PhD students excel at womENcourage in Spain

The conference, focused on fostering connections among women in various STEM fields and supporting their journey in computing, revolved around the theme Responsible Computing for Gender Equality. 

This theme emphasised the gender gap in computing and puts the stress on the utilitarian nature of computing, as a tool to augment human capabilities and contribute to the progress of society. 

King’s was represented by six PhD students, Elfia Bezou-Vrakatseli, Chiara Di Bonaventura, Michelle Nwachukwu, and Madeleine Waller, from the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Safe and Trusted Artificial Intelligence; Carlota Vazquez Gonzale from Human Centred Computing; and Camille Bigot from Cybersecurity.

Day One

Carlota spearheaded “Hands on workshop: exploring HCI and the design thinking process”, shedding light on the aspects of the HCI design cycle. Elfia presented her work in the first poster session of the conference with the poster ‘Bridging Humans and AI via Analysis of Ethical Debates’.

Day Two

Chiara and Michelle led their workshop on “Gender Bias in Knowledge Graphs and Language Models”, which involved a 40-minute presentation followed by a 40-minute group discussion on the latest trends in this field.

The goals of the workshop were to shed light on the gender bias of computing systems that are widely used in many scenarios, like Generative AI and search engines, and to encourage participants to critically think about the sources of this bias, how to measure it, and how to inform users about it.

During the evening, conference participants were treated to a dinner that featured a selection of local flavours, providing a true taste of Spain. Following the meal, a flamenco show took centre stage: a vibrant, impressive performance, which encapsulated the spirit of Spain, culturally enriched the evening the event and enhanced the sense of connection among the conference participants. 

Day Three

Building on the success of their workshop at previous a conference, Elfia and Madeleine ran “Play and Persuade: Using Computational Argumentation for Responsible AI”. Rooted in the AI domain, this workshop covered computational methods to structure and evaluate arguments across various sectors such as law and healthcare to facilitate explainable, transparent decision-making and responsible AI.

Madeleine presented her poster ‘An Argumentation-based Approach to Bias Detection, Explanation and Mitigation in Decision-making Systems’ during the final poster presentation session of the conference. 

All the PhD students enhanced their professional networks and gained valuable insights from engaging with the womENcourage attendees.

They found that leading workshops, presenting their research, and actively participating in discussions with other conference attendees were incredibly beneficial activities.

Motivated by the impactful stories of women excelling in STEM fields, they viewed their participation in the conference as a crucial step toward increasing female representation in STEM worldwide. They are hopeful that future students from King’s will attend and contribute to a future where diversity and inclusion in STEM are more than just ideals but are actualised within the community.