Data Science At Scale Everywhere for Everyone
Doris Lee
ACM Distinguished Speaker
CEO and co-founder of Ponder
03/11/2024
Over the past decade, the democratization of data science tooling, particularly through Python libraries like pandas and NumPy, has empowered practitioners of all levels to work with data efficiently. Yet, despite the popularity of these tools, they present challenges as practitioners look to scale their workflows to production. In this talk, we explore the limitations of these tools and pain points that data scientists encounter when dealing with data at scale. Next, I will share how we are solving this problem at Ponder, with both our open-source project Modin and our groundbreaking technology that lets anyone run their Python data workflows directly in their databases.
Searching for Justice in Programming Language Design
Amy J. Ko
ACM Distinguished Speaker, Professor
University of Washington
03/25/2024
From its earliest days, computing has been an eclectic project of capitalism, war, colonialism, and white supremacy. Its central Western values of utility, efficiency, rationality, and mathematical beauty have enabled sweeping changes to culture and communication, but also amplified some of the worst parts of these oppressive systems. At the heart of many of these forces are programming languages, which deeply embed many assumptions about their users: English fluency, normative ability, and a devotion to speed. These assumptions create a culture of computing that structurally excludes vast parts of humanity from participating. In this talk, I describe some of my nascent efforts to design the opposite: programming language that seeks to be global, accessible, playful, and simple, embracing all of humanity’s natural languages and abilities, while trading computing’s devotion to efficiency for simplicity and silliness. Throughout, I’ll provide demonstrations of these gestures toward programming language justice, pointing to alternative visions for how we might make with computing and who might do the making.
Gender-Inclusive Software and Beyond
Margaret Burnett
ACM Distinguished Speaker, Distinguished Professor
Oregon State University
04/08/2024
How can software industry professionals (e.g., developers, UI/UX professionals, product managers) assess whether their software supports diverse users? And if they find problems, how can they fix them? We begin with a summary of GenderMag, a systematic inspection method for finding and fixing “gender inclusivity bugs" -- biases against different genders in software interfaces and workflows. We then show what software industry professionals are doing with it in the real world, from their bias finds & fixes to their practices & pitfalls in using it. Finally, we introduce InclusiveMag, a meta-method that can be used by HCI researchers to generate systematic inclusiveness methods for other dimensions of diversity.
Computer Science, Engineering, and Science: It comes down to bits and pieces, and practices
Laura Peticolas
Associate Director, EdEon STEM Learning
Sonoma State University
04/15/2024
Why are the Physics and Astronomy majors coding? Isn't that what computer science majors do? How is coding different in Computer Science, Engineering, and Science? If there are so many differences, how should we teach coding in the K-12 classrooms? This talk answers these questions and brings up more questions. Specifically, the presentation will include examples of how coding in various careers can differ and/or be similar. This presentation also showcases what the EdEon STEM Learning Department is doing to address several challenges to teaching coding in middle and high school science classrooms.
Scanning the Internet, Revealing Risks and Security Insights About Attack Surfaces
Dallas Womack ('21)
Software Engineer
Censys
04/22/2024
Keeping track of internet infrastructure can be difficult, especially as companies migrate to the cloud, workforces become more distributed, and companies acquire security debt from mergers or acquisitions. Censys helps discover, manage, and remediate risks in a company's digital foot print. Created by the founders of the Zmap project, Censys's Attack Surface Management Platform helps organizations understand their external exposures with their Global Internet Map. This presentation aims to give the audience an understanding of what an attack surface management system is, the data that Censys uses to build the attack surfaces of its customers, and how the ASM platform works. Additionally, the talk will consist of a deep dive into how assets are attributed to an organization based on seed data that is provided during the automated on boarding process.