Women in Data Science conference to be held at ILRI’s Nairobi campus on 8 Mar 2019

Women in Data Science conference

International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)

Nairobi, Kenya, 8 Mar 2019

Women in Data Science (WiDS) is an event organized by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the Biosciences eastern and central Africa-ILRI Hub (BecA-ILRI Hub) to coincide with the annual Global Women in Data Science Conference, which is held at Stanford University, in California, and more than 150 other locations worldwide every year on the fourth of March.

The Global WiDS event features talks by women leaders in various fields of data science and broadcasts of the Global WiDS Conference.

WiDS regional events feature outstanding women doing outstanding work.

At ILRI, Sonal Henson, an ILRI bioinformatician and a Global WiDS ambassador, is organizing an all-day WiDS conference at ILRI’s Nairobi campus on 8 Mar 2019 to help celebrate International Women’s Day.

The Global WiDS Conference works to inspire and educate data scientists worldwide, regardless of gender, and to support women in the field. Participants of the conference hear about the latest data research and applications of that research in different domains.

The core objective of the ILRI WiDS conference is to provide a platform for mentoring youth in data science, which can greatly enlarge the classroom knowledge they acquire in institutions of higher learning.

At ILRI’s 8 Mar 2019 meeting, early-career data scientists will be able to interact with experts already impacting the real world using the data that they have generated and analysed.

This is the second year in a row that ILRI is hosting a WiDS meeting. Through it, ILRI hopes to encourage young women to enter one of the fields of data science.

The ILRI meeting will comprise:

• Talks given by invited female speakers from institutes and organizations that are harnessing data for improving livelihoods and/or are building capacity in data science
• Roundtable and panel discussions on the specificities of data science in East Africa, its potential for the transformation of livelihoods and the involvement of women in that field
• Broadcasting of some of the videos from the Global WiDS Conference (see the list here: https://www.widsconference.org/speakers-466253.html)

Topics to be discussed at the ILRI-hosted WiDS meeting include:

• What education opportunities exist in data science in Africa?
• How and to what extent do gender norms affect the under-representation of women in academia in East Africa, particularly in data-oriented tracks?
• How can data science help improve the livelihoods of small-scale farmers and informal sellers of farm products in low- and middle-income countries?
• What are the ethical considerations of collecting data in resource-deprived contexts?

Find more about the Global WiDS Conference here.

Follow the #widsilri hashtag.