Women in Data Science (WiDS)
recently ran its 4th Annual Datathon, a three-week event that ended on the 1st of March. The WiDS Datathon aims to inspire women across the globe to learn more about data science, and to create a supportive environment for women to connect with others in their community who share similar interests. WiDS challenged this year’s participants to employ data models to discover whether a patient admitted to an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) has been diagnosed with a particular type of diabetes.
While mentor and speaker positions are reserved for women, anyone, from experts to novices, is welcome to participate in this challenge. For those who have never tried machine learning, the local ambassadors had a series of guides and mentoring sessions to help them get started with the algorithms and dataset.
As sponsors,
Assignar
played a crucial role in mentoring and guiding participants through sessions during the WiDs Sydney Datathon. Assignar recognizes and embraces that women, with the support of amazing, diverse teams, play a key role in the evolution of technology and innovation. As a result, the company is deliberate about investing in diversity, women in technology, and the future.
The Analytics and Data Science Director
Duhita Khadepau
at Assignar, who is also a Sydney WiDS Ambassador, is a strong believer in this philosophy. Since last year she has been mentoring two women,
Zarmina Muhammed
and
Nikita Sharma
, who have now joined the Assignar family as Data Analysts.
Now, these women are paying it forward. By teaming up, Duhita, Zarmina, and Nikita are helping to train other women who want to make their mark in Data Science. The Assignar team has worked hard to host multiple mentoring sessions across three weeks. Sessions included dives into Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA), building machine learning models, and deploying them on production. Special guests, like Yogitha Mariyappa and Patricia Kavinski, Data scientists from CBA along with Theresa Anderson, Vice-chairperson of the Australian Computer Society (ACS), enriched these sessions. The Assignar Data team also coached the attendees on how to build their brand in this digital era. To say the least, all sessions were electrifying.
“It was my second mentoring session with
Women in Data Science (WiDS) at Stanford University
. The sessions have been so insightful and enlightening with regards to the data science practice and process currently being implemented in the organizations. Thank you for providing us with this platform, inspiring us, and educating anyone who wants to upskill their data science skills.” — Kanupriya Arora, Datathon participant
To celebrate and motivate the women who participated in this Datathon, Assignar will give away fantastic prizes for the top 2 winning teams from the Sydney region. The winners will be announced on the last day (12th March 2021) of the
Sydney WiDS festival
which is a week-long festival starting 8th March 2021 to 12th March 2021.
The Sydney WiDS Festival is an independent event organized by the Sydney WiDS Ambassadors to coincide with the global Stanford University Women in Data Science 24-hour Virtual Conference. Tickets for the Women in Data Science Sydney Festival are free and available from https://widssydney.com.au/
