The 2nd WiDS Villach Conference has once again succeeded in bringing the renowned Women in Data Science format of the US elite university Stanford to Austria, thus creating an intraregional stage for a topic that is currently occupying high-tech companies worldwide and is currently in greater demand than ever on the labour market.
The organizing team centered around statistician Olivia Pfeiler from the Villach Research Centre KAI and mathematician Anita Kloss-Brandstätter from the Carinthia University of Applied Sciences is creating an urgently needed platform for data scientists in the region with the WiDS conference as well as consolidating the status of Villach as a high-tech location and haven for forward-looking ideas and initiatives.
The invitation to the second edition of the conference was accepted by almost 90 participants on site and more than 150 people from all over the world in a hybrid live stream setting. They were greeted by guests of honour, and received presentations by regional experts who gave insights into research and practice on topics such as "Text Analysis and Natural Language Processing", "Data Science in Health Applications" and "Data Science for Future Mobility".
"We have been experiencing in practice for years that the demand for expertise in the field of Data Science is increasing enormously everywhere, but at the same time the proportion of female representatives in our field is actually decreasing from an already low level," said organizer Olivia Pfeiler when explaining the motivation for holding the conference. "The experts set the basic topics within their areas of expertise, and this year we were able to attract not only top-class speakers from the three country triangle of Italy, Slovenia, and Austria , but also interesting female scientists from all over Austria and beyond," said FH Professor Anita Kloss-Brandstätter when talking about this year's program.
Videos of the WiDS Villach 2021 lectures
- can be found on the WiDS Villach YouTube Channel
WiDS Villach 2021 press releases:
- Futurezone.at: announcement of the conference & announcement of the live stream
- Kleine Zeitung: Interview with Katja Schechtner & follow-up report on the conference (not available online)
- The Weekly / meinbezirk.at: Follow-up report on the conference
- 5min Villach: Follow-up report on the conference
Contact:
FH-Prof.in Dr.in rer. nat. Priv.-Doz. DI Mag.a Anita Kloss-Brandstätter
University lecturer FH Carinthia
a.kloss-brandstaetter[at]fh-kaernten[dot]at
