The WiDS Trinidad & Tobago is hosting virtual workshops and regional events in support of the international WiDS Datathon Challenge 2023. The main goals are:

• to provide data science enthusiasts with the necessary knowledge, resources and tools to assist in the international WiDS Datathon challenge and beyond

• to promote awareness about data science experiences from the female perspective, featuring women in data science-related fields in academia and industry

Title: Data Science Overview & the WiDS 2023 Datathon Challenge

Data science: A beginner's guide - Dr. Letetia Addison

Overview of the WiDS 2023 Datathon challenge and data set- Ms. Usha Rengaraju

Title: Data Science Methods at a glance

Gentle introduction to Pandas - Ms. Fazeeia Mindy Mohammed

Data science prediction methods - Ms. Alleanna Clark

Title: Finished training your ML Model: What Next?

Insights and challenges when ML Models are deployed in the real world - Ms. Sarah Ostermeier

Title: AI Applications in Agriculture in the Caribbean

The FAAIR project aims to demonstrate modern Caribbean farm resilience and adaptability by incorporating AI technology. This spotlight talk investigates the processes, applications and challenges of the FAAIR project related to Climate change and its overall effect on small farming within the Caribbean

Speaker: Ms. Fazeeia Mindy Mohammed

Title: Women In Data Science: Stories from the fields

Attitudes and perceptions about data science from the female perspective

This Fireside Chat features women in data science-related fields in academia and industry from around the globe to promote awareness about data science experiences from the female perspective.

Combined Speaker list for Workshops and Talks

Ms. USHA RENGARAJU

HEAD dATA SCIENTIST,

eXA PROTOCOL,

aUSTRALIA

Ms. SARAH OSTERMEIER,

FIELD DATA SCIENTIST AT ARTHUR,

usa

Ms. sOKHAR sAMB,

ml/nlp rESEARCHER, SENEGAL

DR. LETETIA ADDISON,

WIDS TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO AMBASSADOR,

PROJECT OFFICER, THE uWI

Ms. alleanna clark

dATA SCIENTIST,

MUSOra media INC.,

usa

MS. SABEEHA MOHAMMED,

DatA SCIENTIST

trinidad and Tobago

Usha currently heads the data science research at Exa Protocol, and she is the World’s first women triple Kaggle Grandmaster. She specializes in Deep Learning and Probabilistic Graphical Models and was one of the TigerGraph “ Graph for all - Million Dollar Challenge” judges in 2022 and also the judge for oneAPI Hackathon 2022 organized by Intel Software .

Usha ranked as one of the top ten Data Scientists in India for the year 2020 by Analytics India Magazine, as one of the top ten women data scientists by Analytics Insight magazine for 2021, and as one of the top 150 AI Leaders and Influencers by 3AI magazine. She organized NeuroAI, which is India’s first-ever research symposium on the interface of Neuroscience and Data Science. She also organized the Neurodiversity India Summit, which is India’s first-ever conference in Neurodiversity.

Usha is one of the winners of “ML in Action” competition organized by the ML Developer programs team at Google, and her team won first place in the WiDS 2022 datathon organized by Stanford University . Recipient of Kaggle ML research spotlight prize .

Check out her YouTube channel by clicking the icon below.

Fazeeia Mohammed is dual degree holder in Environmental and Natural Resource Management and Computer Science with a minor in Biology. She is currently a research scientist at TTLAB and a data analyst at the Digicel Group in Trinidad and Tobago. She has special research interests in the areas of Biology, Environmental and Machine Learning. As technical lead for the Farming Adaptation and Artificial Intelligence for Resilience research project, funded by National Geographic and Microsoft she was able to intersect these two areas of study to produce tools to add insights into agriculture. She invests her time and energies into innovating ways to streamline different data pipelines from collection to actionable insights through the use of tools like Python, Power BI, Microsoft Azure and MyOracleSQL. She has a range of projects under her domain that include broad topics such as, chat-bot development, natural language processing, computer vision, forecasting, KPI evaluation, customer segmentation and deep learning.

Shannon-Rae is a self-taught aspiring data scientist and M.Sc. Renewable Energy Engineering student at the University of Trinidad and Tobago. She has also obtained a B.Sc. in Chemical and Process Engineering from the University of the West Indies. Her research is focused on increasing levels of energy efficiency and sustainable energy locally using photovoltaic energy. Her M.Sc. capstone project seeks to highlight Machine Learning applications to the Renewable Energy sector. She is currently a Data Science Intern at CIBC First Caribbean International Bank and an active member of the TTLAB organization.

Mercedes is a current student in the MSc. Data Science programme at the UWI St. Augustine. She also holds a BSc. in Economics and Psychology from the University of South Florida and an MSc. in Psychology from Maastricht University in the Netherlands. She has conducted research in the areas of executive function and self-control, refugee integration, child maltreatment, and education. Currently, she works as an Educational Research Officer at the Ministry of Education where she analyzes student performance data and conducts research to identify factors contributing to student success. Her research interests include the application of machine learning models to predict student success and the application of data science to social development in general.

Shankar Ramharack is a final year Electrical and Computer Engineering student at the University of the West Indies (UWI) currently specializing in Energy Systems. Some of his student projects include using Bi-Directional Neural ODEs in load forecasting, using changepoint detection for cable fault location and assisting in developing a framework for Data-Logging in Battery Electric Vehicles. He has collaborated on developing A Probabilistic Model using Monte Carlo Simulations for Electric Vehicle Charging in a Distribution Network. His interests lie in data driven engineering and using statistical analysis to develop more robust and efficient energy systems.

Jaimie is an alumnus of Sorbonne University in Paris with a BSc Physics and a graduate of the UWI with a MSc Biomedical Physics. Her research falls within Crystallography and Computational Materials Science, where she has applied Machine Learning to X-ray diffraction data for crystalline phase identification and quantitative Materials characterization. She considers herself a general Physics enthusiast, but is especially interested in Quantum Computing for Optimization and Machine Learning problems in Materials modelling. She has participated in international IBM Quantum coding schools and challenges covering Quantum Machine Learning and Quantum Optimization and is now an IBM Certified Developer in Quantum Computation using Qiskit.

Aadidev is a current M.Sc. Data Science Student at the UWI St Augustine after graduating from the BSc Electrical and Computer Engineering with a specialty in Computer Systems. His current pursuits lie in machine learning, specifically optimizing classic methods for few-shot image/video processing and natural language processing. His side-hobbies include Indian classical music and photography. He has worked both in the aviation industry (Augmented Reality application development) and the public sector (process optimization), and is currently an Associate Professional in the Department of Engineering at UWI St Augustine.

Riana Kandhai recently graduated from The University of the West Indies (UWI) with a BSc in Mechanical Engineering (First Class Honours) and is currently pursuing her MPhil Mechanical Engineering. She works at the UWI, as a Teaching Assistant, in the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and as a Lecturer at the School of Business and Computer Science Global Learning Institute (SBCS GLI) Limited. She is also a Volunteer and Team Lead for the MindWise Project. Her interests are in Women and Gender, Mental Health and Climate Activism.

Nicholas Smith is a final-year student at the University of the West Indies, where he is pursuing the B.Sc. Computer Science (Special). In addition to tertiary courses, he has done his own independent study in AI. As a result, he applied to two udacity challenge courses in the field of machine learning and was selected to take part in a Nanodegree programme in Artificial Intelligence with Python using neural networks to create an image classifier as the final project. He enjoys looking for online courses that would offer a basic understanding of various technologies. He would create side projects to put his abilities and knowledge to the test after finishing these online courses. He participated in a Youth Speak Up initiative as a volunteer mentor. As a former club executive for the Computing Society at the University of the West Indies, he gave a presentation on the advantages of Git and Github. He is always seeking new ways to develop his abilities.

Contact

Here's how to reach us.

Email Address

widsttgroup@gmail.com