Keynote 1
Follow Bhavani Thuraisingham at:
Why a Career in Data Science for a Woman? + the Role of Mentoring to Support Women to achieve Career Success
Abstract: The representation of women and underrepresented minority communities has increased a great deal in Computer Science. However, in many disciplines of Computer Science such as Data Science and Cyber Security, it is vastly underrepresented. Far fewer women have been elected to IEEE Fellows than men when it should be around 50%. In addition, fewer women are in positions of power both in academic institutions (e.g., Engineering Deans) and in the C-Suite in corporations as well as on corporate boards. This is partly because of the number of women at say first level management are far fewer than men. Then you have to rise up the ladder from that pool and so women are already at a disadvantage. One solution to this problem is to engage women at a much earlier age – perhaps even in elementary school and focus on Computer Science that includes Data Science as a subject. We need mentors to start promoting girls and women. For example, senior researchers and practitioners have to support women in getting promotions and awards such as IEEE and ACM Fellow and various Technical Recognition Awards. We need to explain to the girls the benefit of having a high paying job. This presentation will discuss the benefits of having a Career in Data Science for a Woman and the challenges involved in developing a successful career. One such challenge I will focus on is the lack of mentorship for women. We are living in a complex world that is rapidly evolving due to technology. While there are numerous career opportunities in areas like Data Science and Cyber Security, the competition is also extremely intense around the globe. It is almost impossible for a person to succeed in his/her career without the advice and mentorship of the senior researchers, developers and technologists. I will discuss the importance of mentoring especially for women in Data Science and give examples of my personal story on how lack of mentoring was initially tough on my career and how I chose mentors who have then supported me and helped me to thrive in my career.
Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham is the Founders Chair Professor of Computer Science, the Founding Executive Director of the Cyber Security Research and Education Institute, and the Co-Director of the Women in Cyber Security and Women in Data Science Centers at the University of Texas at Dallas. She is also a visiting senior research fellow at Kings College, the University of London. She is an elected Fellow of the IEEE, the ACM, the AAAS and the NAI (National Academy of Inventors). Her research, development and education efforts have been on integrating cyber security and data science/machine learning for the past 36+ years including at Honeywell Inc., The MITRE Corporation, the National Science Foundation, and Academia. Her work for the industry and government has included designing and developing one of the early high assurance secure data management systems, combining security with real-time processing for control systems, integrating multiple secure systems across geographical regions, and policy based secure information sharing between organizations in the US, UK and Italy. More recently her focus has been on malware analysis, ransomware attacks and developing trustworthy machine learning-based solutions for tackling the cyber security challenges as well as on transferring the technology to commercial products. She has received several awards including the IEEE Computer Society’s 1997 Technical Achievement Award, ACM SIGSAC () 2010 Outstanding Contributions Award, 2013 IBM Faculty Award, ACM CODASPY (Conference on Data and Applications Security and Privacy) 2017 Lasting Research Award, the 2017 Dallas Business journal Women in Technology Award, and the IEEE ComSoc 2019 Technical Recognition Award for Communications and Information Security. She has delivered around 200 keynote and featured addresses, authored multiple books, published numerous journal articles and conference papers, participated in several industry panels including for Fortune Media and Dell Technologies World as well as invented several patents in cyber security and data science. She was named by the D Magazine’s D CEO Publication as one of 500 most influential business leaders in North Texas in 2021 and 2022. She received her PhD in Computability Theory from the University Wales, UK and the prestigious earned higher doctorate (D.Eng) form the University of Bristol, UK for her published work in Secure Data Management.
Keynote 2
Follow Ben Chin Ooi at:
Architecture of a Verifiable Database System for Supporting Digital Trust
Abstract: The advancement of technologies has caused many organizations to re-strategize and adopt digital transformation. Along with it, transactions and interactions between organizations have been digitized. However, digitalization is creating the dependency of society on increasingly complex, interconnected systems and networks, which increases our exposure to various threats such as loss of data, loss of control over the software systems and networks, mistrust due to ill-intended contents and actions, misuse of technology and so on. To bootstrap trust and support secure data sharing, cross-institution transactions and business in the digital world, various technologies are needed to empower cross-institutional collaboration with increasing trust through secure communication, transfer and exchange of digital documents and assets, verifiability, and auditability. Trusted database technology is foundational to supporting digital trust. It is required to not only ensure privacy, integrity of data, but also of the computation on the data. The design space for trusted database systems is vast, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. I shall discuss design and implementation issues and requirements of a flexible trusted database system and our verifiable database system.
Prof. Beng Chin Ooi is Lee Kong Chian Centennial Professor and NGS faculty member at the National University of Singapore (NUS), an adjunct Chair Professor at Zhejiang University, China, and the director of NUS AI Innovation and Commercialization Centre at Suzhou, China. He obtained his BSc (1st Class Honors) and PhD from Monash University, Australia, in 1985 and 1989 respectively. He is a fellow of the ACM , IEEE, and Singapore National Academy of Science (SNAS). Beng Chin serves as a non-executive and independent director of ComfortDelgro, a transportation company, and AlDigi Holdings, a Fintech company.
Beng Chin’s research interests include database systems, distributed and blockchain systems, and large scale analytics, in the aspects of system architectures, performance issues, security, accuracy and correctness. He works closely with the industry (eg. NUHS, Jurong Health, Tan Tok Seng Hospital and Singapore General Hospital on healthcare analytics and prediabetes prevention), and exploits IT for efficiency in various application domains, including healthcare, finance and smart city.
Beng Chin was the recipient of ACM SIGMOD 2009 Contributions award, a co-winner of the 2011 Singapore President’s Science Award, the recipient of 2012 IEEE Computer Society Kanai award, 2013 NUS Outstanding Researcher Award, 2014 IEEE TCDE CSEE Impact Award, 2016 China Computer Federation (CCF) Overseas Outstanding Contributions Award, 2020 ACM SIGMOD EF Codd Innovation Award, and 2021 NUS Research Recognition Award.
Beng Chin has served as a Vice PC Chair for ICDE’00,04,06, PC co-Chair for SSD’93 and DASFAA’05, PC Chair for ACM SIGMOD’07, Core DB PC chair for VLDB’08, and PC co-Chair for IEEE ICDE’12, IEEE Big Data’15, BOSS’18, IEEE ICDE’18, Industry track of VLDB’19, BCDL’19 and ACM SoCC’20. He has served as the President of VLDB Endowment (2014-2017), and editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions on Knowledge Engineering (2008-2012), Elsevier Journal of Big Data Research (2014-2016), and ACM/IMS Transactions on Data Science (2018-2021).