Deborah Hanus

How to find underrepresented groups in machine learning

Are you woman or an underrepresented minority? Have you worked on a project that uses machine learning? Do you want the opportunity to attend a top teir machine learning conference? Do you want to meet other women in minorities who are working in your field? If so, there are event and organizations that are dedicated to helping new researchers find their in place machine learning and mid-level to senior researchers to find collaborators and resources.

Are you a workshop organizer looking for speakers? Are you a journalist looking for machine learning and AI experts? Are you a company that wants to hire machine learning experts with a more diverse set of experiences? Are you a researcher who wants to hear the voices of more women and minorities in your field? If so, these are some fantastic organizations to follow and get involved in.

If you want to follow all of these organizations on Twitter, I made a list so you can do that with one click.

Women in Machine Learning (WiML) Workshop

The Women in Machine Learning Workshop is dedicated to showcasing and promoting the amazing work that women are doing in machine learning. Everyone is welcome to attend the workshop, but all the organizers, speakers, and board members identify as women. The workshop is co-located with the Neural Information Procesing Systems (NIPS) Conference and offers travel grants to attend. They also host a lunch at the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML).

Black in AI Workshop

The Black in AI Workshop is dedicated to showcasing and promoting the amazing work that black people are doing in machine learning. Everyone is welcome to attend, but all the organizers, speakers, and board members are black. The workshop is co-located with the Neural Information Procesing Systems (NIPS) Conference and offers travel grants to attend.

Broader Participation in Data Mining (BPDM) Program

The Women in Machine Learning Workshop is dedicated to showcasing the amazing work that women are doing in machine learning. Everyone is welcome to attend the workshop, but all the organizers, speakers, and board members identify as women. The workshop is co-located with the Conference on Knowledge Discovery & Data Mining and offers travel grants to attend.

Widening participation in Natural Language Processing (WiNLP) Workshop

The Widening Participation in Natural Language Processing (WiNLP) Workshop is dedicated to showcasing and promoting the amazing work that women and underrepresented minorities are doing in natural language processing (a subfield of machine learning). Everyone is welcome to attend. The workshop is colocated with the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (NAACL) Conference and offers travel grants to attend.

Women in Computer Vision (WiCV) Workshop

The Women in Machine Learning Workshop is dedicated to showcasing the amazing work that women are doing in machine learning. Everyone is welcome to attend the workshop, but all the organizers, speakers, and board members identify as women. The workshop is colocated with the Conference on Computer Vision & Pattern Recognition (CVPR) and European Conference on Computer Vision. It offers travel grants to attend both workshops.

Women in Machine Learning & Data Science (WiMLDS) Community

The Women in Machine Learning & Data Science (WiDS) community is an international network. While they originally were inspired by the community that was created by WiML Workshop, today is an expansive community of women working in machine learning and data science. The easiest way to get involved is to follow them on Twitter, join their Facebook group, or join their Slack channel. If your area does not already have a WiMLDS community, you should start one! It is a great network to be a part of.

Deep Learning Indaba

The Deep Learning Indaba community is focused on celebrating and strengthening the Artificial Intelligence community in Africa. Currently, they host machine learning summer schools across Africa and sponsor awards for machine learning excellence in Africa. They provide travel grants for African students and academics to attend the summer school, so if you are doing machine learning in Africa, this is an excellent event to join.

I hope that this post helps you find a venue for your research project, a community of likeminded friends and collaborators, or the machine learning and AI experts that you are looking for.