12 April 2019

Women in data science get together in Copenhagen

Diversitet

The conference Women in Data Science (WiDS) is the first of its kind in Denmark. The purpose of the conference is to promote, support and create networks between women in data science.

The three organisers from DIKU: PhD student Ana Valeria Gonzalez, postdoc Maria Jung Barrett and PhD student Mareike Hartmann.
The three organisers from DIKU: PhD student Ana Valeria Gonzalez, postdoc Maria Jung Barrett and PhD student Mareike Hartmann.

Three women researchers from Department of Computer Science, University of Copenhagen (DIKU) are in the organising group of the conference that will take place on 16 April 2019 at IT University of Copenhagen (ITU) where more than 200 women and men will get together for inspiration and networking. The speakers consist of women role models in data science.

DIKU's researchers bring focus to Natural Language Processing

The three women researchers from DIKU, Ana, Maria og Mareike, all represent the Natural Language Processing (NLP) research field, that has grown bigger and bigger at DIKU within the recent years:

- The conference has a wide scope in data science, but it's been great to be a part of the organising group and be able to bring focus to our specific field of research with speakers such as Lucia Specia (professor at Imperial College London in NLP) and Anna Katrine Jørgensen (leader of a language technology project at Google), says Marie Jung Barrett.

- We are happy to contribute to this event that showcases women's contributions to the field and at the same time inspire and create new relations, continues Mareike Hartmann.

Only women speakers

- We have gathered a number of talented women researchers and from industry who will give inspiring academic presentations on data science research and applications in a wide range of domains, and who can be role models for a diverse audience of both women and men. We want to show the public that the data science field is wide and opens up many different career paths, says Associate Professor at ITU Barbara Plank, who together with Associate Professor at ITU Natalie Schluter is in charge of the organising group.

The conference originates from Stanford University and was first held in 2015. Since then, more than 100 conferences of various sizes have been held around the world and now it has come to Denmark.