Electrical Engineer Professor from Weizmann Institute of Science, Yonina Eldar is featured in The Silicon Leaders, a reputed global digital business magazine.
Her vision is to propel scientific investigation across cultures and for the benefit of all humanity. What inspires Yonina to spearhead this effort is the need to connect basic research with practical applications in the outside world. Her passion for creating new knowledge and ensuring gender inclusion and equity in science stems from her strong belief that diversity in science is the solution to effecting impactful change. Through mentoring and outreach in the community, Yonina aims to create opportunities that benefit minority communities so their endeavors make the world more innovative, equitable, and inclusive.
She was me drawn to the potential of probability theory being used in a real system that would mimic human capability. This alignment of interests in theoretical elegance and usefulness encouraged me to pursue this field. Her Ph.D. work me with Professor Al Oppenheim at MIT solidified me interests in aligning theoretical effort with practical implementation. Professor Oppenheim’s emphasis on innovation, creative thinking, and implementation had a huge influence on the research and innovation strategy of Yonina. When she completed her Ph.D., she was quite sure that she would do research, development, and work with young potential students. Now, as a mentor, Yonina labors to nurture talent in a variety of areas from signal processing and artificial intelligence to interdisciplinary uses in medical imaging, communications, autonomous driving, and biology.
Along with professional advice, she is most passionately dedicated to mentoring women academics. Having braved countless challenges as a woman researcher herself, Yonina wishes to “create an inclusive environment where women feel supported, empowered, and encouraged to pursue their ambitions confidently.” Mathematics is the bond that unites engineering and science for Yonina. She has been motivated for many years by the promise of signal processing to uncover scientific information, to enable diagnostic and therapeutic innovation. As it is able to break down and make comprehensible complex information, signal processing introduces revolutionary promise into science and engineering. It enables the uncovering of patterns and hidden information previously, and it makes possible medical diagnostic innovations, personalized therapies, and even fundamental scientific advances. Yonina is driven by “a desire to unite these disciplines, applying mathematical precision in order to create technologies that promote human health and well-being.”
