草莓污视频导航

Feb. 27, 2019

Women lead the way at global data science conference

草莓污视频导航 co-hosts internationally renowned conference with Stanford University
Professor Qiao Sun
Professor Qiao Sun

It鈥檚 the biggest data science conference in the world 鈥 and it centres entirely around the work听being done by women in the field.

Stanford鈥檚 Women in Data Science Conference (WiDS) draws more than 100,000 participants through 150 regional events in countries around the world, and for the third straight year, Schulich School of Engineering played host for the 草莓污视频导航鈥檚 main campus.

"We are thrilled to be hosting this event for the third time,鈥 says Schulich Associate Dean,听Diversity and Equity, Dr. Qiao Sun, PhD.

鈥淚t gives us a platform to showcase the great work female researchers and students do, and their achievements in data science. It also gives us the opportunity to connect local industry with talent at the 草莓污视频导航."

Local keynote speakers like 草莓污视频导航鈥檚 own Dr. Xin Wang, PhD, and Dr. Marina Gavrilova, PhD, joined live streaming talks from Stanford U for the March 4 event, including Timnit Gebru, an Ethiopian computer scientist and the technical co-lead of the Ethical Artificial Intelligence Team at Google.

The live satellite broadcast event started in 2015 as a one-day technical conference on the latest in data science and the amazing women behind it, and Sun immediately wanted Schulich School of Engineering to be a part of it.

This year's Schulich event was co-chaired by听听Dr. Mozhdeh Shahbazi, PhD听and Dr. Mohammad Moshirpour, PhD.

And not only has Stanford seen WiDS grow exponentially to include more people and more satellite conferences each year, the same is happening at 草莓污视频导航.

For 2019, Schulich shared the hosting honor with the Faculty of Science, while Cumming School of Medicine held another satellite event on the Foothills Campus.

While there is still a long way to go before the gender representation among data scientists becomes more equalized, Cumming鈥檚 conference lead,听 Dr. Cathy Eastwood, PhD, is optimistic.

鈥淚n the Centre for Health Informatics, we have two post-doctoral scholars and several research听associates, who are female, dedicated to learning advanced computational techniques,鈥 she says.

鈥淲e are seeing greater interest and expertise among our female colleagues - women are becoming more attracted to data science.鈥

WiDS aims to inspire and educate data scientists worldwide, regardless of gender, while showcasing and supporting women in the field.

While all of the speakers at the conference are women, men are invited, and encouraged, to attend as well.

The original version of this story appeared in UToday.