Invited Technical Speakers
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Confirmed Invited Technical Speakers
Catherine Baudin
Principal Research Analyst, eBay Research Lab
Talk Title: To be determined
Session Time: To be determined
Abstract: In process
Biography: Catherine joined eBay Research Lab in March 2006. Her main research interests are: text mining – particularly knowledge extraction/discovery from text in sources such as blogs and discussion forums, log analysis, vertical search, and user studies to assess the impact of these cool technologies on people’s lives.
At eBay she is involved in: session log analysis to study queries and fuel the design of ecommerce components, the implementation of efficient search metrics for shopping sites, and pattern identification for fraud analysis in collaboration with Trust and Safety.
Prior to joining eBay Catherine was the CTO of Kaidara inc where she designed technologies to analyze and retrieve customer data for the automotive, high tech and pharmaceutical industry. She was a senior computer scientist at PriceWaterhouseCoopers technology center for five years and a principal investigator at NASA Ames Research Center for six. Catherine was the NASA lead for the DEDAL project, an information capture and retrieval tool that could learn from its experience with users – DEDAL’ technology was transferred from the research lab to the Web-Librarian, an early web information sharing tool (developed by EIT). Catherine also conducted user studies at PWC and at NASA where she collaborated with the Stanford Center for Design Research to study the information seeking behavior of engineers engaged in problem solving activities.
She is the author of a number of papers, some book chapters and a patent. She holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Paris VI France.
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Carla Gomes
Associate Professor and Director Institute for Computational Sustainability, Cornell University
Talk Title: To be determined
Session Time: To be determined
Abstract: In process
Biography: Carla Gomes is an associate professor of computer science at Cornell University, with joint appointments in Computer Science, Information Science, and Applied Economics and Management. She obtained a Ph.D. in computer science in the area of artificial intelligence and operations research from the University of Edinburgh. She also holds an M.Sc. in applied mathematics from the University of Lisbon. Her research has covered several areas in artificial intelligence and computer science, including planning and scheduling, integration of constraint reasoning and operations research techniques for solving combinatorial optimization problems, complete randomized search methods, and algorithm portfolios. Gomes’ central research themes are the integration of concepts from mathematical programming, constraint programming, and algorithm theory for large scale combinatorial problems; the study of the impact of structure on problem hardness; and the use of randomization techniques to improve the performance of exact (complete) search methods. Gomes is currently pursuing the new research area of Computational Sustainability. Gomes is the Lead PI of an NSF Expeditions in Computing award on Computational Sustainability and the director of the newly established Institute for Computational Sustainability at Cornell University. Gomes is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.
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Claudia Bauzer Medeiros
Professor, Institute of Computing (IC) – University of Campinas, Brazil
Talk Title: To be determined
Session Time: To be determined
Abstract: In process
Biography: Claudia Bauzer Medeiros, PhD, is a full professor of Computer Science at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil. She has received several awards for research, teaching, and work concerning women and IT – including the 2006 Anita Borg Change Agent Award, and in 2008 Google Brazil’s Women in Technology Award. She is the ACM-W ambassador in Brazil, and was the president of the Brazilian Computer Society for 4 years (2003-2007).
Her research is centered on the design and construction of scientific databases, to help scientists work with large volumes of heterogeneous data. She has led several multi-institutional and multidisciplinary projects in Brazil, with emphasis in the development of tools, techniques and methodologies to support agro-environmental planning and biodiversity studies. She has served in leadership positions for several Brazilian government initiatives on computer science research and education. She holds a Dr. Honoris Causa from University Antenor Orrego, Peru. In 2008, she was awarded the Brazilian Order of Scientific Merit (grade Commander). For details on papers, projects, and students supervised, see www.ic.unicamp.br/~cmbm
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Lucila Ohno-Machado
Professor of Medicine and Chief, Division of Biomedical Informatics, UC San Diego Health Sciences
Talk Title: To be determined
Session Time: To be determined
Abstract: In process
Biography: In process
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Fernanda B. Viegas
Research scientist and computational designer, IBM
Talk Title: To be determined
Session Time: To be determined
Abstract: In process
Biography: Fernanda B. Viégas is a research scientist and computational designer whose work focuses on the social, collaborative, and artistic aspects of information visualization.
Her fascination with the power of visualization to spark conversation led to the creation of Many Eyes with colleague Martin Wattenberg at IBM. The site is an open experiment on collective sensemaking and the impact of data analysis on public debate.
Before joining IBM, Viégas’s research at the MIT Media Lab focused on the visualization of online communities. She is known for her pioneering work on depicting chat histories, email archives, and Wikipedia activity. Viégas’s interest in the stories that people tell about these archives led to a series of visualizations of personal, emotionally-charged data.
Her artistic visualizations have been exhibited in venues such as the New York Museum of Modern Art, the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Viégas holds a Ph.D. and M.S. from the Media Lab at MIT. She is Brazilian and misses the year-round warm weather in Rio de Janeiro where she grew up.
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Jan Moolman
Project Coordinator MDG 3 – Women’s Networking Support Programme, Association for Progressive Communications
Talk Title:TakeBacktheTech: Reclaiming Technology to End Violence Against Women
Session Time: To be determined
Abstract: Women all over the world are discovering the potency of technologies and using them in advancing their rights especially in the campaign to end violence against women. Advocacy to stop violence against women is a powerful force that has freed women from harm and abuse. To this day however, violence continues to be a reality for many women.
This presentation is about how technology is changing the ways women experience and confront violence. To some extent, technologies have aided perpetrators in harassing, exerting control and even inflicting harm through mobile devices, spy software, email tampering, tiny surveillance cameras, GPS technologies, cyber stalking and misogyny in virtual reality environments. On the other hand, the internet has been creatively used by women in poorly resourced countries with limited access to technology. Girls in South Africa are using their cell phones to stop teen pornography. Filipina migrant workers can rely on an SOS SMS Helpline to report abuse while they work overseas. Village women trained in digital storytelling share experiences of healing and survival from the armed conflict in Uganda.
As tech-savvy women, we have a role to play in shaping technologies to keep women safe. Technology practice is as much part of creating technology as is engineering and design. How can we demand more of technology and use it to protect, exercise and advance women’s rights?
Biography: Janine (Jan) is the Editor of the SANGONeT Portal and also manages the Civil Society Information Programme. She is a feminist editor, writer and activist with extensive experience in the South African women’s rights sector. She is a former editor of Agenda, South Africa’s longest surviving feminist journal and former columnist for The Mercury newspaper in KwaZulu Natal and has contributed to a number of publications dealing with women and gender issues. She was formerly the editor and assistant director at Gender Links, an NGO that promotes gender equality in and through the media in southern Africa.
Before joining SANGONeT she worked as the media and information manager at Women’sNet, a southern African organisation which promotes the strategic use of ICTs to help women and marginalised groups to systematise and develop their own knowledge and perspectives and make sure these are adequately reflected on the world wide web, and in media more broadly.
Recently, she has also taken on the role of Project Coordinator for APC’s invovlment in the MDG3 project, a multi-stakeholder project that aims to strengthen women’s strategic use of ICTs to combat violence against women and girls. She is reponsible for implementing research and developing the national strategy for South Africa, as well as providing guidance and supervision to the country coordinators worldwide.