Sex and Gender Biases in Artificial Intelligence and Health, under debate at the Palau Macaya

16 March 2021

The ”la Caixa” Foundation Social Observatory begins the new cycle “Sex and gender biases in artificial intelligence and health”, one of the innovative projects selected in the last call, organized by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center. The objective of the cycle is to exchange knowledge and analyze the social, ethical and technological challenges of sex and gender bias in research in the field of health, personalized medicine and artificial intelligence (AI).

The first conference of the cycle will define the objectives of the cycle, proposing an open debate with international experts to analyze the implications of sex and gender bias in the development and applications of new technologies in the field of health and personalized medicine, in particular the risk of amplification of biases and their perpetuation with the application of Artificial Intelligence in the population. It will be in charge of Alfonso Valencia, ICREA research professor, director of the Department of Life Sciences at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) and director of the Spanish National Bioinformatics Institute (INB-ISCIII); and Maria Teresa Ferretti, co-founder and scientific director of the Women’s Brain Project (WBP) and professor at the Medical University of Vienna.

The event will be opened by Zulema Altamirano, director of the Women and Science Unit of the Ministry of Science and Innovation; Laura Pérez, Deputy Mayor for Social Rights, Global Justice, Feminisms and LGTBI of the Barcelona City Council; María José Rementeria and Nataly Buslón, Social Link Analytics, Bioinfo4women Program, Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC).

The conference will be held on Tuesday, March 16 at 6:00 p.m. in Palau Macaya, and can be followed in presence with prior reservation and limited capacity, or in streaming with retransmission in Spanish and English.

 

Building the future for equality

The cycle will be coordinated from the Bioinfo4women (B4W) program, a non-profit initiative of the Department of Life Sciences of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, which began its activities in 2018 to promote research carried out by women in computational biology, with special emphasis in his transition from post-doctorate to independent junior positions. B4W supports computational biology researchers by promoting the exchange of knowledge and experiences of outstanding female researchers through activities such as seminars, conferences, training opportunities, and mentors. This program seeks to give greater visibility to the contribution of women in different fields of biology, with a particular focus on the areas of personalized medicine, bioinformatics and HPC, and ultimately, it aims to build a more collaborative, supportive scientific community and egalitarian that benefits society as a whole.

 

Further information here.

See brochure here.