STAI CDT PhD students, Elfia Bezou-Vrakatseli, Chiara Di Bonaventura, Michelle Nwachukwu and Madeleine Waller, led workshops and presented their research at the 11th ACM womEncourage conference in Madrid, Spain.
The conference, focused on fostering connections among women in various STEM fields and supporting their journey in computing, revolved around the theme Responsible Computing for Gender Equality.
This theme emphasised the gender gap in computing and puts the stress on the utilitarian nature of computing, as a tool to augment human capabilities and contribute to the progress of society.
Chiara and Michelle led a workshop on ‘Gender Bias in Knowledge Graphs and Language Models’, which involved a 40-minute presentation followed by a 40-minute group discussion on the latest trends in this field.
The goals of the workshop were to shed light on the gender bias of computing systems that are widely used in many scenarios, like Generative AI and search engines, and to encourage participants to critically think about the sources of this bias, how to measure it, and how to inform users about it.
Building on the success of their workshop at previous a conference, Elfia and Madeleine ran ‘Play and Persuade: Using Computational Argumentation for Responsible AI’. Rooted in the AI domain, this workshop covered computational methods to structure and evaluate arguments across various sectors such as law and healthcare to facilitate explainable, transparent decision-making and responsible AI.
Madeleine was thrilled with the positive feedback from their workshop. She shared, “One attendee expressed interest in diving deeper into argumentation and asked to follow up for additional resources. Another mentioned it was their favourite workshop of the entire conference!”.
The conference also provided an opportunity to present research. Elfia presented her work with the poster ‘Bridging Humans and AI via Analysis of Ethical Debates’. Madeleine presented her poster ‘An Argumentation-based Approach to Bias Detection, Explanation and Mitigation in Decision-making Systems’.
Michelle, Elfia, Madeleine and Chiara shared that they enhanced their professional networks and gained valuable insights from engaging with the womENcourage attendees and presenting at the conference. They also enjoyed the chance the evening of the conference, where a flamenco show took centre stage. For Madeleine, this “vibrant, impressive performance, encapsulated the spirit of Spain, and culturally enriched the evening the event and enhanced the sense of connection among the conference participants”.
Motivated by the impactful stories of women excelling in STEM fields, they viewed their participation in the conference as a crucial step toward increasing female representation in STEM worldwide. They are hopeful that future students will attend and contribute to a future where diversity and inclusion in STEM are more than just ideals but are actualised within the community.