2022 Overview
The Wharton School and Penn Engineering were proud to host the third annual Women in Data Science (WiDS) @ Penn Conference on February 9-10, 2022. Over the course of two days, attendees tuned in for talks showcasing the latest advances in data science, live speaker Q&A sessions, and networking opportunities.
This year’s theme – This is What a Data Scientist Looks Like – emphasized the diversity of data science, both in subject matter and personnel. A celebrated interdisciplinary event, WiDS @ Penn welcomed academic, industry, and student speakers from across the data science landscape.
Hosted By
WiDS By The Numbers
Related Articles
Career Advice from Women in Data Science
Members of our WiDS Philadelphia @ Penn 2022 Industry Panel and our Keynote Speaker, Michelle Peluso, W’93, offer up their most essential advice for succeeding.
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Tal Rabin on the History and Future of Women in Data Science
Tal Rabin, Rachleff Family Professor in Computer and Information Science, believes that being surrounded and inspired by women as a graduate student in the late 80s ensured her success in the field. When she was completing her graduate studies, the representation of women in those fields was just entering its decades-long decline, but the resources she needed were still plentiful for her.
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Bridging The Big Data Divide
The rise of data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence have created more data jobs than ever before. There’s just one problem: 80% of big data professionals are men. Find out how the third annual Women in Data Science @ Penn Conference is working to bridge the gap.
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Wharton Data Science Academy Alumna Sydney Bramen Is Creating Impact Through Analytics
Wharton Data Science Academy alumna Sydney Bramen hopes to learn more about applying data science to real-world problems, including education inequality. In her junior year, she learned the coding language Swift to create an app to help a struggling student learn fractions.
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Supporting the Next Generation of Women in Data Science
The WiDS @ Penn Committee is dedicated to creating equitable opportunities to educate the next generation of female data scientists and analytics leaders. We are thrilled to announce that this year we raised more than $11,000 to support need-based scholarships for female high school students. These scholarships expose young talent to the field of data science and analytics and enable students, regardless of their background, to participate in the Wharton Data Science Academy.
Keynote Address
Digital Transformations – How Emergent Technologies and Global Circumstances Redefine Industries
In her keynote address, Michelle Peluso, W’93, Executive Vice President, Chief Customer Officer, and Co-President of Retail at CVS Health, offers invaluable career advice and insights into leading companies through digital transformations. She’s joined by Wharton Customer Analytics Executive Director Mary Purk for a live Q&A.
Welcoming Remarks
Day 1 Talks
The Path to Scale with AI
Ren Zhang, Director, Selling Partner, Development Science, at Amazon shares vital advice on how to effectively scale organizations with AI. Ren offers key tips on how to introduce AI practices into businesses slowly and effectively in order to illustrate their value to potentially skeptical stakeholders.
Improving the Health of Individuals and Populations with Electronic Health Records
Blanca Himes, Associate Professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the Perelman School of Medicine, shares how Electronic Health Records (EHRs) can be used in tandem with publicly available social, economic, and environmental factors to better predict health exposures and improve the quality of life for individuals.
Industry Panel
Three industry titans – Victoria Lewis-Bogatyrenko, SVP of UnitedHealth Networks, Gayatri Narayan, SVP of Digital Products and Services at PepsiCo, and Jenny Wolski, VP of Retail Strategy and Omnichannel Experience at Petco – joined Wharton Customer Analytics Executive Director Mary Purk to offer vital career advice for women in data science.
Day 2 Talks
Efficient and Targeted COVID-19 Border Testing Via Reinforcement Learning
Associate Professor of Operations, Information, and Decisions at The Wharton School, Hamsa Bastani, shares the data science approach she took to help the Greek government efficiently target COVID-19 border testing in order to mitigate the risk of exposure from tourists.
Sharing Data while Preserving Privacy (and Applications to Cryptocurrency Wallets)
While multi-party computation has existed for decades, Computer and Information Science Professor and world-renowned cryptologist Tal Rabin illustrates how multi-party computation is still used today, with many applications in the realm of cryptocurrencies.
Academic Lightning Talks
Carbon, Cancer, and Contamination: The Relationships Between Pollution, Temperature, and Disease
Wharton Data Science Academy alumnae and high school students Sydney Bramen, Isabella Huang, Joanna Liu, and Emily Wang present their findings on the correlation between pollution, temperature, and lung cancer rates throughout the United States.
The Impact of Socioeconomic Status on Career Choice & Advancement
Penn Alumna and Microsoft Data Scientist Sally Hu utilizes data analytics to measure the impact that one’s socioeconomic status has on the careers they choose, and their ability to grow in that career.
Demographic Effects on Gun Ownership in New York City
Wharton Data Science Academy alumni and high school students Anushka Acharya, Joy An, Gracia Chen, Sidarth Krishna, and Yulan Wang present their findings on what impact demographic information has on gun ownership in New York City.
Multimodal Movie Genre Classification
University of Pennsylvania master’s student So Han demonstrates how she utilizes data science to facilitate multi-modal genre classifications for movies.
Conference Sponsors
Community Partners
