Women in Data Science @ Penn Conference
2022 Agenda
Wednesday, February 9
12:00 – 12:10 p.m. ET
Welcoming and Introductions
Erika James
Dean
The Wharton School
Mary Purk
Executive Director
Wharton Customer Analytics and Wharton AI for Business
12:10–12:50 p.m. ET
Keynote Address
Michelle Peluso, W’93
Executive Vice President & Chief Customer Officer, CVS Health, and Co-President of Retail
Digital Transformations – How Emergent Technologies and Global Circumstances Redefine Industries
In her keynote address, Michelle Peluso will discuss her career journey thus far, the experience she has had at the forefront of digital transformations, the ways the pandemic has impacted healthcare, and some career tips she has found valuable along the way.
12:50–1:20 p.m. ET
Industry Speaker
Ren Zhang, GrW ’00 & ’02
Executive, Director of Data Science
Amazon
The Path to Scale with AI
With a combination of an explosion of data, and technological advancements, AI has transformed our world and the industries. It helps provide relevant customer experiences, enhanced operational efficiencies, prudent risk decisions, proactive fraud detection and optimal price assignments. Despite the benefit of AI, many organizations struggle to get tangible return from AI quickly and to eventually scale.
Ren Zhang, Data Science Director in Amazon, will speak about strategies of how to drive tangible business return and how to scale through AI with industry examples.
1:20–2:00 p.m. ET
Break/Networking Session
Linda Zhao
Professor of Statistics, Academic Director of the Dual Master’s Degree in Statistics
The Wharton School
How to Become a Successful Data Scientist – with Ren Zhang, Executive, Director of Data Science, Amazon
Amazon’s Ren Zhang, GrW ’00 & ’02, joins Professor Linda Zhao to consider what factors and behaviors lead to success in data science.
Mary Purk
Executive Director
Wharton Customer Analytics and Wharton AI for Business
Mentorship in Analytics & Data Science Careers
This networking session will focus on sharing advice around finding mentors, successful mentorship practices, and generally supporting other women in the field.
2:05–2:35 p.m. ET
Academic Speaker
Blanca Himes
Associate Professor, Biostatistics and Epidemiology
Perelman School
Improving the Health of Individuals and Populations with Electronic Health Records
Electronic health records (EHRs) offer convenient and low-cost access to longitudinal data for large numbers of patients, which have made them an invaluable resource for biomedical research. EHRs are limited for the study of conditions in which social and environmental exposures play a prominent role because social, economic, and environmental information is not often captured during patient care. This talk will show how EHR data can be enhanced by linking to it external data on social, economic, and environmental factors, thereby enabling the identification of individual-level health risk factors and the conduct of geospatial analyses to identify areas at peak risk of specific conditions.
2:35–2:55 p.m. ET
Academic Lightning Talks
Sally Hu
Data Scientist
Microsoft
The Impact of Socioeconomic Status on Career Choice & Advancement
Isabella Huang
Engineer, Junior
Watchung Hills Regional High School
Carbon, Cancer, and Contamination: The Relationships Between Pollution, Temperature, and Disease
Sydney Bramen
Senior Class Treasurer, Senior
The Baldwin School, Bryn Mawr
Carbon, Cancer, and Contamination: The Relationships Between Pollution, Temperature, and Disease
Joanna Liu
Champion Swimmer, Senior
Campolindo High School
Carbon, Cancer, and Contamination: The Relationships Between Pollution, Temperature, and Disease
Emily Wang
Editor-in-Chief, Maroon Newspaper, Junior
Scarsdale High School
Carbon, Cancer, and Contamination: The Relationships Between Pollution, Temperature, and Disease
2:55 p.m. ET
Closing Remarks
Linda Zhao
Professor of Statistics, Academic Director of the Dual Master’s Degree in Statistics
The Wharton School
Thursday, February 10
12:00 p.m.–12:10 p.m. ET
Welcome & Introductions
Vijay Kumar
Nemirovsky Family Dean
Penn Engineering
Susan Davidson
Weiss Professor, Computer and Information Science
Penn Engineering
12:10–12:40 p.m. ET
Industry Panel
Sponsored by Wharton Women in Business (WWIB)
Mary Purk (moderator)
Executive Director
Wharton Customer Analytics and Wharton AI for Business
Jenny Wolski (panelist)
Vice President of Retail Strategy and Experience
Petco
Gayatri Narayan (panelist)
Senior Vice President, Digital Products and Services
PepsiCo
Victoria Lewis-Bogatyrenko, WG’94 (panelist)
Senior Vice President
UnitedHealth Networks
12:40–1:10 p.m. ET
Academic Speaker
Hamsa Bastani
Assistant Professor, Operations, Information and Decisions
The Wharton School
Efficient and Targeted COVID-19 Border Testing Via Reinforcement Learning
Hear how Hamsa Bastani partnered with the Greek government to utilize data science and machine learning to mitigate the risk of COVID-19 for Greek citizens.
1:10–1:55 p.m. ET
Break/Networking Session
Susan Davidson
Weiss Professor, Computer and Information Science
Penn Engineering
Skills for Data Scientists
Data Science is an exciting field, so how can you get involved? What are the skills that you should develop? This networking session will focus on skills for Data Scientists, the MSE Data Science program at Penn, and resources to enable organizations to build their own Data Science educational programs.
Mary Purk
Executive Director
Wharton Customer Analytics and Wharton AI for Business
Mentorship in Analytics & Data Science Careers
This networking session will focus on sharing advice around finding mentors, successful mentorship practices, and generally supporting other women in the field.
1:55–2:25 p.m. ET
Academic Speaker
Tal Rabin
Professor Computer and Information Science
Penn Engineering
Sharing Data while Preserving Privacy (and Applications to Cryptocurrency Wallets)
This session highlights how multi-party computation can help us maintain data privacy without sacrificing the optimization that this information often provides.
2:25–2:55 p.m. ET
Academic Lightning Talks
Gracia Chen
Senior
Miramonte High School
Demographic Effects on Gun Ownership in New York City
Yulan Wang
Junior
Theodore Roosevelt High School
Demographic Effects on Gun Ownership in New York City
Sidarth Krishna
Junior
Acton Boxborough High School
Demographic Effects on Gun Ownership in New York City
Anushka Acharya
Junior
Amity Regional High School
Demographic Effects on Gun Ownership in New York City
Joy An
Junior
Choate Rosemary Hall
Demographic Effects on Gun Ownership in New York City
Somang (So) Han
Master’s Student, Data Science
University of Pennsylvania
Multimodal Movie Genre Classification
Academic Lightning Talks feature research from high school and college students.
2:55–3:00 p.m. ET
Closing Remarks
Susan Davidson
Weiss Professor, Computer and Information Science
Penn Engineering
Mary Purk
Executive Director
Wharton Customer Analytics and Wharton AI for Business
Linda Zhao
Professor of Statistics, Academic Director of the Dual Master’s Degree in Statistics
The Wharton School