Women in RecSys
The “Women in RecSys” tradition started in 2014 to foster diversity among the RecSys community. This year we offer three different ways to come together both as the whole RecSys community to celebrate female RecSys role models and in the form of both physical and virtual networking meetings for women of the community.
Our “Women in RecSys Keynote Series” starts already on September 1st and gives insights into the career paths and the current RecSys challenges of our speakers. We invite everyone to join and enjoy both talks and discussions.
The traditional “Women in RecSys Breakfast” will take place on September 29th for any women attending RecSys physically in Amsterdam. The event provides an opportunity for women to share the challenges and successes of working within our community and to exchange experiences with one another.
Given the current circumstances, we will also organize a virtual “Women in RecSys Breakfast” get-together for all women of the RecSys community one week after its physical counterpart on October 6th.
This year’s events are co-hosted by Julia Neidhardt (TU Wien, Austria), Özlem Özgöbek (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway), and Hanna Hauptmann (Utrecht University, Netherlands). Details on the individual events will be provided shortly.
Women in RecSys Keynote Series
- Who: Everyone is welcome
- What: Talks about RecSys challenges and career paths
- When: Wednesdays of September 5-6 PM CEST
- Where: Zoom. To participate in the Women in RecSys Keynote Series, please write a short email to , and we will send you the link.
Sept 1st: Jennifer Golbeck: Growing Up as a Scholar with Social Media
Jennifer Golbeck is Director of the Social Intelligence Lab and a Professor in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research focuses on artificial intelligence and social media, privacy, and trust on the web. She received an AB in Economics and an SB and SM in Computer Science at the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, College Park.
Sept 8th: Karen Church: What it really takes to drive impact with data science in companies
Karen is a research & data science leader who loves building great teams and using data to uncover insights, drive decision making and inform product innovation. As Head of Research, Analytics & Data Science (RAD) at Intercom, Karen leads a team of researchers and data scientists who help Intercom shape strategy and build products that deliver tangible value to our customers and business. Prior to Intercom, she spent 8 years in industrial research labs mining, understanding and modeling mobile user behaviors. Karen led a team of scientists focused on native & mobile ad analytics at Yahoo Research. She was also a Research Scientist in the scientific team in Telefonica Research exploring the future of mobile experiences. Karen holds a PhD in Computer Science from University College Dublin and a BSc. in Computer Science from ITB. She has published ~50 peer-reviewed research papers in top tier conferences in human computer interaction, mobile computing, information retrieval and recommender systems. Karen is a huge advocate for women in technology and believes in the power of strong female role models. She is founder of HER+Data, a community for women who work with & love data to support each other, share experiences, establish meaningful connections & talk data!
Sept 15th: Michelle Zhou: U(You)Ser-Centered Recommender Systems
Dr. Michelle Zhou is a Co-founder and CEO of Juji, Inc., an Artificial Intelligence (AI) company that powers Cognitive AI Assistants in the form of chatbots. She is an expert in the field of Human-Centered AI, an interdisciplinary area that intersects AI and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Zhou has authored more than 100 scientific publications and 45 patent applications on subjects including conversational AI, personality analytics, and interactive visual analytics of big data. Earlier in her career, she spent 15 years at IBM Research and the IBM Watson Group, where she managed the research and development of Human-Centered AI technologies and solutions, including IBM Watson Personality Insights. Zhou serves as Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems (TiiS) and an Associate Editor of ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology (TIST), and was formerly the Steering Committee Chair for the ACM International Conference Series on Intelligent User Interfaces. She received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Columbia University and is an ACM Distinguished Member.
Sept 22nd: Bracha Shapira: How much information is needed for a good recommendation.
Bracha Shapira is a professor at the Software and Information Systems Engineering Department at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU). She is currently the deputy dean for research at the Faculty of Engineering Sciences at BGU. She established the Information Retrieval Lab there and leads numerous research projects related to personalization, recommender systems, user profiling, privacy, and application of machine learning methods to cyber security. She is also a member of the Telekom Innovation Laboratory at BGU where she serves as a leading PI in various projects. She has published more than 200 papers in major scientific conferences and journals and has several registered patents. Prof. Shapira is also the editor of “Recommender Systems Handbook” (1st edition, Springer, 2011; 2nd edition, 2015). Her lab has been involved in many research projects that attracted a significant amount of funding from industry and government agencies. She serves as a consultant to industry mainly in the fields of data science and recommender systems.
Women in RecSys Breakfast
Physical Breakfast
- Who: Women attending RecSys physically
- What: Networking while enjoying a nice breakfast
- When: 29th of September, 8:30 – 9:30AM CEST
- Where: Keurzaal
Virtual Breakfast
- Who: All RecSys women
- What: Networking on wonder.me
- When: 6th of October, 5-7 PM CEST
- Where: https://www.wonder.me/ link will follow
