Margot Gerritsen
Stanford University
Biography: Margot Gerritsen is the Executive Director of WiDS Worldwide. She is Professor [Emerita] at Stanford University. Margot grew up in the Netherlands and left for sunnier and hillier places after receiving her MSc degree in Applied Mathematics at the University of Technology in Delft.
After wandering around Scandinavia, Atlanta, and Colorado, she went to Stanford University and received her Ph.D. in Computational Mathematics in 1996. Feeling she needed to go further West still, she spent 5 years as a Lecturer at the University of Auckland in New Zealand before returning to Stanford in 2001 as a faculty member. From 2010-2018 she was the Director of the
Stanford Institute for Computational & Mathematical Engineering. During this time, she founded WiDS with two friends and organized the first WiDS conference in 2015.
Margot is a Fellow of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and received honorary doctorates from the University of Uppsala and the University of Eindhoven.
Margot now resides in Bend with her husband Paul. She loves the outdoors and is frequently in the mountains or on the rivers with Paul, their dog Millie, and whenever he can take time off from work, her son Callum. She is also trying to learn to play banjo.
Talk Title: Data Science By All For All: Why WiDS and Where from Here?
Online Via ZOOM | Mar 13, 2023 | 17:00 – 17:30 (UTC+2)
Abstract: Data Science is booming and this increasingly critical field is (re)shaping our world. Data Science affects everyone everywhere, yet the opportunities for positive impact on societies, and the associated wealth (and power) creation are not shared by all: women are significantly underrepresented in all areas of data science globally.
WiDS (Women in Data Science Worldwide) envisions a future in which women, and other historically underrepresented groups, are fully integrated at all levels in Data Science and accepted as partners in problem definition, solution making, decision making, and wealth sharing.
Our WiDS mission is to help create and nurture this change and build a global actionable organization of women in data science.
In this talk, I will discuss why we started WiDS, share activities and stories from our community, and look ahead at what is next. I'm thrilled to be at your conference in Alexandria.