This June the team at RE•WORK are excited to be heading back to San Francisco for the Deep Learning for Robotics Summit & AI in Industrial Automation Summit. On the 26th June, we’re bringing another Women in AI Dinner to the city, providing the opportunity to hear from some of the leading female experts within the industry whilst networking amongst peers. In the lead up to these events, we have used this time as an opportunity to look into some of the most exciting work within AI taking place in San Francisco, and wanted to share with you some of the most influential women behind these progressions across multiple industries.
Here are 5 women that we think have particularly helped with the progression of the technology, whether it has been with helping to develop AI, apply it a beneficial way or helping to raise the conversation around the technology.
Beena Ammanath @beena_ammanath
Global VP - Artificial Intelligence, Data and Innovation, Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Prior to her current role at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Beena was the Vice President of Data Science and Innovation at GE, working to transform the company into a digital industrial company leveraging data, analytics and AI. Beena has shared her expertise in technology as a board advisor in various Artificial Intelligence companies, including Predii, which uses patented Machine Learning technology to provide ‘Repair Intelligence”. Beena has also been leading efforts to increase diversity in technology, having been the Board Director of ChickTech, a non-profit dedicated to increasing the number of women and girls pursuing technology-based careers, and retaining women already in STEM workforces. In 2017 Beena founded nonprofit organization Humans For AI, which focuses on increasing diversity in technology. In 2016 Beena chatted to RE•WORK about breakthrough technology and achieving gender equality in the industry. You can read the interview here.
Carol Reiley @robot_MD
Co-founder, drive.ai
Formed out of Stanford’s AI Lab, drive.ai builds Deep Learning software for self-driving cars. As co-founder and president, Carol led the product team, built investor relationships to raise over $70 million and led the company strategy. Carol has eight technical patents, and is the author of more than a dozen papers published in various scientific conference proceedings, refereed journals and conferences, with a research focus on ‘intelligent robotic systems that can aid humans in performing skillful tasks more effectively.’ Carol has previously served on the various boards, including the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and JHU Engineering Diversity Council. Carol has built up a large collection of awards over her career, and has been listed in the Silicon Valley Business Journal Most Influential list in 2017 and Inc Magazine’s Most Innovative Women Entrepreneurs.
Daphne Koller @DaphneKoller
Co-founder, Coursera
Daphne is the Chief Computing Officer at Calico Labs, an Alphabet (Google) company that is using advanced technology to understand aging and design interventions that help people lead longer, healthier lives. She is also the Co-Chair of the Board and Co-Founder of Coursera, the largest platform for massive open online courses (MOOCs). Previously, she was the Rajeev Motwani Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, where she served on the faculty for 18 years. In January Daphne become the founder and CEO of Insitro, incorporating machine learning into drug discovery. She is the author of over 200-refereed publications appearing in venues such as Science, Cell, and Nature Genetics. At the beginning of the year, Daphne took part in a fireside chat at the RE•WORK Deep Learning Summit in San Francisco, where she spoke about the implementation of AI in healthcare, saying “...if we can provide basic medical care with AI, we can leave the higher end of medical issues to the experts and people can receive high level medical care from experts at a lower cost.”
Devi Parikh @deviparikh
Research Scientist, Facebook AI Research
Devi Parikh is an Assistant Professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech, as well a Research Scientist at Facebook AI Research (FAIR). With interests in computer vision and visual recognition problems, her recent work involves exploring problems at the intersection of vision and language, and leveraging human-machine collaboration for building smarter machines. She received her Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 2009. Devi’s contributions in the field have been widely recognised by the community, and she is a recipient of numerous awards, including the NSF CAREER award, and an IJCAI Computers and Thought award. Devi has also featured in a Forbes' list of 20 "Incredible Women Advancing A.I. Research." She was also awarded a Marr Best Paper Prize at the International Conference on Computer Vision.
Fei-Fei Li @drfeifei
Chief Scientist of Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Google Cloud
Fei-Fei Li is the director of the Vision Lab and AI Lab, where she works with over 20 faculties and is also a professor. The lab’s research includes Machine Learning, computer vision and cognitive neuroscience. Fei Fei also splits her time by leading the AI and ML research development efforts at Google Cloud, which includes overseeing the research and products at Google Cloud. Fei Fei has also put a lot of effort in to tackling the diversity issue in technology, and in 2017 co-launched non-profit organization AI4ALL, which introduces AI into schools through workshops. Fei Fei has contributed greatly to the advancement of AI throughout her career, and her work has been recognized through many awards, including the 2014 IBM Faculty Fellow Award and the 2012 Yahoo Labs FREP Award.
Complete list:
Alicia Kavelaars @hello_offworld
CTO & Co-founder, OffWorld
Alicia has over 15 years of experience in the aerospace industry, developing and successfully launching systems for NASA, NOAA and the Telecommunications industry. In 2015, Alicia made the jump to New Space to work on cutting edge innovation programs. At OffWorld, Alicia has led the development of AI based rugged robots that will be deployed in one of the most extreme environments on Earth as a precursor to swarm robotic space operations: deep underground mines. Alicia will be speaking at the AI in Industrial Automation Summit in June about her work.
Alison Darcy @alisonmdarcy
Founder and CEO, Woebot Labs Inc.
Woebot Labs is a company that aims to make the best psychological tools radically accessible for everyone. Alison created Woebot, a friendly AI-powered chatbot that delivers cognitive behavior therapy at scale. A clinical research psychologist, Alison was Faculty in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Stanford School of Medicine for a decade where she developed digital health interventions for young people. With both a technical and scientific background, Alison works at the intersection of mental health and technology. In January, Alison spoke at the AI Assistant Summit, where she discussed her work delivering CBT through a chatbot to address the global mental health crisis.
Amy Gershkoff @amygershkoff
Advisor, Independent
Amy was named one of America’s “40 Under 40” leading entrepreneurs, one of the Top 50 Women to Watch in Tech, and one of San Francisco's Most Influential Women in Business. Amy currently advises companies to address challenges in product, growth and operations. During her career, she has led the Customer Analytics & Insights team at eBay, served as Chief Data Scientist at WPP, and was Head of Media Planning at Obama for America, where she designed the campaign’s advertising and analytics strategy. In January 2018, Amy spoke about successfully incorporating Machine Learning into organisations at RE•WORK’s Deep Learning Summit.
Angela Sy @angelaleesy
Head of AI & Strategy, Skycatch
Angela graduated from Stanford University with a B.S. in Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence, and a M.S. in Management Science & Engineering. Whilst studying for her degrees Angela built up a breadth of experience, including internships at Salesforce and Indiegogo, as well taking part in the Design for Extreme Affordability cohort, designing products to aid some of the world’s poorest citizens. Angla joined Skycatch in 2016, a startup that builds technology to autonomously capture, process, and analyze 3D drone data. She now leads the AI teams on Machine Learning initiatives.
Ann Thyme-Gobbel
Voice UI/UX Design Leader, Sound United
While doing a PhD in Cognitive Science and Linguistics at UCSD, Ann's interest in phonetics and NLP led to a dissertation using neural networks to model how speakers of a language form new words via paradigm patterning and token analogy. After that, Ann did R&D and product development in conversational speech recognition, including discourse analysis and prosody-based language identification. She spent 12 years at Nuance in user-centered design, analysis and user testing of IVRs and in-car interfaces. At Amazon Lab 126, Ann focused on incorporating speech into the design of interactive devices.
Ayse Naz Erkan @naz_erkan
Staff Data Scientist, Twitter
During her PhD studies in computer science in New York, Ayse worked on a range of robot vision problems under the supervision of AI pioneer Professor Yann LeCunn. In 2011 Ayse joined twitter as a Software Engineer, and is now the Engineering Manager for the Content Understanding and Applied Deep Learning team. Ayse has also expressed her interest in the issue of ethics in Machine Learning, having initiated the ML Ethics effort at Twitter, which she also leads.
Research Scientist, Google Brain
Before joining Google Brain, Been was a research scientist at Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2) and an affiliate faculty in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on building interpretable machine learning, with the vision to make humans empowered by machine learning. She received her PhD. from MIT. Prior to her PhD, she worked at the MathWorks as a software engineer.
Catherine Lu @spikeventures
Principal, Spike Ventures
Catherine is an entrepreneur-turned-investor. She is currently a Principal at Spike Ventures, a VC firm that invests in Stanford alum-led companies. Previously, she was Director of Product at NEA-backed Datavisor, an enterprise company offering an unsupervised machine learning fraud solution. Prior to Datavisor, she co-founded the retail analytics company Fancy That, which was acquired by Palantir in 2015. Catherine graduated from Stanford with a BS and MS in Computer Science, focusing on artificial intelligence. Catherine will be on the investor panel at the upcoming Deep Learning for Robotics and AI in Automation Summits, providing advice on how to gain funding.
Cathy Pearl @cpearl42
Head of Conversation Design Outreach, Google
Before joining Google, Cathy was the VP of user experience at Sensely, whose virtual nurse avatar, Molly, helps people engage with their health. Cathy is the author of the O’Reilly book “Designing Voice User Interfaces”. Throughout her career, Cathy has applied her knowledge to a range of projects, and has worked on everything from helicopter pilot simulators at NASA to a conversational iPad app in which Esquire magazine’s style columnist tells you what you should wear on a first date. During her time at Nuance and Microsoft, Cathy designed VUIs for banks, airlines, and Ford SYNC. Cathy holds a BS in cognitive science from UCSD and an MS in computer science from Indiana University.
Cindi Thompson @CindiThompson
Principal Data Scientist, Apple
Since completing her PhD in Computer Sciences at The Uni of Texas in 1998, Cindi has built a wide range of academic and industry experience in artificial Intelligence, including Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing. She has produced many publications including and is the co-inventor of three patents, including the System and Method for Comparing and Reviewing Documents.
Emma Brunskill @Stanford
Assistant Professor, Computer Science, Stanford
Emma is a faculty member of the Stanford Statistical Machine Learning group and the AI Lab, having joined the Computer Science department in 2017. Prior to Stanford, Emma was the Associate Professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. Over her career, Emma has written and co-written many papers, which have received numerous nominations and awards, including the Best Paper Award at the Uncertainty of Artificial Intelligence in 2017.
Fiona McEvoy @fionajmcevoy
Tech Ethics Researcher and Founder, YouTheData.com
With the topic of ethics being such a key area in Artificial Intelligence, Fiona’s work plays an important role in exploring the relationship between technology and society. Fiona holds a graduate degree in Philosophy, with a special focus on ethics and technology. She recently presented her work to the International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP) at Stanford University, and her latest paper on Big Data and the future of autonomy was published by the University of Bucharest as part of a series on emerging technology. Outside of research, Fiona also runs YouTheData.com, a website that attempts to translate topical tech ethics conundrums for "non-techie" audiences. She also writes in the media for publications including Slate, VentureBeat, and a selection of popular Medium blogs.
Jia Li @lijiali_vision
Adjunct Professor, Stanford University
In 2011 Jia received her PhD in Computer Science at Stanford University, and in February she returned as an Adjunct Professor in the School of Medicine, exploring how AI can be used to improve the outcomes of patients and hospitals. Jia is also the Head of R&D at Google Cloud AI, where the focus is to use aI to solve real world problems. Prior to joining Google, Jia was the Head of Research at Snap and between 2011 and 2015 Jia led the Visual Computing and Learning Group at Yahoo! Labs, where she was the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2014 Mater Inventor Award, for contribution of innovation in Computer Vision, Machine Learning and Image Search.
Katie Driggs-Campbell @Stanford
Postdoctoral Researcher, Stanford University
Katie is currently a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at Stanford University. Prior to that, she was a PhD Candidate in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley, advised by engineer and computer scientist, Professor Ruzena Bajcsy. Prior to that, she received a B.S.E. from Arizona State University in 2012 and a M.S. from UC Berkeley in 2015. Her research considers the integration of autonomy into human dominated fields, in terms of safe interaction in everyday life, with a strong emphasis on novel modeling methods, experimental design, and control frameworks. She received the Demetri Angelakos Memorial Achievement Award for her contributions to the community.
Mariya Yao @thinkmariya
CTO and Head of R&D, Metamaven
Mariya is the CTO and Head of Research & Design at Metamaven, an AI strategy & development company building machine learning solutions for Fortune 500 customers and leading brands like L'Oreal, LinkedIn, and Paypal. She also splits her time as the Editor in Chief at TOPBOTS, a publication and community for enterprise AI executives and professionals. She also co-authored the book Applied Artificial Intelligence: A Handbook For Business Leaders and writes for Forbes about enterprise AI. Earlier this year in 2018, Mariya was the compere at the Deep Learning Summit in San Francisco.
Negin Nejati @Airbnb
Senior Data Scientist, Airbnb
Negin Nejati received her PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, where her thesis focused on Machine Learning and Cognitive Sciences. She joined Apple Maps in 2013 where she led the geosearch effort building a query understanding Machine Learning model and geo search backend. Negin then moved to Airbnb in 2016 and is currently focused on improving customer support through Machine Learning. She enjoys building end to end products and her focus is on Natural Language Understanding. Negin will be sharing her expertise on Machine learning at the Women in AI Dinner on the 26th June 2018.
Rekha Joshi @rekhajoshm
Principal Software Engineer, Microsoft
Before joining Microsoft in 2018, Rekha was a Principal Software Engineer at Intuit, where she worked in the central technology group. Along with creating numerous publications, Rekha has also invented 5 patents, including Dynamic Reputation Score For a Digital Identity in 2017. Over her career, Rekha has worked in various domains of finance, supply chain and AI research.
Rosanne Liu @UberAILabs
Research Scientist, Uber AI Labs
Rosanne is a Research Scientist and a founding member of Uber AI Labs. She received her PhD degree in Computer Science from Northwestern University. After graduating, Rosanne joined a research oriented AI startup, Geometric Intelligence. This involved working with a small groups of people on general AI algorithms. The company was later acquired by Uber Technologies Inc. to become Uber AI Labs. Her research interests include neural network interpretability, object recognition and detection, generative models, and adversarial attacks and defense in neural networks.
Rumman Chowdhury @ruchowdh
Senior Principal, Accenture
Rumman comes from a quantitative social science background, and is a practicing data scientist. As a Senior Principal at Accenture, she works on cutting-edge applications of AI and is the Global Lead for Responsible AI. Rumman also leads client solutions on ethical AI design and implementation, working with organisations such as the IEEE and World Economic Forum. She has been named a fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts and is one of BBC’s 100 most influential women of 2017. In January 2018, Rumman shared her knowledge at the RE•WORK Deep Learning Summit and moderated the fireside chat with Daphne Koller, discussing AI in healthcare and the lack of minorities working in technology.
Shelley Zhuang @ShelleyZhuang
Founder and Managing Partner, 11.2 Capital
Shelley has over ten years of experience in technology as a software engineer, research scientist, business executive, and venture capitalist. She holds a BS in Computer Science and Computer Engineering from the University of Missouri, and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. Previously, Shelley was a Principal at DFJ, where she was actively involved in a number of investments including Ecoplast Technologies, FeedBurner (acquired by Google for $100M) and Flurry (acquired by Yahoo for $240M). Shelly is currently a G7 Fellow at Creative Destruction Lab, and serves on Enigma 2016's program committee.
Shivani Rao @shivanigrao
Senior Applied Researcher, LinkedIn
Shivani currently works in the Learning Relevance Group at LinkedIn, which integrates online learning into the platform, ensuring members gain the skills they need for their career. Shivani has accrued research experience in Industry and academia in areas of Machine Learning, Data Mining and Computer Vision. Outside of R&D work, Shivani also engages with the larger technical community, by writing and speaking and serving on the organizing committee of workshops and conferences. Shivani is also passionate about mentoring and supporting women in tech. In January, Shivani spoke at the Women in Machine Intelligence Dinner, discussing enabling lifelong learning through AI. You can read our interview with Shivani here.
Sowmiya Chocka Narayanan @sowmiyac
Co-founder and CTO, Lily AI
Lily AI ia an emotional intelligence powered shopping experience that helps women discover clothes. At Lily, she has built the key engines using deep learning and machine learning algorithms. Prior to Lily, she worked at different levels of the tech stack at Box leading initiatives in - building SDKs, applications for industry verticals & MDM solutions. She was also an early engineer at Pocket Gems where she worked on the core game engine and built acquisition and retention strategies for #1 & #4 top grossing gaming apps. Sowmiya is a UT Austin grad with Masters in Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Stacey Svetlichnaya @metaphdor
Senior Research Engineer, Flickr
Stacey’s work is Flickr is focused on improving image search and discovery via deep learning. Her deep learning research includes object recognition, image aesthetic quality and style classification, photo caption generation, and modeling emoji usage. She has worked extensively on Flickr image search and data pipelines, as well as automating content discovery and recommendation. Prior to Flickr, she helped develop a visual similarity search engine with LookFlow, which Yahoo acquired in 2013. Stacey holds a BS and MS in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University.
Terah Lyons @terahlyons
Executive director, The Partnership on AI
The Partnership on AI aims to establish the best practices on AI technologies, and to serve as an open platform to discuss the technology, and its influence on people and society.
Since May 2017, Terah has been a Technology Policy Fellow at the Mozilla Foundation, and is also a member of the Board of Directors at the Harvard Alumni Association. She previously served as Policy Advisor to the U.S. Chief Technology Officer at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. While serving as Policy Advisor Terah led a policy portfolio in the Obama Administration White House focused on emergent technology related to Machine Intelligence, including Artificial Intelligence, robotics and more.
Tessa Lau @tessalau
CTO, Savioke
Tessa has a breadth of experience covering a range of areas, including robotics, computer science, Machine Learning and data analytics. Up until March of this year Tessa was the CTO and ‘Chief Robot Whisperer’ of Savioke, an autonomous delivery robot. Tessa has made a big impact at Savioke in her time there, including leading the early software team to develop the first generation relay system and creating a Field Operations Organisation from the group up.
If you’d like to hear from leading women who are helping advance AI, be sure to subscribe to the RE•WORK Women in AI Podcast and also check out our Women in AI Blogs. Previous guests include experts from Facebook, McGill University, LinkedIn who have discussed a range of topics including psychologically aware AI, personalised healthcare and the commercialisation of deep learning.
If you would like to hear from some of these women, then join us at one of our Women in AI Events. These events are open to both men and women for an evening of networking and discussions surrounding some of the key areas of the rapidly advancing technology, supporting women in the industry.