Diversity Panel

Sonal Choudhary is a publisher of mathematics, physical and applied sciences journals. She is responsible for Quality and User Experience at Springer Nature. She brings with her immense experience of managing and developing journals.

The journals portfolio being managed by her comprises the journals co-published by Springer Nature of partners none other than the top most societies and institutes. She also manages many other global Springer Nature proprietary journals. Apart from managing journals, ensuring ethical compliance and apprising editors of the latest developments of industry are a few of Sonal’s core responsibilities and interests. 

Driven by her interest in research on diversity, inclusion, and education, Mieke Cannaerts embarked on her PhD journey in March 2022 within the ETHER Research Group. Her academic background in sociology, and gender and diversity studies strengthened the knowledge and passion needed for this interdisciplinary project, which intersects social sciences and engineering technology. The URGENT-project aims to foster inclusion and a sense of belonging among a more diverse group of engineering students. 

Julia Himmelsbach is a scientist at the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology and has a background in communication and media science. She researches in the field of diversity-aware R&D with a special focus on gender, age, and social class. Her research interests include diversity-aware methodology of human-centered design processes, deconstructing notions of user identities in HCI considering intersectional perspectives and critical posthumanist theories, and technological innovations contributing to social equality and inclusion. She gathered experience in European and national projects researching in the field of critical diversity studies in HCI, Active Assisted Living, moral courage and prosocial behavior, and social cohesion.

Peter Schelkens holds a professorship at the Department of Electronics and Informatics (ETRO) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium and is vice-dean of the Faculty of Engineering. He is also affiliated as principal investigator with the Interuniversity Institute for Microelectronics (imec) in Leuven, Belgium. 

The research interests of Peter Schelkens are situated in the field of multidimensional signal processing encompassing the representation, communication, security, rendering and quality assessment of these signals. In 2013 he was awarded an EU ERC Consolidator Grant focusing on digital holography.

Since 2018, he has been rapporteur/chair of the JPEG Coding, Test and Quality Subgroup and he is actively involved in coordinating the JPEG PLENO standardization activity. He is currently also convenor of ISO/IEC JTC1 /SC 29/AG 4 coordinating the collaboration between JPEG and MPEG communities.