WiDS Datathon 2021 and Amrapali Zaveri Awards (AZA)

We also held a datathon associated with the WiDS. For more about the datathon itself, see here. Two awards were presented: 

• Responsible Data Science Pioneer Team to “TUD Girls” (Barbara Rentroia, Leonoor Tideman, and Padmaja Kulkarni) 

• WIDS Datathon Maastricht Winner Team to TeamTwente.py (Anna Machens, Maryam Amir Haeri, and Abhishta Abhishta). This team obtained the highest score of all Maastricht Teams after the global competition had closed. 

We also awarded the Amrapali Zaveri Early Career Data Scientist Award to Dr. Anna Schueth;

Denise Slenter and Marvin Martens came in close second and third.

The Amrapali Zaveri Data Science Award went to Prof. Dr. Ilja Arts; Prof. Dr. Philippe Lambin and Prof. Dr. Egon Willighagen came in close second and third.

Conference participants were able to join one of two discussion panels, one about responsible data science by design, the other about data science careers.

In the responsible data science session, moderated by Dr. Visara Urovi and Dr. Linda Rieswijk, panel members discussed the state of responsibility in their domains and organisations. They each related that responsibility was still evolving in those domains and needed more attention. The slides from the responsible data science session can be found here.

The career in data science  panel discussion was moderated by Dr. Rianne Fijten & Dr. Constance Sommerey. Dr. Rachel Cavill and Dr. Anda Iamnitchi described their career paths into data science and gave some advice. Dr. Cavill underscored the importance of acquiring programming skills to build self-reliance and better understanding of methods and data. She also emphasized building critical thinking skills to be able to ask, “why do my results look like this?” Dr. Iamnitchi related some important moments in her career, such as choosing people to work with over the institution or money, and the importance of a colleague to collaborate on research with. Another mentor gave her important advice: in research, do what you love--hopefully success will follow, or at least you’ll have fun. 

The conference closed with a Career networking session organised by BISS.  Several companies. Medtrocis, CBS, CaptainVR and Cadchain provided parallel sessions where they interacted with the audience. You can find a detailed summary of the career networking session here.

more details: https://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/wids-datathon-2021-and-amrapali-zaveri-awards-aza-0