2 consecutive years. Her project was even featured in the university and broadcasted in a local TV channel (please view the forecast:  WSU Dream Team ), highlighting her success and recognition for her outstanding work. Fahima Amin Bhuyan worked as a teaching assistant during her graduate studies. Fahima Amin Bhuyan has been recognized for her teaching both as a faculty member in Diablo Valley College and in Bangladesh. She is an active member of the community and volunteers with several organizations.

Anika currently works as an M&A Strategist at Intuitive Surgical Inc, where she is focused on developing a go-to-market strategy for an AI tool used in non-invasive robotic surgery. She has been working in the healthtech industry for the last 8 years, practicing her background in engineering in the world of business mergers and acquisitions.  Anika earned her MS in EE from Santa Clara University, and her MBA from the University of California Los Angeles. She holds a BS in EE from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET). In her free time, she illustrates children's books to provide resources for bilingual children to learn Bengali alongside English. Additionally, she is actively involved in volunteering for her company's Women Leadership Network and Pan Asian Employees resource group.

Kaneez Tumpa is a Transportation Electrical Engineer at Caltrans in California District 4. She is part of the design team responsible for developing electrical design plans for highway lighting, electrical, and power systems. Prior to joining Caltrans, Kaneez worked in the semiconductor field for over 15 years as a DFT (Design for Test) Engineer at Rambus and Cadence, where she supported testing, silicon bring ups, and chip debugging for various memory interfaces and emulation platforms. Kaneez holds an MSc degree from San Jose State University and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET). In her free time, Kaneez enjoys traveling, cooking, and reading books on technology and leadership. She also volunteers for various community service projects and organizations.

Mehnaz Rahman is a Research Scientist at Intel Lab in Santa Clara, specializing in Wifi, LTE, 5G, 6G, MIMO, and other pioneering wireless technology. She has been working at Intel Lab since 2016 and has filed over 30 US patents and other publications. She is also an author of a book on 5G communication published by Springer, which has been distributed to libraries of all the reputed universities of the world. Mehnaz completed her Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. She completed her journey in less than 3.5 years with a published book and patent on her own, along with numerous journals and conference papers. Mehnaz completed her undergraduate program in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) in Dhaka. Mehnaz has given multiple guest appearances and talks on 5G wireless communication at the global level. Apart from her academic achievements, Mehnaz is an active member of Sh...