Diversity & InclusionACSOS 2023

The goal of this session is to discuss issues of diversity and inclusion including research, education and technical barriers. Moreover, the session welcomes the ACSOS community to discuss how events and processes are inclusive, welcoming and safe for everyone in the field of information and technology, what best practices are for all activities, including conferences, institutions, and committees. We are hosting two guest speakers and a community discussion during the session.

Speakers

Shingai Manjengwa

Shingai is the Head of AI Education at ChainML, where she works with clients on AI education, adoption, and implementation, from an AI product idea to an affordable and scalable deployment. She’s a seasoned data scientist with a background in retail analytics and experience leading technical education at the Vector Institute for AI. Shingai is also a children’s book author and the founder of Fireside Analytics Inc., an online data science education company with over half a million learners who have taken her courses on platforms like IBM and Coursera. Shingai is an award winning leader in AI and a champion for diversity and inclusion in tech. She sits on the Service Advisory Committee for Employment and Social Development Canada led by the COO of Service Canada, and she is a board member at the Institute on Governance. You can find Shingai on LinkedIn and Twitter: @Tjido.

Dr. Payam Zahadat

Dr. Payam Zahadat is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark. She is a part of Robotics, Evolution and Art Lab with an interdisciplinary approach to explore basic science and engineering scenarios. She researches how complex collective systems function, takes inspiration from natural systems and designs computational methods for distributed artificial systems. Her research includes both theoretical studies and applications in the field of swarm robotics, modular robotics, collective intelligence, self-organizing systems, evolutionary robotics, and bio-inspired computation. She previously worked in the Artificial Life Lab at the University of Graz in Austria, and the Modular Robotics Lab at the University of Southern Denmark. Dr Zahadat earned her PhD degrees in Artificial Intelligence from Shiraz University, Iran.