10th Annual Workshop for Women in Machine Learning (WiML 2015)

Sunday, December 6

Co-Located with NIPS in Palais des Congrès de Montréal, Canada

Speakers

Logistics

Program

Call for Participation

Committee

FAQ

Code Of Conduct

Machine learning is one of the fastest growing areas of computer science research. Search engines, text mining, social media analytics, face recognition, DNA sequence analysis, speech and handwriting recognition, healthcare analytics are just some of the applications in which machine learning is routinely used.

In spite of the wide reach of machine learning and the variety of theory and applications it covers, the percentage of female researchers is lower than in many other areas of computer science. Most women working in machine learning rarely get the chance to interact with other female researchers, making it easy to feel isolated and hard to find role models.

The annual Women in Machine Learning Workshop is the flagship event of Women in Machine Learning. This technical workshop gives female faculty, research scientists, and graduate students in the machine learning community an opportunity to meet, network and exchange ideas, participate in career-focused panel discussions with senior women in industry and academia and learn from each other. Underrepresented minorities and undergraduates interested in machine learning research are encouraged to attend. We welcome all genders; however, any formal presentations, i.e. talks and posters, are given by women. We strive to create an atmosphere in which participants feel comfortable to engage in technical and career-related conversations.

Now in its 11th year, the 2016 workshop is co-located with NIPS in Barcelona, Spain on December 5, 2016. A History of WiML poster was created to celebrate the 10th workshop, held in 2015 in Montreal, Canada 2015.

Besides this un-workshop and annual workshop which is co-located with NeurIPS, Women in Machine Learning also organizes events such as breakfast at ICML and AAAI conferences and local meetup events, maintains a public directory of women active in ML, profiles the research of women in ML, and maintains a list of resources for women working in ML.

Invited Speakers

Jennifer Chayes

Microsoft Research

Maya Gupta

Google Research

Anima Anandkumar

Amazon / UC Irvine

Education_(42).jpg

Suchi Saria

John Hopkins Univ

Location

The workshop takes place in Centre de Convencions Internacional Barcelona, located at Plaça de Willy Brandt, 11-14, 08019 Barcelona, Spain.

Sunday, Dec 4

12.00 – 14.00

Registration desk open. Entrance Hall (enter from Entrance C)

14.00 – 19.00

Workshop on Effective Communication by Katherine Gorman of Talking Machines and Amazon (Optional). Invitation-only, RSVP required

16.00 – 18.00

Amazon Panel & Networking (Optional). Invitation-only, RSVP required

17.00 – 19.00

Facebook Lean-In Circles (Optional). Invitation-only, RSVP required

19.15 – 22.00

WiML Dinner (Optional). Separate registration required. Dedicated to Amazon

22.00 – 23.30

OpenAI Happy Hour (Optional). Invitation-only, RSVP required

Monday, Dec 5

All events are held in Rooms 111 and 112, level P1, CCIB except for the poster session, which takes place in Area 5+6+7+8, level P0.

07.00 – 08.00

Registration and Breakfast. Dedicated to Microsoft and OpenAI. Registration desk at Entrance Hall (enter from Entrance C); Breakfast in Rooms 111 and 112, level P1

08.00 – 08.05

Opening Remarks

08.05 – 08.40

Invited Talk: Maya Gupta, Google Research. Designing Algorithms for Practical Machine Learning. [Abstract] [Video]

08.40 – 08.55

Contributed Talk: Maithra Raghu, Cornell Univ / Google Brain. On the Expressive Power of Deep Neural Networks. [Abstract] [Video]

08.55 – 09.10

Contributed Talk: Sara Magliacane, VU Univ Amsterdam. Ancestral Causal Inference. [Abstract] [Video] [Slides]

09.10 – 09.15

Break

09.15 – 10.15

Research Roundtables (Coffee served until 9.40am). Dedicated to Apple and Facebook

10.15 – 10.50

Invited Talk: Suchi Saria, John Hopkins Univ. Towards a Reasoning Engine for Individualizing Healthcare. [Abstract] [Video]

10.50 – 11.05

Contributed Talk: Madalina Fiterau, Stanford Univ. Learning Representations from Time Series Data through Contextualized LSTMs. [Abstract] [Video]

11.05 – 11.10

Break

11.10 – 11.25

Contributed Talk: Konstantina Christakopoulou, Univ Minnesota. Towards Conversational Recommender Systems. [Abstract] [Video] [Slides]

11.25 – 12.00

Invited Talk: Anima Anandkumar, Amazon / UC Irvine. Large-Scale Machine Learning through Spectral Methods: Theory & Practice. [Abstract] [Video] [Slides]

12.00 – 13.00

Career & Advice Roundtables

13.00 – 13.30

Lunch and Poster Setup. Dedicated to DeepMind and Google

13.30 – 15.30

Poster Session (Coffee served until 2pm). Open to WiML and NIPS attendees. Dedicated to our Silver Sponsors: Capital One, D.E. Shaw, Intel, Twitter. Area 5+6+7+8, level P0; Round 1: 1.40pm – 2.30pm; Round 2:

2.30pm – 3.20pm; Poster Removal: 3.20pm – 3.30pm

15.30 – 15.45

Raffle and WiML Updates: Tamara Broderick, MIT and Sinead Williamson, UT Austin. [Video]

15.45 – 16.00

Contributed Talk: Amy Zhang, Facebook. Using Convolutional Neural Networks to Estimate Population Density from High Resolution Satellite Images. [Abstract] [Video]

16.00 – 16.35

Invited Talk: Jennifer Chayes, Microsoft Research. Graphons and Machine Learning: Estimation of Sparse Massive Networks. [Abstract] [Video]

16.35 – 16.40

Closing Remarks

NIPS Main Conference (NIPS registration required)

17.00

NIPS Opening Remarks. Area 1 + 2, level P0

WiML 2016 Poster Session

Monday, Dec 5, 1.30pm to 3:30pm, Area 5+6+7+8, level P0, open to WiML and NIPS attendees

200+ posters covering theory, methodology, and applications of machine learning will be presented in 2 rounds.
Accepted posters

Accepted posters (with abstracts). Abstracts listed here are for archival purposes and do not constitute proceedings for this workshop.

Information for poster presenters:

Posters for both rounds should be setup 1-1.40pm and removed 3.20-3.30pm. Each poster board is shared by 2-3 presenters. Please check the program book for your round number and poster number. Look for that number in the poster room with ‘W’ appended to the front, e.g. W1, W2, etc.

Poster size: up to 37.9 inches width and 35.8 inches height (or 96.3 cm x 91.0 cm), portrait or landscape.

Table 1: Deep learning I – Katja Hofmann, Microsoft Research, Oriol Vinyals, DeepMind

Table 2: Deep learning II – Junli Gu, Tesla, Sergio Guadarrama, Google Research, Niv Sundaram, Intel

Table 3: Reinforcement learning – Emma Brunskill, Carnegie Mellon / Stanford, Yisong Yue, Caltech

Table 4: Bayesian methods I – Barbara Engelhardt, Princeton, Lamiae Azizi, University of Sydney

Table 5: Bayesian methods II – Ferenc Huszar, Twitter / Magic Pony

Table 6: Graphical models – Margaret Mitchell, Google Research, Danielle Belgrave, Imperial College London

Table 7: Learning theory – Cynthia Rush, Columbia University, Corinna Cortes, Google Research

Table 8: Statistical inference and estimation – Katherine M. Kinnaird, Brown University, Alessandra Tosi, Mind Foundry, Oxford

Table 9: Optimization – Anima Anandkumar, Amazon / UC Irvine, Puja Das, Apple

Table 10: Neuroscience – Irina Higgins, DeepMind, Jascha Sohl-Dickstein, Google Brain

Table 11: Robotics – Raia Hadsell, DeepMind, Julie Bernauer, NVIDIA

Table 12: Natural language processing I – Catherine Breslin, Amazon, Olivia Buzek, IBM Watson

Table 13: Natural language processing II – Pallika Kanani, Oracle Labs, Ana Peleteiro Ramallo, Zalando, Aline Villavicencio, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

Table 14: Healthcare/biology applications – Tania Cerquitelli, Politecnico di Torino, Jennifer Healey, Intel

Table 15: Music applications – Luba Elliott, iambicai, Kat Ellis, Amazon Music, Emilia Gomez, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona

Table 16: Social science applications – Allison Chaney, Princeton University, Isabel Valera, Max Planck Institute for Software Systems

Table 17: Fairness, accountability, transparency in machine learning – Sarah Bird, Microsoft, Ekaterina Kochmar, University of Cambridge

Table 18: Computational sustainability – Erin LeDell, H2O.ai, Jennifer Dy, Northeastern University

Table 19: Computer vision – Judy Hoffman, Stanford University, Manohar Paluri, Facebook

Table 20: Human-in-the-Loop Learning – Been Kim, Allen Institute for AI / Univ of Washington, Saleema Amershi, Microsoft Research

Table 1: Machine Learning @Amazon: Jumpstarting your career in industry – Anima Anandkumar, Catherine Breslin, Enrica Maria Fillipi

Table 2: Careers@Apple – Meriko Borogove, Anh Nguyen

Table 3: Machine Learning @DeepMind: Research in industry vs. academia – Nando De Freitas, Viorica Patraucean, Kimberly Stachenfeld

Table 4: Machine Learning @Facebook: Sponsorship vs. Mentorship Throughout Your Career – Angela Fan, Amy Zhang, Christy Sauper, Natalia Neverova, Manohar Paluri

Table 5: Machine Learning @Google: Industrial Research and Academic Impact – Corinna Cortes, Google

Table 6: Machine Learning and Deep Learning @Microsoft – Christopher Bishop, Mir Rosenberg, Anusua Trivedi

Table 7: Delivering phenomenal customer experiences with Machine Learning @Capital One – Jennifer Hill, Marcie Apelt

Table 8: Networking I – Olivia Buzek, IBM Watson, Jennifer Healey, Intel

Table 9: Networking II – Pallika Kanani, Oracle Labs, Been Kim, Allen Institute for AI / Univ of Washington

Table 10: Work/Life Balance (academia) – Namrata Vaswani, Iowa State University, Beka Steorts, Duke University

Table 11: Work/Life Balance (industry) I – Yuanyuan Pao, Lyft, Antonio Penta, United Technologies Research Centre, Ireland

Table 12: Work/Life Balance (industry) II – Kat Ellis, Amazon Music, Puja Das, Apple

Table 13: Choosing between academia/industry I – Katherine M. Kinnaird, Brown University, Jascha Sohl-Dickstein, Google Brain

Table 14: Choosing between academia/industry II – Sarah Bird, Microsoft, Oriol Vinyals, DeepMind

Table 15: Life with Kids – Jenn Wortman Vaughan, Microsoft Research, Julie Bernauer, NVIDIA

Table 16: Getting a job (academia) I – Jennifer Chayes, Microsoft Research, Yisong Yue, Caltech

Table 17: Getting a job (academia) II – Tamara Broderick, MIT, Cynthia Rush, Columbia University

Table 18: Getting a job (industry) I – Anne-Marie Tousch, Criteo, Sergio Guadarrama, Google Research

Table 19: Getting a job (industry) II – Margaret Mitchell, Google Research, Erin LeDell, H2O.ai

Table 20: Doing a postdoc – Cristina Savin, IST Austria / NYU, Judy Hoffman, Stanford University

Table 21: Doing research in industry – Junli Gu, Tesla, Samy Bengio, Google Brain

Table 22: Keeping up with academia while in industry – Irina Higgins, DeepMind, Alessandra Tosi, Mind Foundry, Oxford

Table 23: Surviving graduate school – Allison Chaney, Princeton University, Viktoriya Krakovna, DeepMind

Table 24: Seeking funding: fellowships and grants – Aline Villavicencio, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, Danielle Belgrave, Imperial College London

Table 25: Establishing collaborations – Barbara Engelhardt, Princeton University, Ekaterina Kochmar, University of Cambridge

Table 26: Joining startups – Alyssa Frazee, Stripe, Ferenc Huszar, Twitter / Magic Pony

Table 27: Scientific communication – Katherine Gorman, Talking Machines, Ana Peleteiro Ramallo, Zalando

Table 28: Building your professional brand – Luba Elliott, iambicai, Lamiae Azizi, The University of Sydney

Table 29: Commercializing your research – Katherine Boyle, General Catalyst, Zehan Wang, Twitter / Magic Pony

Table 30: Long-term career planning – Inmar Givoni, Kindred.ai, Jennifer Dy, Northeastern University

Call for Participation

The 11th WiML Workshop is co-located with NIPS in Barcelona, Spain on Monday, December 05, 2016.

The workshop is a full-day event with invited speakers, oral presentations, and posters. The event brings together faculty, graduate students, and research scientists for an opportunity to connect and exchange ideas.

There will also be a panel discussion and a mentoring session to discuss current research trends and career choices in machine learning. Underrepresented minorities and undergraduates interested in pursuing machine learning research are encouraged to participate. While all presenters will be female, all genders are invited to attend. This is a technical workshop with exciting technical talks.

Important Dates

August 29, 2016 11:59pm PST – Abstract submission deadline
September 26, 2016 – Notification of abstract acceptance
October 5, 2016 11:59pm PST- Travel grant/oral presentation application deadline
October 15, 2016 – End of abstract editing period
October 24, 2016 – Notification of travel grant/oral presentation acceptance
November 1, 2016 (or before, if we run out of space) – Registration deadline
December 4, 2016 – Pre-workshop dinner and events
December 5, 2016 – Workshop

Submission Instructions

We strongly encourage female students, post-docs and researchers in all areas of machine learning to submit an abstract (500 words or less) describing new, previously, or concurrently published research. We welcome abstract submissions in theory, methodology, as well as applications. Authors of accepted abstracts will be asked to present their work in a poster session. A few authors will be selected to give 15 minutes oral presentations.

Submission page: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=wiml2016
Evaluation criteria: Submissions will be peer reviewed. Abstracts will be evaluated on scientific merit and relevance to the community. To facilitate the peer review process, we encourage authors to sign up as reviewers when submitting abstracts.

Examples of accepted abstracts from previous years. Note that despite the option to upload a paper in the submission system, this is not required. Due to the volume of submissions anticipated, we are unable to review any submitted materials besides the requested abstract.

Travel Scholarships

Registration is free. Partial scholarships will be provided to female students and postdoctoral attendees with accepted abstracts to offset travel costs.

GOLD SPONSORS

SILVER SPONSORS

BRONZE SPONSORS

SUPPORTER

Committee

ORGANIZERS

Diana Cai

Statistics PhD student
University of Chicago

Deborah Hanus

Computer Science PhD student
Harvard University

Sarah Tan

Statistics PhD student
Cornell University

Isabel Valera

Postdoctoral Fellow
Max Planck Institute for Software Systems

Rose Yu

Computer Science PhD student
University of Southern California

AREA CHAIRS

Danielle Belgrave (Imperial College London)
Tamara Broderick (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Allison Chaney (Princeton University)
Deborah Hanus (Harvard University)
Pallika Kanani (Oracle Labs)
Katherine M. Kinnaird (Brown University)
Lizhen Lin (University of Texas at Austin)
Maria Lomeli (University of Cambridge)
Konstantina Palla (University of Oxford)
Sara Wade (University of Warwick)
Sinead Williamson (University of Texas at Austin)
Svitlana Volkova (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)

FAQs

Do you have a list of members? How can I join WiML?

WiML doesn’t have “members” per se, any women working in machine learning can be part of the WiML network. We have a mailing list for anyone to post announcements of interest to the WiML network and an opt-in, necessarily incomplete directory of women working in machine learning.

How can I join the WiML mailing list?

Join the mailing list directly here.

What kind of events do you organize?

Our flagship event is the annual WiML Workshop, typically co-located with NeurIPS, a machine learning conference. We also organize an “un-workshop” at ICML, as well as small events (e.g. lunches and receptions) at other machine learning conferences, such as CoRL, COLT, etc. Check out our events page for up-to-date listings of events.

Do you have local meetups?

No, but check out WiMLDS (website, Twitter), another organization that supports women in machine learning by organizing local meetups.

How do I reach the WiML network?

Use our mailing list.

How can I sponsor WiML?

Thank you for your interest in sponsoring WiML! See this page for more information.

I am looking for an invited speaker / panelist / area chair / program committee member etc. Can WiML help me?

Use our directory of women in machine learning or post this opportunity to our mailing list.

I want to circulate a job posting. Can WiML help me?

Post directly to our mailing list.

How can I support WiML?

You can:

Post interesting opportunities and job postings to our mailing list.
Use our directory of women in machine learning to find invited speakers, panelists, area chairs, program committee members, etc, or post these opportunities to our mailing list.
Sponsor us. See this page for more information.
Volunteer at one of our events. Check out our events page for up-to-date listings of events.
Apply to be an area chair or reviewer at WiML Workshop (see this year’s workshop website for info).
Take pictures at our events and share with us (tag @wimlworkshop on Twitter).
If you see us mentioned in the media, send us a link at info@wimlworkshop.org.

And many others!

How did WiML start? What's the founding story?

Hanna Wallach, Jennifer Wortman Vaughan, Lisa Wainer, and Angela Yu shared a room at NIPS 2005. Late one night, they talked about how exciting it was that there were FOUR female students at NIPS that year. They tried to list all the women in machine learning they know of and got to 10, then started talking about creating a meeting or gathering for all these women and perhaps others that they didn’t know about. Jenn, Lisa, and Hanna put together a proposal for a session at the 2006 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing that would feature talks and posters by female researchers and students in machine learning. The 1st WiML workshop was co-located with the 2006 Grace Hopper Celeberation. In 2008, WiML Workshop moved to NIPS (renamed NeurIPS in 2018) and there has been a WiML Workshop at NeurIPS every year since. In 2020, WiML introduced an “un-workshop” at ICML based on the concept of an “un-conference”, a form of discussion on a pre-selected topic that is primarily driven by participants. Read more WiML history here!

I am a man. Can I attend WiML?

Yes. Allies are welcome to attend! Note, however, that all speakers and poster presenters will primarily identify as women, nonbinary, or gender-nonconforming, as our goal is to promote them and their work within the machine learning community.

What are the mentorship roundtables?

Each table seats 8-10 people (including mentors), with two mentors leading the discussion on a particular topic at each table. WiML attendees rotate between tables every 15-20 minutes. This allows attendees to gain exposure to different topics, and mentors to meet a large number of WiML attendees.

Is WiML an archival venue?

No, WiML is a non-archival venue. This means that, if your contribution is accepted, we will not be asking you to submit a camera-ready version of it, nor will we publish it anywhere (neither online nor in proceedings of any sort). We will only make the title and authors’ names available in the program book.

I have a question that isn't answered here. How do I reach you?

We receive a lot of email. Help us help you by reaching out through the appropriate channels.

Job posting, announcement, CFP, etc: Post directly to WiML mailing list.
Have event pictures to share: post on Twitter and tag @wimlworkshop
Workshop enquiries: workshop@wimlworkshop.org
If you are a company interested in sponsoring WiML: sponsorship@wimlworkshop.org
Any other enquiries: info@wimlworkshop.org

If you email us, don’t cc multiple email addresses — this saves us time routing your email to one mailbox, and reduces the chances of your email getting lost. Thank you in advance!