Highlights of Engineering Week 2021 at the Universidad del Valle

With dozens of talks, academic presentations and other events, Engineering Week 2021 at the Faculty of Engineering of the Universidad del Valle (Univalle) was a great success. Here are some of the highlights of the week.

The Bad Habits of Artificial Intelligence

Although many of the talks focused on the visible effects of gender inequality, two in particular focused on the imperceptible effects that reinforce gender biases.

In her talk, international guest  Londa Schiebinger, who is a professor of History of Science at Stanford University, explained that many of the technologies we use every day, for example searching Google images or some medical devices, have certain implicit biases.

In one example, Professor Schiebinger showed that Google Translate trained its algorithm using historical data (books and other texts from the last 40 years), but it turned out that almost all translations change the feminine pronoun to a masculine one, because this was the usage most common in the database.

"With a single algorithm they ended 40 years of gender progress... but that was not their intention," explained Professor Schiebinger, "The past is projected into the future."

The same biases exist in hardware as well. This is the case of the oximeter, an indispensable tool during the Covid-19 pandemic that, unfortunately, does not report oxygen saturation correctly in patients with darker skin, putting people at risk.

According to Professor Schiebinger, there is an intersectionality (crossing of different factors), where race and gender biases can combine and amplify, for example, technologies such as test dummies developed by males who do not take into account the medical needs of women from ethnic minorities.

She suggested that we cannot go back to a world that ignores gender, as we do not have the luxury of ignoring such opportunities.

“We don't do gender analysis for theoretical physics... black holes have nothing to do with sex and gender, but with so many other things, we should be doing gender analysis .... We should care if there is a group of men designing something, they should take these things into account. " 

International Lecture: - Taking into account the aspects of gender to improve innovation results. 

María Pérez, philosopher of Univalle; Maria Fernanda Acero, Statistician from the National University of Colombia; Dr. Nataly Buslón, researcher at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (Centro Nacional de Supercomputación) and Margarita María Rueda (MBA), Associate Dean of the Sergio Arboleda University; also had a discussion on the subject, but from the perspective of women in STEM.

Acero explained that the diversity of thought in the teams that develop technologies is very valuable.

"The best thing is to have more diversity, not only of women, but diversity in your points of view, for example I am a statistician but I have a philosopher friend who has a very different perspective"


Women in Space 

Univalle has many graduates in the aerospace industry and some of them shared their experiences in a panel discussion.

Dra. Nidia Gallego, an engineer at the National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA; Dr. Bonnie Prado, who works at LeoLabs, an American company that protects satellites in low earth orbit; Alexandra Erazo, a Physical Engineering student from Unicauca; and Dr. Olga Lucía Quintero from EAFIT University; talked about the challenges of women in this industry but also about the exciting opportunities.

Prado explained that the recent incident involving a Russian missile hitting a satellite drew attention to her field: orbital debris.

"The exact sciences are not easy, but they are very interesting," Dr. Prado explained, adding that although she and Dr. Gallego are abroad, this is not the only way to get ahead.
   
"Yes, we are overseas, but we are still very involved with what is happening in Colombia ...
You have to work hard to achieve your dreams, but leaving the country permanently is not the only option. "

The discussion was moderated by Profesor Mónica Villaquirán of the School of Materials Engineering at Univalle.


 


Economic Gap

One of the talks that touched the area of equity was chaired by Professor Sara Aida Rodríguez, a researcher at the Fatigue and Surface Research Group .  She said that in the specific case of many engineering fields, women are earning 15 percent less than men, despite having the same qualifications, years of experience and workloads… in exactly the same job.

She explained that an increase in the participation of women in engineering can help close this gap: in general, women earn equal to men with at least one year less training, which represents a difference of 24% in the case of most professionals.

“Women engineers have wages 2% higher than the average of professional women and this difference increases with the years since graduation and 15 years after graduation, an engineer has a salary 30% higher than an average professional woman with the same number of years after graduation, " Professor Rodríguez explained.

Tecnología contra violencia de género

In a discussion that showed a very practical use of technology to change lives, Amal Hosni, Systems Engineer and  Microsoft MVP winner; and Ana V. Espinosa Moya, Executive Director of NGO Fundación Violeta, showed off a "panic button" they had developed. 

This device, just by pressing the button, can emit about 90 decibels of sound and, at the same moment, send an alert to three chosen people. The hope is that it can help thousands of women who are victims of gender violence in Colombia.

Although the product, which includes the device and other services, costs COP 90,000 at this time, the goal is to make it available to more women through government subsidies and economies of scale.

Espinosa Moya explained that to confront the epidemic hidden violence at each level of society there is an app that has all the forms needed to file charges, ready to be downloaded.
"They themselves can report the crimes," Espinosa Moya said , adding that the evidence recorded through the app can also help by attaching the evidence that the Prosecutor's Office needs to sucessfully prosecute the abusers.

 

Tecnologías para prevenir violencia contra la mujer

Spin Off Universitarias

Photo: Screenshot from the Spin Off Conversation. Credit: Andrew James / NCC / Univalle

Andrea Navas Calixto, the moderator of the chat called "Spin Off Universitarias. General concepts, cases and gender approach," explained that university spin-offs (companies that turn discoveries into commercial products or services), are an opportunity to take a research group to another level and provide new job to graduates.

According to Navas Calixto, to survive the so-called "valley of death" in entrepreneurship, strong collaborations with public and private entities are required, such as the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation of Colombia (Minciencias), universities and private investors. In the discussion, Emiro Tovar from Minciencias explained the role of the government and the legal perspective was presented by Catalina Atehortúa García, a lawyer from the University of Medellín.

Also participating were Dr. Renata Reinhiemer from Argentina and María del Pilar Monserat Pérez from Mexico, who provided important information about their work and experience forming university Spinoffs in their countries.

"From their voices, we managed to motivate our teachers, students and graduates to this possibility of technology-based entrepreneurship as a feasible option," Navas Calixto said.

Women in Cybersecurity

Two leaders in the field of cybersecurity are Liliana Reyes, business development manager of 5G and Telco Cloud for Fortinet América Latina, and Diana Rodríguez, Marketing specialist and renovation manager for, also for Fortinet América Latina.

Rodríguez said that it is important for women to know that there is more than one path to a successful career in STEM: she flunked subjects in her studies, but reached her goals.
 
"I went to the internship office every day, but I didn't make it through with my grade point average, so I looked for my own practical experience and I had the opportunity to work at IBM, Oracle and Microsoft," Rodriguez said.

Also, Rodríguez explained, there is a false impression about female cybersecurity workers.

"We are not boring people who have no life... We work hard in our field, but in the pre-pandemic, I had a social life, I went out to dance, I have three pets, it is a very normal life," she said.

 
Lecture: Cybersecurity, an opportunity for profesional women 

Face to Face Activities

In addition to the virtual programming, there was also an important face-to-face part: a student business market, a sports tournament, and a closing event with dancers and two live bands.

Vivian Liceth Caravajal Vasco, a Statistics student, said that most of the business projects were for handicrafts and it was a good place to learn the basics of entrepreneurship.

"There are drinks, food, face creams, a girl with acrylic lamps... there is a little of everything."

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