Women in Data Science @ Penn Conference
2022 Agenda

Wednesday, February 9

12:00 – 12:10 p.m. ET

Welcoming and Introductions

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Erika James 
Dean
The Wharton School

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Mary Purk
Executive Director
Wharton Customer Analytics and Wharton AI for Business

12:10–12:50 p.m. ET

Keynote Address

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Michelle Peluso, W’93
Executive Vice President & Chief Customer Officer, CVS Health, and Co-President of Retail

Digital Transformations – How Emergent Technologies and Global Circumstances Redefine Industries

In her keynote address, Michelle Peluso will discuss her career journey thus far, the experience she has had at the forefront of digital transformations, the ways the pandemic has impacted healthcare, and some career tips she has found valuable along the way.

12:50–1:20 p.m. ET

Industry Speaker

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Ren Zhang, GrW ’00 & ’02
Executive, Director of Data Science
Amazon

The Path to Scale with AI

With a combination of an explosion of data, and technological advancements, AI has transformed our world and the industries. It helps provide relevant customer experiences, enhanced operational efficiencies, prudent risk decisions, proactive fraud detection and optimal price assignments. Despite the benefit of AI, many organizations struggle to get tangible return from AI quickly and to eventually scale.

Ren Zhang, Data Science Director in Amazon, will speak about strategies of how to drive tangible business return and how to scale through AI with industry examples.

1:20–2:00 p.m. ET

Break/Networking Session

Linda-Zhao_circle-150x150

Linda Zhao
Professor of Statistics, Academic Director of the Dual Master’s Degree in Statistics
The Wharton School

How to Become a Successful Data Scientist – with Ren Zhang, Executive, Director of Data Science, Amazon

Amazon’s Ren Zhang, GrW ’00 & ’02, joins Professor Linda Zhao to consider what factors and behaviors lead to success in data science.

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Mary Purk
Executive Director
Wharton Customer Analytics and Wharton AI for Business

Mentorship in Analytics & Data Science Careers

This networking session will focus on sharing advice around finding mentors, successful mentorship practices, and generally supporting other women in the field.

2:05–2:35 p.m. ET

Academic Speaker

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Blanca Himes
Associate Professor, Biostatistics and Epidemiology
Perelman School

Improving the Health of Individuals and Populations with Electronic Health Records

Electronic health records (EHRs) offer convenient and low-cost access to longitudinal data for large numbers of patients, which have made them an invaluable resource for biomedical research. EHRs are limited for the study of conditions in which social and environmental exposures play a prominent role because social, economic, and environmental information is not often captured during patient care. This talk will show how EHR data can be enhanced by linking to it external data on social, economic, and environmental factors, thereby enabling the identification of individual-level health risk factors and the conduct of geospatial analyses to identify areas at peak risk of specific conditions.

2:35–2:55 p.m. ET

Academic Lightning Talks

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Sally Hu
Data Scientist
Microsoft

The Impact of Socioeconomic Status on Career Choice & Advancement

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Isabella Huang
Engineer, Junior
Watchung Hills Regional High School

Carbon, Cancer, and Contamination: The Relationships Between Pollution, Temperature, and Disease

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Sydney Bramen
Senior Class Treasurer, Senior
The Baldwin School, Bryn Mawr

Carbon, Cancer, and Contamination: The Relationships Between Pollution, Temperature, and Disease

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Joanna Liu
Champion Swimmer, Senior
Campolindo High School

Carbon, Cancer, and Contamination: The Relationships Between Pollution, Temperature, and Disease

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Emily Wang
Editor-in-Chief, Maroon Newspaper, Junior
Scarsdale High School

Carbon, Cancer, and Contamination: The Relationships Between Pollution, Temperature, and Disease

2:55 p.m. ET

Closing Remarks

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Linda Zhao
Professor of Statistics, Academic Director of the Dual Master’s Degree in Statistics
The Wharton School

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Thursday, February 10

12:00 p.m.–12:10 p.m. ET

Welcome & Introductions

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Vijay Kumar
Nemirovsky Family Dean
Penn Engineering

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Susan Davidson
Weiss Professor, Computer and Information Science
Penn Engineering

12:10–12:40 p.m. ET

Industry Panel

Sponsored by Wharton Women in Business (WWIB)

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Mary Purk (moderator)
Executive Director
Wharton Customer Analytics and Wharton AI for Business

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Jenny Wolski (panelist)
Vice President of Retail Strategy and Experience
Petco

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Gayatri Narayan (panelist)
Senior Vice President, Digital Products and Services
PepsiCo

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Victoria Lewis-Bogatyrenko, WG’94 (panelist)
Senior Vice President
UnitedHealth Networks

12:40–1:10 p.m. ET

Academic Speaker

Hamsa Bastani

Hamsa Bastani
Assistant Professor, Operations, Information and Decisions
The Wharton School

Efficient and Targeted COVID-19 Border Testing Via Reinforcement Learning

Hear how Hamsa Bastani partnered with the Greek government to utilize data science and machine learning to mitigate the risk of COVID-19 for Greek citizens.

1:10–1:55 p.m. ET

Break/Networking Session

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Susan Davidson
Weiss Professor, Computer and Information Science
Penn Engineering

Skills for Data Scientists

Data Science is an exciting field, so how can you get involved?  What are the skills that you should develop? This networking session will focus on skills for Data Scientists, the MSE Data Science program at Penn, and resources to enable organizations to build their own Data Science educational programs.

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Mary Purk
Executive Director
Wharton Customer Analytics and Wharton AI for Business

Mentorship in Analytics & Data Science Careers

This networking session will focus on sharing advice around finding mentors, successful mentorship practices, and generally supporting other women in the field.

1:55–2:25 p.m. ET

Academic Speaker

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Tal Rabin
Professor Computer and Information Science
Penn Engineering

Sharing Data while Preserving Privacy (and Applications to Cryptocurrency Wallets)

This session highlights how multi-party computation can help us maintain data privacy without sacrificing the optimization that this information often provides.

2:25–2:55 p.m. ET

Academic Lightning Talks

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Gracia Chen
Senior
Miramonte High School

Demographic Effects on Gun Ownership in New York City

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Yulan Wang
Junior
Theodore Roosevelt High School

Demographic Effects on Gun Ownership in New York City

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Sidarth Krishna
Junior
Acton Boxborough High School

Demographic Effects on Gun Ownership in New York City

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Anushka Acharya
Junior
Amity Regional High School

Demographic Effects on Gun Ownership in New York City

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Joy An
Junior
Choate Rosemary Hall

Demographic Effects on Gun Ownership in New York City

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Somang (So) Han
Master’s Student, Data Science
University of Pennsylvania

Multimodal Movie Genre Classification

Academic Lightning Talks feature research from high school and college students.

2:55–3:00 p.m. ET

Closing Remarks

A person with long blonde hair and glasses, wearing a suit and light blue shirt, is smiling while seated in an office setting.

Susan Davidson
Weiss Professor, Computer and Information Science
Penn Engineering

Headshot of a person with short dark hair, wearing a light blue blazer and a light-colored top, smiling against a dark background.

Mary Purk
Executive Director
Wharton Customer Analytics and Wharton AI for Business

Linda-Zhao_circle-150x150

Linda Zhao
Professor of Statistics, Academic Director of the Dual Master’s Degree in Statistics
The Wharton School

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