2022 Overview

The Wharton School and Penn Engineering were proud to host the third annual Women in Data Science (WiDS) @ Penn Conference on February 9-10, 2022. Over the course of two days, attendees tuned in for talks showcasing the latest advances in data science, live speaker Q&A sessions, and networking opportunities.

This year’s theme – This is What a Data Scientist Looks Like – emphasized the diversity of data science, both in subject matter and personnel. A celebrated interdisciplinary event, WiDS @ Penn welcomed academic, industry, and student speakers from across the data science landscape.

Head shots of WiDS speakers

Hosted By

Analytics at Wharton logo
Wharton Customer Analytics logo
Penn Engineering logo
Wharton Statistics and Data Science logo

WiDS By The Numbers

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Scholarship Raised for the Wharton Data Science Academy
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Tal Rabin on the History and Future of Women in Data Science

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Bridging The Big Data Divide

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Supporting the Next Generation of Women in Data Science

The WiDS @ Penn Committee is dedicated to creating equitable opportunities to educate the next generation of female data scientists and analytics leaders. We are thrilled to announce that this year we raised more than $11,000 to support need-based scholarships for female high school students. These scholarships expose young talent to the field of data science and analytics and enable students, regardless of their background, to participate in the Wharton Data Science Academy.

Keynote Address

Digital Transformations – How Emergent Technologies and Global Circumstances Redefine Industries

In her keynote address, Michelle Peluso, W’93, Executive Vice President, Chief Customer Officer, and Co-President of Retail at CVS Health, offers invaluable career advice and insights into leading companies through digital transformations. She’s joined by Wharton Customer Analytics Executive Director Mary Purk for a live Q&A.

Welcoming Remarks

Day 1 Talks

The Path to Scale with AI

Ren Zhang, Director, Selling Partner, Development Science, at Amazon shares vital advice on how to effectively scale organizations with AI. Ren offers key tips on how to introduce AI practices into businesses slowly and effectively in order to illustrate their value to potentially skeptical stakeholders.

Improving the Health of Individuals and Populations with Electronic Health Records

Blanca Himes, Associate Professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the Perelman School of Medicine, shares how Electronic Health Records (EHRs) can be used in tandem with publicly available social, economic, and environmental factors to better predict health exposures and improve the quality of life for individuals.

Industry Panel

Three industry titans – Victoria Lewis-Bogatyrenko, SVP of UnitedHealth Networks, Gayatri Narayan, SVP of Digital Products and Services at PepsiCo, and Jenny Wolski, VP of Retail Strategy and Omnichannel Experience at Petco – joined Wharton Customer Analytics Executive Director Mary Purk to offer vital career advice for women in data science.

Day 2 Talks

Efficient and Targeted COVID-19 Border Testing Via Reinforcement Learning

Associate Professor of Operations, Information, and Decisions at The Wharton School, Hamsa Bastani, shares the data science approach she took to help the Greek government efficiently target COVID-19 border testing in order to mitigate the risk of exposure from tourists.

Sharing Data while Preserving Privacy (and Applications to Cryptocurrency Wallets)

While multi-party computation has existed for decades, Computer and Information Science Professor and world-renowned cryptologist Tal Rabin illustrates how multi-party computation is still used today, with many applications in the realm of cryptocurrencies.

Academic Lightning Talks

Carbon, Cancer, and Contamination: The Relationships Between Pollution, Temperature, and Disease

Wharton Data Science Academy alumnae and high school students Sydney Bramen, Isabella Huang, Joanna Liu, and Emily Wang present their findings on the correlation between pollution, temperature, and lung cancer rates throughout the United States.

The Impact of Socioeconomic Status on Career Choice & Advancement

Penn Alumna and Microsoft Data Scientist Sally Hu utilizes data analytics to measure the impact that one’s socioeconomic status has on the careers they choose, and their ability to grow in that career.

Demographic Effects on Gun Ownership in New York City

Wharton Data Science Academy alumni and high school students Anushka Acharya, Joy An, Gracia Chen, Sidarth Krishna, and Yulan Wang present their findings on what impact demographic information has on gun ownership in New York City.

Multimodal Movie Genre Classification

University of Pennsylvania master’s student So Han demonstrates how she utilizes data science to facilitate multi-modal genre classifications for movies.

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