Leading the charge

Data science is transforming many industries, from health care to banking to heavy manufacturing, and women are leading the charge. That was the crux of the Cambridge Women in Data Science Conference, held March 5 as part of a global event launched by Stanford University in 2015 to educate, inspire, and connect women in tech. The local conference, now in its second year, was hosted by the Institute of Applied Computational Science (IACS) at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences; the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society; and Microsoft. Distinguished speakers from academia and industry presented technical talks to more than 240 female technologists, researchers, and students, highlighting research in such areas as deep learning applications in oncology, data science tools for pollution monitoring, and the challenges of preventing bias in algorithms. In addition, local winners of an international datathon/kaggle challenge, held in conjunction with Stanford's global conference were announced, and students presented posters and took advantage of networking and recruiting opportunities.