Webinar: Women as Ambassadors for a Better Future

By on July 8th, 2026 in Articles, Blog Posts, Human Impacts, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact, Video & Podcasts

IEEE SSIT Sustainability Technical Committee Featured Webinar

Women as Ambassadors for a Better Future

30 June 2026

Here are the key highlights from the workshop celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Diffie-Hellman algorithm and the IEEE Women in Engineering Day:

  • Event Overview: The workshop, titled “Women as Ambassadors for a Better Future,” was organized to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the revolutionary Diffie-Hellman public key exchange algorithm. It focused on how women can help shape a secure, ethical, inclusive, and trustworthy digital future.
  • The Legacy of Diffie-Hellman: Fifty years ago, Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman published their groundbreaking paper, “New Directions in Cryptography,” in the IEEE Transactions. This algorithm became a fundamental building block of modern cybersecurity, enabling secure internet communication and underpinning digital public infrastructure (DPI), online banking, and e-commerce.
  • The Importance of Women’s Representation: Speaker Mei Lin Fung highlighted the necessity of women shaping digital public infrastructure. She gave the example of Wikipedia, where fewer than 10% of editors are women, noting that since AI relies on Wikipedia for answers, the data does not properly reflect the world.
  • The Care and Informal Economies: Fung emphasized that the care economy and informal economy—driven by relationships and love—are currently not tracked by data, meaning AI cannot help improve them. She suggested that women design digital public infrastructure to recognize and support these human values.
  • The Role of Post-Quantum Cryptography: Co-speaker Kudsai Musarandega, a quantum solutions research fellow, discussed the future threat that quantum computing poses to existing key exchange systems. She highlighted the urgent need to actively develop post-quantum cryptography to preserve global digital security.
  • Call for Diffie-Hellman Ambassadors: The speakers launched a global recruitment initiative for three types of DH50 ambassadors to collect local community stories and build a dynamic global repository:
    • History Ambassadors: Investigate how public key cryptography mathematically traveled from the Stanford lab to specific global locations over the last 50 years.
    • Present Ambassadors: Examine how communities currently interface with digital public infrastructure, how it impacts everyday people, and what local challenges exist.
    • Future Ambassadors: Bring in experts to train upcoming professionals and map out a local vision for how digital public infrastructure should evolve securely.
  • Connecting Globally: Fung closed by celebrating the massive global reach of the IEEE across 190 countries, allowing professionals to form a truly connected “global family” to collaboratively shape the future of technology for humanity.