ArabWIC Saudi Arabia @ WiDS Riyadh 2018
The ArabWIC Chapter
in Saudi Arabia partnered with King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology
(KACST) in organizing and leading the “WiDS Riyadh” conference where two of the
chapter leaders were part of the event’s steering committee (Dr. Areej Al-Wabil
and Eng. Nour Alkhalil). The WIDS Riyadh conference at KACST also hosted two
ArabWIC Regional leaders, Dr. Kaoutar Almaghraoui, ArabWIC’s Chairperson and
Susan Malaika, ArabWIC’s VP for partnership, as speakers in the technical
program. The event also hosted one ArabWIC Ambassador, Dr. Norah Alghamdi from
Princess Noura University, who also participated in the WiDS Riyadh event at
the ARABWIC chapter’s booth in the event’s networking sessions with local
chapters of affinity groups (IEEE and ACM).
The event held on
the 5th of March at KACST hosted more than 40 speakers from different academic
and industrial backgrounds and covered cutting edge topics in data science like
genomic data science, environmental engineering research, social computing and
Arabic Natural Language Processing (NLP), medical diagnostics and analytics for
strategic decision making. The event hosted speakers from a wide range of
universities and institutions in the kingdome such as King Saud University,
Princess Noura University, Imam Muhammed bin Saud University, and Prince Sultan
University in Riyadh. Academics from other cities included Taif University in
the western region, Effat University in Jeddah, and Imam Abdulrahman University
in Dammam in the eastern region. Speakers from the tech industry included
panelists and speakers from Sadad, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, SheWorks
Business Centers, and local startups in data analytics such as Wasphi. The
keynotes were presented by Professor Lilac Alsafadi, Professor of Information Technology
at King Saud University and Consultant to the Governor of Munsha’at, the Saudi
Small and Medium Enterprises General Authority (smea.gov.sa), Dr. Areeg
Al-Wabil, WiDS Ambassador in Saudi Arabia and President of the ArabWIC Saudi
Arabia Chapter.
The event also
hosted parallel workshops that varied in level from beginners to advanced in
different topics such as convolutional neural networks, Apache Spark analytics,
social computing tools, neural networks for brain-computer interfaces, and
introductory sessions on data analytics workframes. A panel on Careers in Data
Science hosted professionals working in the data science industry who shed the
light on the workforce opportunities and the challenges they are facing.
The event was
concluded with a ceremony recognizing the event steering committee and
volunteers.
Media
Coverage:
Event
highlights:
Keynote with Professor Lilac Alsafadi
Panel with Dr. Razan Kattoa, Maha Shira, Dr. Moudhi Aljamea, Sarah Alsaleh (left to right)
Presentation with Dr. Nouf Alnumair, King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center KFSHRC
Keynote by Dr. Malak Althaqafi, Director of the Saudi Genome Project
Opening Remarks by the WiDS Ambassador, Dr. Areej Al-Wabil, Principal Investigator at the Center for Complex Engineering Systems at KACST and MIT
Presentation by Dr. Kaoutar El Maghraoui, Senior Scientists at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center
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