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Information about People and Culture activities and resources in the School of Informatics
We had our first P&C meeting of the new academic year on the 1st of October. Based on the feedback received from our Athena Swan Culture Survey, it was clear that there is a need of an events calendar to show various social events.
The School is working on alternative options to have a more central event management system. However, for this academic year, we will keep updating a shared calendar that you could simply subscribe by your favorite email client. It is important that you subscribe to this calendar online (don’t import since this would not be the most up-to-date version!). I will describe the steps below to subscribe to this calendar on Office 365 (Web client of Outlook).
Alternative way to access the Web view: Click on the “Upcoming Events” button on the right pane, this will redirect you to the same webpage as given above.
Copy the .ics link, and paste it in the space provided.
Provide a name for this calendar (such as ‘P&C Events’), pick your favorite color and charm, and click on ‘Import’.
‘P&C Events’ should be added to the ‘Other calendars’ section on the left pane.
Make sure that the calendar is selected so that you could see the entries from this calendar on your Calendar view.
Check if the setup is correct
If you did these steps correctly, you should be able to see P&C Events that we will add to this shared calendar. If you did the setup correctly, you should see an ‘example P&C event’ on the 24th of October, 11am-noon.
I would like to take this opportunity to advertise the fantastic ED&I reading group that regularly meets in the Informatics Forum.
This reading group usually discusses a research paper on a topic related to equality, diversity and inclusion. Everyone in Informatics – and beyond – is invited to attend. To give you an idea of the sort of research the reading group discusses, the first paper was “Everyone has an accent” by Nina Markl and Catherine Lai. The first author joined us to present key points of her work and we discussed it directly with her. The paper was published at Interspeech 2023, and it points at a gap between how accents and accented speech are thought of in the linguistics literature and how speech technology research talks about them.
In everyday language, we might say that someone ‘has an accent’, which makes it sound like some people don’t have an accent. The speech technology literature seems to have embraced this idea. For example, there are studies that try to detect from a voice recording how “accented” someone’s speech is, and try to measure it on a scale. There have been suggestions that this technology could be used to decide whether a customer service employee is right for the job or whether they might require additional training. The linguistics literature, however, is clear: Everyone – from someone who has just started to learn English to the King – has an accent. The difference is that they have different accents, so they pronounce things differently.
Why does this distinction matter? One reason it matters is that perceptions of accents depend on the listener: an American may find that a Hollywood actor “doesn’t have much of an accent” but of course a Scottish person would disagree if the actor sounds American. Therefore it does not make much sense to say that one person has more of an accent than someone else, objectively. Where things do start to have an impact is when you are having difficulty understanding someone’s speech. Therefore, a more useful concept than accentedness is intelligibility. That is still not something we can measure in a single number (intelligible to whom?) but we can measure whether someone’s speech is intelligible to a specific group of people or to a specific voice recognition system.
To me, this research shows what happens when we take everyday notions and shorthands, like “having an accent” and incorporate them into our research without reflecting on the hidden biases that they are based on. In this case, could stereotypes about English learners and about class be playing a role when researchers equate the poorly defined idea of “accentedness” and intelligibility? It’s perfectly possible for someone to be easy to understand while they also have an accent that clearly shows where they grew up. Decisions about who gets a job or not, or who receives additional training, should not be based on research that uses flawed, outdated concepts.
For me, the goal of discussing such issues in a group isn’t to point fingers, it’s to critically reflect on our own stereotypes, and how they may be influencing our research, so that we can become better researchers.
The ED&I reading group usually meets once a month on a Tuesday at 1pm, in G.03. There is a mailing list (inf-edi-reading-group@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk), please find sign-up instructions here. For those who come, there’s pizza!
Research in AI is an increasingly exciting and fast-paced environment, with many new interesting features and applications available at a wider scale. However, it is also the topic of heavy criticism for often failing to represent and serve minority groups, which have historically been underrepresented in conversations about technology. Being PhD students in the CDT in NLP, we think it is extremely important to keep up with issues regarding equality, diversity and inclusion (ED&I), both to improve our own work but also to be critical about new advancements in the field.
Because of that, we are currently hosting a reading group in ED&I once a month, open to all postgraduate students and staff from the School of Informatics.
Anyone involved can choose a paper which they think is of interest, no matter whether it is their own work or not. Although attendees are encouraged to read the paper beforehand, this is not a requirement as we start with a ~15 min presentation. Afterwards, an informal group discussion follows, which allows everyone to comfortably express their ideas and ask questions. For the past few months, the sessions have had a very friendly atmosphere and we have learned a lot from each other about how to be more mindful researchers.
Through the ED&I reading group, we’re hoping to raise some awareness on how issues relating to equality, diversity and inclusion can impact current AI research, but also how AI research can have consequences in areas which have a direct or indirect impact on society. We also aim to foster a welcoming and inclusive environment where researchers can share and discuss their ideas on how AI research is impacting our society. We hope that attendees leave with thoughts on how their choices as a researcher can make a difference for people who have often been left out of the conversation about AI and how their choices can change that.
From the past few sessions, we have learned a lot from all the people who have presented and whom we have shared a discussion with! Our past sessions have covered:
With AI being an exciting and constantly evolving area of research, we believe that issues of equality, diversity and inclusion are more important than ever for researchers to be aware of, even if their own topic of research is not directly linked to them.
If you are a researcher at the School of Informatics, we hope you’ll join us the last Tuesday of every month from 1-2pm for engaging presentations and fruitful discussions. Let’s all learn from each other! We usually meet in G.03, with the exception of 30th April, where we will meet in IF 1.15.
I went to the WomEncourage conference in Trondheim, Norway in September 2023, and here are some lessons that I learnt.
It’s amazing to be in a female-dominated computing environment. We are all used to spaces where people are talking about computing being very male dominated. Mostly that is ok, and mostly we can feel welcome and part of that environment. But it’s a wonderful change to be discussing technical details about computing in a room that is 80% female – being in the majority feels good.
Women working together is inspiring and uplifting. WomEncourage was formed by a group of women who had been working to support other women in their home countries and came together to form ACM-W Europe, and soon after came up with the idea of an annual conference – here is the inspiring story. Anyone in tech can join ACM-W and get involved in working with this community, and this is something I would very much encourage our female staff and students to do.
Hackathons don’t have to focus on coding. The WomEncourage hackathon required teams to come up with innovative ideas about how tech could create meaningful solutions to some of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Understanding tech and having plausible ideas about what could work was key, but the focus was on hacking the ideas and not the code.
There is a huge skills gap in ethics and DEI in tech. Employers cannot find enough people with technical skills who also have an understanding of:
How to support and encourage diversity within the workplace (tech firms are often terrible at this and want to get better)
How to develop technology that is ethically aware and accessible to all – e.g., not just aimed at the most common (white, male) demographic
Encouraging our students to develop these skills is not just about doing the right thing – it’s about equipping our students for the modern job market and helping tech firms fill these crucial roles.
Most people (companies, universities, etc.) are doing the right thing in terms of talking about unconscious bias and other diversity issues. But very often this has very little payoff because it’s not deeply engrained into every day life but instead is an add on. This is rarely effective.
In university settings, ethics is often taught as a separate or additional subject rather than as a core part of every single branch of CS and tech – and it’s often taught by people with no background in ethics. Every time we teach or learn anything, we should regard thinking about the ethical and societal impacts to be as important as the technical knowledge.
The paths into tech careers are many and various. Women and other minorities can flourish by following a ‘standard’ path in tech or by creating a new path that focusses on their passions and skills. Birgit Penzenstadler, whose research focusses on sustainable software development, talked about how she brings yoga and mindfulness into her teaching and research practice.
In the last week of May, I attended the International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS) 2023 conference in person. This was the first in person conference after the pandemic, and the location of the event was London, which was an easy destination to reach but also an expensive destination to stay. AAMAS brings together researchers from all over the world.
The keynote from Karl Tuyls at AAMAS-23 (Photo credit: Sebastian Stein)
I would like to talk about a Diversity and Inclusion activity included in AAMAS 2023. A diversity lunch event has been organized to bring together participants of the conference. The goal was to share ideas for how to increase diversity at the conference and in our community. There was a panel consisting of Catholijn Jonker, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands; Sarit Kraus, Bar-Ilan University, Israel and Manuela Veloso, J.P. Morgan, USA. The panel was chaired by Maria Gini, University of Minnesota, USA. It was a bit disappointing that the panel was not diverse enough (e.g., four white women talking about their own careers). However, I really enjoyed all the stories shared by the speakers.
Have a mentor to get career advice.Jonker emphasized the importance of having mentors in her life, since she was always part of a male-dominated research community. In her case, Maria Gini was her mentor, who was her role model. Jonker said she still continues getting advice from Maria. I believe this is a powerful message. It does not matter how senior you are in your career; it is always important to have mentors you can trust and talk to when you need advice.
Improve your time management skills.Kraus shared her story about how she became a successful academic while raising her kids. She had to establish a work-life balance; her life story showed that one does not necessarily need to give up on things.
Avoid confronting colleagues in group settings.The stories shared by Manuela Veloso were really interesting because she is someone who has both academic and industry experience. When she was working as an academic, she said she was not listened to during meetings even if she was sharing a very interesting idea. However, when a male colleague of her was saying exactly the same thing, others in the meeting were supporting his idea. She said such things were upsetting her a lot, since she was the one putting so much effort to come up with an original idea. Her advice was not to confront such people in a group setting. Instead, having a one-to-one conversation with such colleagues would be more effective. I will definitely take this advice!
Be a voice not an echo. – Albert Einstein
Do care about people in your life.Veloso mentioned that she really cares about people and her relationships with them. Her advice, similar to Kraus’ advice, was about work-life balance. She said not to focus on achieving many things by working for long hours. Instead, her advice was to spend time with people such as colleagues, friends and family. She said people will forget about your achievements, but they will always remember how you treated others. I also liked this advice; it is important to invest time to build meaningful relationships.
Do you have power?Use it wisely! Veloso emphasized that people with power are the ones who could take positive actions, people are likely to listen to others on power. Since she is leading an AI group at J.P. Morgan at the moment, she said she was using her power to build a diverse gender-balanced team. I think this is a good message for the community as well. People with power can make changes more easily than others. When you hold such a position, you can support people around you and be their voice (and not undermine them!).
I really hope that Diversity and Inclusion activities will become an essential part of conferences we attend. Such activities are excellent to create a safe space for everyone, participants can speak with each other and share their expertise. It is not always easy to speak up, but listening to other people’s stories can help us to realize that we are not alone. This can also give us the confidence to share our own stories.
BCSWomen organises the annual Lovelace Colloquium: a day featuring talks, a careers panel, employer stands and a student poster contest. This year, three students from the University of Edinburgh made the trip to Sheffield, and Qiuye Zhang in fact won first place with her poster “Can Artificial Neural Networks Learn like Brains?” in the second year contest! Here is how she experienced the event:
I am excited to share my experiences and insights from the Lovelace Colloquium, where I had the opportunity to present my poster on computational neuroscience and computational psychiatry. It was my first time discussing these two fascinating fields publicly, and I was thrilled to see some attendees express interest in computational psychiatry.
Initially, my abstract didn’t mention computational psychiatry, but after being inspired by Peggy and her course on computational cognitive neuroscience, I decided to include it in my poster. The interest and discussions surrounding my presentation exceeded my expectations. We delved into topics beyond the scope of my poster, such as Hopfield networks, Bayesian models, and reinforcement learning models. The judges of the contest were very encouraging about my current research. Their kind words and support reinforced my passion for the subject and motivated me to continue my work in this field.
The event also allowed me to meet many amazing people who provided warm hugs and support when I felt nervous before my presentation. In addition to my poster experience, the keynote speeches were enlightening. They touched on the biases faced by females, gender-neutral individuals, and disabled people, as well as the use of technology to detect violence.
Going forward, I plan to be more mindful of potential biases in my research, particularly concerning people with psychiatric diseases. I will consider whether they receive adequate support and explore how to facilitate their lives when cognitive control is a challenge.
Overall, the Lovelace Colloquium was an enriching experience that allowed me to share my passion for computational neuroscience and psychiatry, learn from others, and connect with amazing people. I’m grateful for the opportunity and look forward to applying my newfound insights in my future work.
Qiuye Zhang’s poster “Can artificial neural networks learn like brains?”
Our School is a community of people from many different backgrounds, which makes it an inspiring place to learn and work. Members are respected for who they are, and the culture they come from doesn’t matter. So, in a sense, it is weird to spotlight some groups over others. Rather than make a big deal, let’s keep being kind and supporting each other no matter what their background. It’s the small things that matter.
Nevertheless, it is Black History Month! Let’s celebrate the diversity we have, which plays a vital role in our School, including the many other cultural influences in the UK. This is an opportunity to pause and reflect on the priviledges we enjoy as students and staff in the School of Informatics. To see that this is not automatic, you may want to learn more about various people’s experiences or take action. Additionally, the University is holding various events you could attend.
