women blazing the data science trail
Some may say that women are from Venus, but our
Nataša and Maja are from Mercury Processing Services International and they held
a great and interesting presentation on Machine Learning at this year’s Women
in Data Science Croatia conference.
The strong women of tech
Women have always been instrumental in technology development ever since the 18th century. Nicole-Reine Lepaute predicted the Halley's Comet, and Maria Mitchell computed the motion of Venus. Ada Lovelace designed the first algorithm intended to be executed by a computer, and Grace Hopper was the first person to design a compiler for a programming language.
Fast forward to 2019, Katie Bouman recently developed the
algorithm that created the first-ever image of a black hole.
Nowadays, the
growing awareness of closing the gender gap in all the aspects and additionally
the technological one is bringing more women into the field by each day.
The Women
in Tech report: The Facts, the National Center for Women & Information
Technology (NCWIT), states that women’s involvement in information technology
patenting has significantly increased from 1.7%
in 1980 to 7.8% in 2010.
Sources: commons.wikimedia
Source: commons.wikimedia
Source: commons.wikimedia
Source: commons.wikimedia
A little
bit of help came from the Stanford University with their initiative The Women in Data Science (WiDS). It
began with the inaugural WiDS conference in November of 2015. When the initiatiors discovered that 6,000+ people
participated in the conference online, they realized that they had an
opportunity for greater impact, worldwide.
The Global
WiDS conference expanded even more in 2018, with 150+ regional events happening in 50+ countries.
Women in Data Science Croatia
The WiDS initiative found its way to Croatia too in 2018. This year, on the appropriate occasion of the 8th March, a “Women in Data Science” conference was organized in Osijek, which some call the Croatian Silicon Valley.
Supporting
our women, and all women in the field, our Nataša
Benčić, Senior Product Expert, and Maja
Šarić, Product Expert, held a presentation showing their expertise in
Machine Learning, a trendy and interesting topic. Especially within the context
of the payment industry and fraud prevention because in our company we strongly
stand by the fact that each piece of card data and each cardholder must have
ultimate protection.
Source: facebook WiDS Croatia
After using
a statistical model based on a simple machine learning algorithm, our company is
now working on a more sophisticated
machine learning model that will be regularly retrained and maintained
internally - and that was the main focus of their presentation.
Their
experience was quite positive. With around 150
seats filled, they said everyone was all ears during their presentation and people
had many questions related to the topic but also our work.
Where does the inspiration come from
We asked Maja a couple of questions regarding her inspirations and ideas and here is what she had to say:
After your
great presentation at WiDS Croatia, what was the audience reaction?
The audience was, as you can see in the pictures,
mostly female, which shows us the great interest of women in the data science.
After our presentation I had the opportunity to speak with other presenters and some women from the audience, and the reactions were great.
The feedback was that our presentation was very interesting, especially
to ones who work in the financial industry but also to the others who are
interested to see the usage of the Machine Learning model in different fields of
industry.
What
inspired you to get into tech?
The tech industry may be the one of the most
challenging, inspiring and rewarding industries today. I have always been the
type of person who loved a good puzzle and what I like the most is that technology
isn’t only about coming up with new ideas – it also involves figuring out how
to make those ideas work and coming up with solutions.
Being a women in data science yourself here at our company, do you think women are supported in this field in general?
Data science is a technical field where women remain statistically
a minority, but WiDS has showed that woman indeed have a lot to say. By that I
do not mean talking about their home, children and shopping – women bring a lot
to the technology table, just as they always have.
Computing and data science are still man’s playground,
but the growing awareness is slowly bringing more women into the field.
Would you like to see more of such events in Croatia?
Yes! Such events are a great opportunity to bring
together people who share a common discipline or field, and also a great way to
meet new people in your field.
Attendees and visitors are able to get together with
people from a wide range of backgrounds, whom you may not encounter at your
home workplace or institution.
It is a great opportunity to expand your knowledge and
find solutions to problems - to talk to people about what they are working on,
and they may even give you advice on how to enhance your own work.
Also, a very
important reason for attending such events is to present your ideas and work to
others and to get feedback on your work from people who have never seen it
before and may provide new insight.