The buzz around Women’s Day has taken a centre stage in the analytics and tech industry. To empower women in data science and talk about their inspiring stories about women data science leaders, our Women in AI and Analytics conference — Rising 2019 is going to be the biggest meeting of women in data science. The conference which aims to bring leaders, early-stage professionals and students from academia and industry will serve as a place to meet and support women developers in the data science field.

The conference will be a day full of learnings, sharing experiences and insightful talks with a slew of women leaders and full of opportunities to learn about data science-focused career paths, explore business opportunities and build strong connections in the field.

The conference will begin with a keynote by Saraswathi Ramachandra who is the head of Analytics Center of Excellence at Danske IT. A senior leader with an experience of more than 21 years in various domains, she is going to open the note with a very relevant topic — Is AI Sexist? At a time when we are fighting issues such as sexism, there have been several instances where AI-based tool has proven to be biased against women. Her talk will focus on technology and if it is dooming to reflect the worst in all of us.

This interesting and thought-provoking session would be followed by a talk from Deepika Sandeep, who is the head of AI and analytics at BLP Clean Energy. She would focus on how to drive towards a cleaner future through data.

This would be followed by an engaging panel discussion, titled Women’s Day 2020 — Changing the Narrative. It would be lead by industry stalwarts Anshu Sharma, Managing Director, Global Head – Retail Banking Technology at Standard Chartered Bank, Pankaj Rai Senior Vice President Strategy at Wells Fargo, Sahana Shetty HR Leader – Technology at ANZ, Aparajita Karimpana Senior Director Analytics – Envestnet Yodlee and Barkha Sharma, CEO and Founder, Bash.ai.

The Rising is also going to host Women in AI Leadership Awards, in association with Jigsaw Academy which will celebrate Tech leaders driving disruption and innovation in data science and AI. Celebrating the importance of women in AI, the awards are aimed at recognising the achievements of technology leaders who have made an incredible impact in the tech community by developing AI solutions.

After a session of networking over lunch, the second half of the day is full of interesting talks by Vikram Vij Sr. Vice President, Samsung R&D Institute, Dharani Karthikeyan Director of engineering at SAP,  Aruna Schwarz CEO at Stelae Technologies who are going to talk about topics such as Samsung Bixby Voice Assistant, unlocking the power of intelligent enterprise with augmented analytics, building an enterprise software company with customer revenue and no VC funding respectively.

Up next, Why We Need More Women In AI, a talk by Vaishali Kasture Co-Founder at Sonder Connect will focus on how AI will pass on the biases of its creators and the data its creators feed it. She will focus on how if we want there to be a woman’s perspective in the new world of AI, we need women to be part of it.

The conference also deals with bigger issues that women face, for example, breast cancer, which goes unnoticed in its early stages, leading to larger problems. The talk by Geetha Manjunath who is the founder and CEO of NIRAMAI will focus on enabling early stage breast cancer detection using AI. Manjunath will talk about the novel and noble application of AI in the area of healthcare developed at NIRAMAI – a noninvasive, affordable and accessible solution to detect early stage breast cancer.

After insightful talks by Damini Gupta,  AVP, AI and Fintech at Mphasis NextLabs and Shivani R Gupta, Head, Data Science and AI, Financial Services at Capgemini, the concluding talk will be delivered by Mathangi Sri, Head of Data Science at PhonePe who will share her experience of working with data. The talk will focus on her learnings over the last 15 years where she has worked across multiple problems and multiple data types, and how she overcame the challenges and explored new opportunities.

The biggest gathering of women professionals in data science, IT industry and academia, Rising 2019 is open to all. Apart from engaging talks by the industry stalwarts, it will serve as a perfect platform to meet organisations, build relationships, learn about data science-focused career paths, explore business opportunities and build strong connections in this field.

Come join us for a day full of learning, empowerment and fun at The Rising 2019, on 8 March at Taj MG Road, Bengaluru. You can book your tickets here.