Global AI and Data Science

Many thanks to the speakers and panelists

In mid-December 2021, 7 women from IBM located in the Greater New York City region decided to sign up as Women in Data Science (WiDS) ambassadors and organize a Women in Data Science regional event. 

After over 4 months of planning and preparation, the WiDS NYC @ IBM 2022 event held on April 29, 2022, featuring 6 technical talks by women at the forefront of data science from industry and academia; including a keynote talk by IBM Fellow Aleksandra (Saska) Mojsilovic on  "Ethics vs. Trust vs. Governance vs. Good: Many facets of Beneficial and Responsible AI"; and a panel discussion on "Data Science Careers in industry and academia".

The topics covered by the speakers ranged from AI governance, Data Science certification to technical implementations of different data science and machine learning use cases. 

The Event Speakers and Panelists included:

• External Guest Speakers:
  Alexandra Chouldechova, Associate Prof. at Carnegie Mellon University & Researcher @ Microsoft Research NYC,
  Leyla Isik, Assistant Professor of Cognitive Science at Johns Hopkins University,
  Silvina Grad, Head of Technical Marketing for Cloud, HPC, and ModelOps at MathWorks,
  Haniyeh Mahmoudian, Global AI Ethicist at Data Robot and Member of National AI Advisory Committee,
  Kara Yang, Data Scientist at AWS and
  Katie Kaplan, Senior Data Scientist
• IBMers:
  IBM Fellow Saska Mojsilovic
  Maureen Norton, Data Scientist Profession Leader
  Samar Deen, Data Scientist and
  Aakanksha Joshi, Senior Data Scientist - Data Science and AI Elite

Many different data science and machine learning use cases were covered by Dr. Isik, Kara Yang and Dr. Kaplan. Dr. Isik demonstrated how ML can be leveraged to perceive others' social interactions, and subsequently develop artificial systems that share this core human ability.  
Kara Yang presented natural science use cases developed on Amazon Sage Maker, that leveraged deep convolutional networks to detect and map solutions based on imagery collected from fixed wing aircraft surveying.
Dr. Kaplan's talk gave an overview of algorithms and methods of causal inference, and provided a practitioner's perspective on applicability of different causal inference methods. There was an added emphasis on the ethical implications of causal inferential methods.

The event was streamed on Watson Media channel and a recap is available -

• https://video.ibm.com/recorded/131702348 

Highlights from the event

• A discussion on Ethics, Responsibility and Trustworthy AI - across Saska and Haniyeh's talks as well as the Q&A session with them
• Samar/Maureen's presentation - and how they emphasized about driving your own career, getting a mentor, getting certified in Data Science
• Spirited panel discussion on Data Science Careers in industry and academia between 4 industry professionals and 2 academics.