[ITV] Katherine Johnson: NASA's 'Hidden Figures' mathematician

✔️ Katherine Johnson Dies at 101; African-American Mathematician Broke Barriers at NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration
• Who were celebrated in the 2016 movie “Hidden Figures” (on IMDb.com)
• Based on the book "Hidden Figures: the American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians who helped win the Space Race" by Margot Lee Shetterly
• ITV Video

► Her Contribution to Space Exploration

• She was one of several hundred rigorously educated, supremely capable yet largely unheralded women who, well before the modern feminist movement, worked as NASA mathematicians
• Her impeccable calculations had already helped plot the successful flight of Alan Shepard
• Who became the first American in space in 1961
• The next year, she likewise helped make it possible for John Glenn to become the first American to orbit the Earth
• Yet throughout Mrs. Johnson’s 33 years in NASA’s Flight Research Division, and for decades afterward, almost no one knew her name
• But it was not only her sex that kept her long marginalized and long unsung
• Katherine, a West Virginia native who began her scientific career in the age of Jim Crow, was also African-American

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By Sejal Karia
Source: itv.com

[BCG Gamma - Study] BigDataFR recommends: Data Science Field Remains Unattractive to Many Female STEM Students

Data Science still has gender diversity problems
✔️ What’s Keeping Women out of Data Science?
• Report by Boston Consulting Group (BCG)/BCG GAMMA
• Authors Camille Brege, Jane Danziger, Sylvain Duranton, Joerg Erlebach, Andrea G. & Marc Pauly
• BCG surveyed over 9,000 STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths) men & women

► Data Science's massive gender gap
Women make up:

• 55% of graduates
• 35% of STEM degrees
• 25% of STEM workforce
• 15-22% of Data Science professionals

►3 reasons Data Science struggles to attract STEM women

• Many women see Data Science as theoretical and low-impact
• Or as "nerdy" and competitive
• STEM women feel poorly informed about Data Science careers

• “Companies cannot simply rely on the media buzz around AI, hoping for the job of Data Scientist to magically ‘sell itself’ to students”
• “They must create a visible culture within their Data Science teams that celebrates impact and shuns competitiveness"
• "And make this career opportunity very tangible and attractive to students of both genders“

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Source: bcg.com

[ECB] BigDataFR recommends: AI White Paper: A European approach to excellence and trust

European Commission White Paper on Artificial Intelligence
✔️ A European approach to AI: Excellence and Trust
• This White Paper on AI is now open for public consultation until 19 May 2020
• European citizens, Member States and industry and academics can provide their opinion
• And contribute to a European approach for AI
• It deals with tech, ethical, legal and socio-economic aspects to boost EU's research & industrial capacity
• And to put AI, IoT and Robotics at the service of European citizens and economy

► Being ahead of tech dev & encouraging uptake by the public/private sectors

• Connect/strengthen AI research centres across Europe
• Support the development of an "AI-on-demand platform"
• And of AI applications in key sectors

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Source: ec.europa.eu