Women in AI

Description: Between infancy and adulthood, the number of synapses in our brain first multiply and then fall. Despite losing 50% of all synapses between the age of two and ten, the brain continues to function. We’re joined for a second time on our podcast series by the wonderful Sara Hooker from Google Brain who’s talk with us at the Deep Learning Summit in San Francisco focused on ’What does a pruned deep neural network ’forget?” Sara’s main interests gravitate towards interpretability, predictive uncertainty, model compression and security. We also took to Twitter and asked Sara some questions that were asked by her followers - follow her on Twitter @sarahookr to ask her your own burning questions.

As part of our Ethics panel during the San Francisco Deep Learning Summit, we were joined by Irina Raicu. It was a pleasure to speak with Irina about the societal challenges & ethical issues which present themselves online. Irina is the Director of the Internet Ethics Program at the Markkula Centre for Applied Ethics. Formerly an attorney in private practice, her work addresses a wide variety of issues, ranging from online privacy to net neutrality, from data ethics to social media’s impact on friendship and family. She tweets at @IEthics and is the primary contributor to the blog Internet Ethics: Views from Silicon Valley. Interested to hear more content from both Women in AI and also from our technical summit speakers? You can register for our newsletter here.

We were delighted to speak with Dr. Shalini Ghosh with a focus on Multi-Modal Video Content Analysis for Content Recommendation focusing on the problems that this can have, e.g. Visual Dialog, Object Detection, Scene Understanding, Content Recommendation. Dr. Ghosh is a principal scientist and leader of the machine learning research at the visual display intelligence lab of Samsung Research America. She also has a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. Interested to hear more content from both Women in AI and also from our technical summit speakers? You can register for our newsletter here.

Dr Katja Hofmann is a Senior Researcher at the Machine Intelligence and Perception group at Microsoft Research Cambridge. Her research focuses on reinforcement learning with applications in video games, as she believes that games will drive a transformation of how people interact with AI technology. She is the research lead of Project Malmo, which uses the popular game Minecraft as an experimentation platform for developing intelligent technology. Her long-term goal is to develop AI systems that learn to collaborate with people, to empower their users and help solve complex real-world problems. Interested to hear more content from both Women in AI and also from our technical summit speakers? You can register for our newsletter here.

Dominique is a lawyer, with a law Master’s degree of UofMontreal on Regulating Robo-Advisers, published in the Banking and Finance Law Review. She is currently practising law as in-house counsel of National Bank of Canada, where she leads Legal AI initiatives and is currently working on implementing an AI governance framework. Outside her work for the Bank, she is also a collaborator of Fin-ML, where she gives workshops on legal and ethical accountability of AI in finance to graduate students and professionals. She is also one of the co-authors of the Discussion paper Responsible AI : A Global Policy Framework by ITechLaw. Interested in hearing more on financial law and ethical guidelines of using AI in Finance and Insurance? Join the London AI Finance Summit next month! See more here.

Alexia is a research scientist in statistics and artificial intelligence (AI). Her main research interests are Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), deep learning, and large-scale gene-by-environment models. Her academic and professional background is in statistics. She started pursuing the study of AI in 2017 on her own. In 2017, she released the Meow Generator, a model that generates pictures of cats. In 2018, she wrote two sole-author papers on GANs, one of which has become highly influential (See “The relativistic discriminator: a key element missing from standard GAN”). In 2019, she wrote one sole-author papers on GANs, entered the highly competitive Ph.D. program at MILA, and received the Borealis AI Fellowship. Her ultimate goal is to push GANs beyond their current capabilities so that one day we can generate media content (such as movies, music, video games, and comics) through artificial intelligence. Looking for a mentor or someone to mentor in the AI field? The new RE•WORK mentorship scheme aims to bring together those in the field looking for that exact thing. Read more on the initiative here.

Alicia is Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at OffWorld Inc. She brings over 15 years of experience in the aerospace industry developing and successfully launching systems for NASA, NOAA and the Telecommunications industry. In 2015, Alicia made the jump to New Space to work on cutting edge innovation programs. In her tenure at OffWorld, Alicia has led the development of AI based rugged robots that will be deployed in one of the most extreme environments on Earth as a precursor to swarm robotic space operations: deep underground mines. Alicia holds a MSc. and PhD from Stanford University and a BSc. in Theoretical Physics from UAM, Spain.

Franziska Meier is a research scientist at Facebook AI Research. Previously she was a research scientist at the Max-Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and a postdoctoral researcher with Dieter Fox at the University of Washington, Seattle. On this weeks podcast, Franziska discusses her current works, challenges and what she has in store for 2020! Join leading women like Franziska at the Women in AI dinner in San Francisco in just two weeks time. You can read more on this here.

Dawn Song is a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UC Berkeley. Her research interest lies in deep learning, security, and blockchain. She has studied diverse security and privacy issues in computer systems and networks, including areas ranging from software security, networking security, distributed systems security, applied cryptography, blockchain and smart contracts, to the intersection of machine learning and security. Dawn will be joining us again in just over two weeks time at the RE•WORK San Francisco Summit. See more in Dawn's presentation and the summit as a whole here.

Dr Sarah Jarvis is a leading computer engineer and neuroscientist with a career founded on applying intelligent solutions to real-world problems. As Head of Data Science at PROWLER.io in Cambridge, she works with a global team of researchers and engineers in building PROWLER.io’s ground-breaking decision-making platform. We were delighted that Prowler both joined and sponsored our recent Women in AI dinner in London. Interested in attending a Women in AI dinner? See more here.

Lucie Luneau is the AI project manager at Kids Code Jeunesse (KCJ), a Canadian founded not-for-profit organization teaching coding skills to teachers and children. Lucie is also an instrumental part of KCJ's France-Canada team. Lucie holds a Master degree in Neuroscience from the University of Montreal. She nurtures a keen interest in designing exciting and accessible resources to give teachers and kids the skills to thrive in a technology-driven society. See our summit list here. Don't miss our on the next Women in AI Dinners taking place in London and San Francisco next month!

Ashley Edwards is a research scientist at Uber AI Labs and recently obtained her PhD in computer science from Georgia Tech. Her research focuses on deep reinforcement learning, imitation learning, and model-based RL problems, with an emphasis on developing general goal representations that can be used across task environments. On this week's podcast, Ashley discusses her current work, goals for the future and challenges faced! Interested in joining fellow women breaking boundaries in STEM? You can save 25% until Friday 6th December with code CYBER25 on any RE•WORK Summit. See our summit list here - https://www.re-work.co/events

Emma Maconick is a partner in the Intellectual Property Transactions Group. She focuses on intellectual property, data protection, privacy and security issues for major technology clients engaged in data and innovation intensive activities. Emma has extensive experience with the IP, data and IT aspects of transactional matters including mergers & acquisitions, strategic alliances, joint ventures, capital markets transactions and corporate and financial investment. Emma also consults on IP litigation, with a focus on settlement agreements, coexistence agreements, cross-licenses and other arrangements for sharing IP rights in the technology content and telecommunications sectors. Emma frequently speaks and writes on cutting-edge issues in data protection, intellectual property and technology.

Shihui (Sophie) Chen is a Data Scientist at NASDAQ’s Machine Intelligence Lab, a group dedicated to leveraging AI to improve financial markets and solutions. Her previous projects covered alternative data research, risk management, portfolio construction, and optimization. She holds a Masters of Finance degree from MIT. Interested in meeting Women also working in Finance and FinTech? The Women in FinTech summit is coming to London in 2020. Read more on it here - https://www.re-work.co/events/women-in-fintech-london-2020

Viola Cao is a Data Scientist at Zurich North America. Viola joined us at the AI in Finance Summit in New York earlier this year to discuss Deep Learning for Property Visual Features and extraction tools. Viola graduated from NYU Data Science Masters programme with a focus on Machine Learning and Big Data. Having previously worked at Stanford University and the United Nations, we caught up with Viola to discuss her past works, future plans and where it all started. Interested in meeting women at the forefront of industry like Viola? Join us at one of our Women in AI dinners in 2020 in San Francisco, London, Boston and more. See the full list of dinners here - https://www.re-work.co/events