Ambassadors share event summaries and videos for you to enjoy:
WiDS Armenia
WiDS Armenia was held on May 21st, led by WiDS ambassadors Mariam Torosyan and Izabella Khanzratyan. Armenian and foreign organizations teamed up to highlight outstanding women in data science and raise awareness of data science solutions for sustainable development. The event brought together over 150 participants and took place at the Gyumri Technology Center (GTC) – the home of emerging Armenian talent and regional development.
Focused on two main themes – women in data science and data science in sustainable development, the conference covered a broad range of related topics. The event kicked off with an introduction to data science and carried on with examples of how data science can work as a driving force of empowerment in key industries: agriculture, hospitality, education.
Another important component of the conference was the data visualization workshop designed by youth, during which they partnered with graphic artists. The connection between art and data science was again explored in the Immersive Art Exhibition featuring local and international artists, photographers, graphic designers. According to artist Hrachya Vardanyan, young participants are eager to learn new things. “Our job is to offer a creative environment for expressing and experimenting with ideas,” he noted.
The event was of double significance: serving both as an information platform for the field of data science and a space for women experts to share their stories, the conference created a hub-like environment. These opportunities are imperative prerequisites for thriving and aspiring women specialists in building successful career paths and contributing to the development of one of the most relevant and promising fields – data science.
The conference served as a kick start for the series of events dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the EIF establishment in Armenia.
Hear what participants have to say about the event in this news article and watch the conference video on YouTube.
WiDS Quebec City
Picture
The inaugural WiDS Québec City took place on May 19th. This one-day virtual event was hosted by WiDS ambassadors Hajar Falih and Laurence Birron. The conference started with an opening speech of a canadian politician Ms. Marie-Chantal Chassé followed by an interview with Ms. Narjès Boufaden, CEO and founder of Keatext. She shared her journey on launching and growing an artificial intelligence company operating in text processing.
There were three lightning panel discussions, keynote speakers and two research presentations. The panels highlighted the following topics:
Artificial intelligence between innovation, ethics and inclusion
Opportunities and challenges for the responsible development and use of artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence at the service of industry, research and environmental development
The panelists were women working in different aspects around artificial intelligence–mainly research, ethics and laws–and were eager to participate in this initiative for next year. The event was open to the general public via livestream and was a great opportunity to see women in data science collaborating together, create partnerships and inspire women in the field.
Ambassadors are looking forward to more collaboration for future editions.
Watch the video recording of their event.
WiDS Mumbai & Kerala
Picture
Picture
The annual WiDS Mumbai & Kerala took place on June 25th. The event had 4 technical talks and 1 keynote session. Ambassador Julian Joseph expresses that it was really special hosting this year since each of the speakers were Googlers the event provided them a platform to share about their phenomenal work. It was not only exciting, but inspiring for all attendees.
They had 588+ views for the virtual sessions that were livestreamed to over 360+ subscribers.
Ambassador Julian Joseph says, “having been a part of WiDS for almost 5 years now and getting to work as a data science advocate at Google is a great privilege. Being able to bring senior Googlers as speakers for our WiDS event was a pleasure and a dream come true!”
Watch their event video on YouTube.
WiDS Barcelona and Madrid
Picture
For the second year in a row, WiDS Barcelona and Madrid was hosted by Aula Magna Business School, The events were held in both cities in June. The event in Barcelona was hosted at the Pedralbes Royal Palace; the event in Madrid was in Madrid’s innovation hub, La Nave.
In total, the events gathered over 300 attendees and 80 speakers. Topics included “The bias in medical research studies”, “Smart Cities” and “Challenges of the new era”.
Speakers included women from Microsoft, Salesforce, Apple, Accenture, Roche, SAS, BBVA, NTTData, Sanofi, Novartis, Ricoh, KPMG, Nestlé, Holaluz, IBM, Carrefour, Bayer, P&G, Schneider Electric, Siemens and Organon, amongst others.
Read more about their event in this news article.
WiDS Guanajuato
Picture
On June 20th WiDS Guanajuato was organized by ambassadors Ivete Sanchez Bravo, Leticia Ramirez and Fatima Oliva in a virtual format.
Yasmin Rios began with the talk, “To optimize the public transport system we need data, lots of data”, in which she presented the need in the logistics and execution of public transport in Mexico in comparison with other countries.
Continuing with the program, the conference “Data science for artificial intelligence” was presented by Marcela Quiroz Castellanos, who spoke about the power of metaheuristics to solve industry problems and the ability to explain algorithms and their behavior to design new techniques.
To follow-up the event, Gabriela Pérez Castresana addressed the topic of data science in the health sector with the conference “Data science and public health: A case study of a region of Sanitary and Environmental Emergency (RESA) in Mexico”. She focused on the urgency of developing studies oriented to environmental health, analyzing large amounts of multivariate data to increase the knowledge of socio-environmental problems in order to formulate strategies for the prevention of health risks due to exposure to pollutants.
Africa Sahara Rodriguez Verduzco in her mini-workshop “Prophet, How to use Facebook’s time series”, shared information regarding the use of Facebook’s prophet in comparison with models such as ARIMAX, making space for the explanation of this tool.
At the event’s closing, a networking session was held with the participants who attended the event, with a large participation of more than 100 people talking about new perspectives, collaborations and experiences developing projects.
WiDS São Paulo @ USP
Picture
WiDS São Paulo @ USP was held as a virtual event on July 20th, organized by WiDS ambassadors Beatriz Arioli de Sá Teles, Júlia Harnisch, Renata Sousa and Fábia Bocayuva. The event featured two lectures given by two professors from the University of São Paulo (USP) aimed at Data Science applications in the academic field.
Professor Kelly Braghetto discussed how data science can be applied in solutions for smart cities, thus enabling a better quality of life for people. Professor Nina Hirata explained image analysis using machine learning applications.
In closing, WiDS USP ambassadors Fábia and Júlia mediated a conversation with the teachers answering questions of the audience.
WiDS UAE
Picture
The 4th annual WiDS UAE took place on May 21st hosted by Heriot-Watt University at the campus in Knowledge Park in Dubai. Presentations and panel discussions were livestreamed for the benefit of attendees who could not be there in person. Presentations ranged from university student graduation projects to academics in research to data scientists with roles in government and industry, reflecting an active data science landscape taking shape.
Private WiDS UAE hosted by EY
Picture
The first and very successful private WiDS Conference at EY Dubai was held in June 2022. The event was driven by Dr. Eva-Marie Muller-Stuler, Senior EY Data and Analytics Partner and Natalia Koryakovtseva, Manager in Data and Analytics EY. During the sessions a spectrum of topics were covered from Trusted AI to Future of Data, also including practical AI Use-Cases and their tangible benefits, smarter audits with analytics, intelligent automation and its impact on the workforce, AI impact on future mobility and Humanizing AI.
The event was attended by data science specialists from IBM, Microsoft, Baker Hughes, DP World.
In the end there was a very thought-provoking panel discussion on the future of data, that inspired everyone to come away with new ideas.
The conference was attended by more than 100 people (remotely and onsite) and the overall feedback was great!
WiDS Portugal
Picture
This year’s edition of WiDS Portugal event took place on June 6th. It was held as a virtual event organized by the ambassador Rosalina Babo, along with the collaboration of Luciana Oliveira and Inês Nunes. The event gathered around 60 participants and two key speakers Susana Brás and Catarina Silva.
Susana Brás gave a presentation on the relation between data science and emotions, bringing the conversation around how data science tools and knowledge can assist in mental health. Catarina Silva provided a deeper understanding on how data science techniques and recent innovative applications can present solutions to the current challenges with biodiversity.
The event closed with a debate with all participants. It was a great experience and was interesting to learn the way that data science can assist in so many areas.
WiDS Delhi
Picture
WiDS Delhi was a two-day virtual event held on June 18th and 19th, organized by WiDS ambassador Dipti Kumari. The main goal was to identify the principal development indicators and build a model around identified features to predict the country’s happiness index. It was a very inspirational event with 500+ participants from 20+ states in India and 100+ eminent engineering and management colleges and organizations.
The event incorporated a Data Challenge and tech talks including:
Classification Techniques in Data Science by Pallavi Satsangi (Senior Engagement Manager, Quantiphi)
Conversational AI by Dr. Nidhi Arora (Research Scientist (NLP), Interactions)
Data Science Applications in Healthcare by Dr. Mayuri Mehta (Professor, SCE)
A career in Data Science by Shreya Sharma (Data Scientist, ITC Infotech)
Participants provided a lot of positive feedback. WiDS Delhi thanks their community partners UDBHAV FOUNDATION and Henry Harvin Education for their constant support.
Watch the tech talks and Data Challenge on the WiDS Delhi YouTube channel: Day1 and Day2.
WiDS Delhi looks forward to hosting another regional WiDS event next year!
WiDS Tokyo @ IBM
Picture
The 3rd annual WiDS Tokyo @ IBM took place on June 3rd. This one-day online event was hosted by WiDS Ambassadors Kyoko Nishito, Aya Tokura and Noriko Katoh. There were seven exciting sessions with about 200 event registrants.
The Keynote by Ms. Asako Suminokura, data scientist of the West Japan Railway Company, was about how to proceed with data science activities in one of the big railway companies in Japan. Her findings based on real-life examples were very interesting and informative. The session by Ms. Meguro, who jumped into the world of data science from a nurse, is currently working for a medical data company and is also conducting research in the doctoral program at the graduate school, was about data science and healthcare. The last session by Ms. Yu Ito, data scientist of Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings Corporation was about how machine learning technology is used in manufacturing.
Other sessions included two sessions by IBM data scientists, two tutorial sessions about quantum computers for future data science by IBM research. All sessions were very active by responding to questions from attendees via online.
They also had a networking lunch where speakers were invited to participate as panelists, and WiDS Ambassador Noriko Katoh conducted a relaxed Q&A session. There were lively comments and questions from many attendees.
You can read more event details and watch videos of their talks in this LinkedIn blog post published by Kyoko.
WiDS Cochabamba
Picture
On June 24th in the WiDS Community in Cochabamba, Bolivia, Abigail Geronimo presented the webinar Data Science for Women which was given by Eng. Karem Infantas. She talked about the role of women in the field of data science and its importance.
WiDS Mysuru
Picture
WiDS Mysuru had 13 unique curated talks in data science featuring many exceptional women leaders across multiple companies including Standard Chartered, Intel, Tiger Graph, JP Morgan Chase and Co, IBM, Microsoft, Kyndryll, Great Learning, Jarvislabs.ai, Mphasis and Decision point Analytics.
The conference was held as two virtual events on June 5th and June 25th and had audiences across the globe who benefited immensely from the knowledge imparted through the sessions.
Watch video recordings of the event sessions on YouTube.
WiDS Alexandria
Picture
The first WiDS Alexandria virtual event was organized by WiDS ambassador Ehsan Shams and held on June 2-8. The participants were taken on a virtual tour across three different continents to hear from brilliant female speakers from industry and academia about their work and stories. The content of the event was designed for those looking to learn about data science and its related fields from many different perspectives in an engaging way, get access to thought-provoking technical talks, hands-on workshops, and get new insights. Efforts were made to make the content intelligible to all, appropriate for anyone interested in the subject yet still intellectually challenging in an inviting way.
The audience was diverse with respect to nationality and education. They came from all over the globe; Egypt, Finland, USA, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria, Czech Republic, India, Philippines, and the Netherlands.
Watch videos from the event on YouTube.
WiDS Bangalore @ Intuit
WiDS Bangalore @ Intuit organized by the Intuit AI team and was held on May 12th as a hybrid, invitation-only event featuring keynotes, technical talks and networking opportunities, bringing together women data science researchers and professionals to talk about the latest data science research in a variety of domains and further speak about how cutting-edge companies are leveraging data science for success.
Key highlights and takeaways from the event:
They had a total of 42 attendees in the room. 22 external attendees came from local leading companies and startups such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Walmart, JP Morgan Chase, Kint, Subex, Rakuten, Decision Point Analytics and Wells Fargo
25 attendees joined online
75% of attendees were women
90% of attendees were from a Data Science background while 10% were from Product Management
They had 1 Intuit Speaker and 4 External Speakers from leading companies such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon and HealthifyMe
Watch all the event videos on their YouTube playlist.
WiDS Santiago @ UC
Picture
The 4th annual WiDS Santiago @ UC took place in July. The online event gathered around 140 attendees from different parts of Chile and even some attendees from different parts of the world.
The event began with a talk by Gloria de la Fuente about transparency and personal data protection, including local and international regulations. Next, they continued with a workshop on analyses of genetic data using R. The closing talk was about a public data system for transparency built by the Science and Technology Ministry of Chile.
The audience participated with many questions to the speakers and appreciated the opportunity given by this event.
WiDS Copenhagen
Picture
WiDS Copenhagen was held on 26th April 2022, led by WiDS ambassadors Muniba Talha and Tayyaba Malik. The conference was held at Copenhagen School of Design and Technology (KEA) and brought together more than 120 participants from both industry and academia.
WiDS highlighted outstanding women from Denmark in the field of data science, AI and machine learning. During the sessions a range of topics were covered from Data Driven Decisions to Navigating Career within Data Science, Controlling Bias in AI, AdTech in a more privacy-preserving future, and Data Science in Marketing and many more.
The event turned out to be of great success providing inspiration, networking opportunities and opening doors to many upcoming events and collaborations for working towards involving more women in the field of Data Science, AI and Machine Learning.
To stay updated about our events, articles, news and updates join our communities on LinkedIn and Facebook.
Thank you, WiDS ambassadors!
Thank you to all of the WiDS ambassadors for your dedication and hard work organizing and hosting WiDS regional events, worldwide! You’re making an impact in your cohort, and with your colleagues and community, and are a crucial part of the WiDS Worldwide movement.
Related Articles:
WiDS Regional Event Highlights, February – March 2022
WiDS Regional Event Highlights, April – May 2022
WiDS Regional Event Highlights, May 2022