The womENcourage hackathon is aimed at providing opportunities to apply technical knowledge and skills, creativity, teamworking, and communication skills to ideate, design, and sketch a technological solution to a relevant problem.
This year the hackathon challenge: AI Fair Play Hackathon: Ensuring Equity in Language Technology, related to the conference main idea, “Responsible Informatics for Gender Equality”.
The hackathon will be an exciting full-day event where everyone with an interest in technology can attend to learn, build and share their creations in a relaxed, stimulating and welcoming environment. You don’t require to be a programmer or to be majoring in Computer Science, because we will create multidisciplinary teams formed by designers, business managers, gender equality enthusiasts, experts in IA, developers, among others, to create tech solutions. In case you need some help, there will be mentors, who can provide support and help you build your project.
What is the Hackathon Challenge?
Large Language Model answers might contain biased information, depending on what the model learned during training and what is prompted. Detecting such biases is important to ensure that information is provided objectively and to avoid strengthening potentially harmful messages. At the same time, instructing users and informing them about the presence and implications of biases is equally important, since the answers of an LLM might be missing the larger context required to understand them, to identify biases and to contextualize the sentence taking into account what is being asked and the user. For example, how should the system behave in presence of a user prompting the LLM to generate the dialogue for an actor playing a sexist role in a play related to sexism awareness?
The challenge is about developing a system that given (i) the initial prompt and (ii) the LLM answer makes any effort to address the above issues. The system might include access to external sources of information to check both the user prompt and the LLM answer, as well as interactions with the user to better understand their intentions and background, and any other mean that the team believes valuable to address the problem.
Who can join?
This year’s hackathon is open for the individuals of all genders, nationalities and ages (18+), with or without experience in IT. You can participate if you have no prior programming experience or knowledge. What matters is your interest in getting a head start in technology.
If you have a technical background, the following pre-requisites are recommended:
Awareness of AI Ethics: An understanding of ethical issues in AI, such as bias, fairness, transparency, and accountability. Participants should be aware of how AI can impact different groups and the importance of ethical AI development;
Programming in python: Ability to write simple programs and scripts, familiarity with programming using remote APIs;
Knowledge of large language models: An understanding of how large language models work and practical experience using them from an user perspective. For instance, familiarity with ChatGPT and similar assistants. Ideally some past experience in using LLMs directly, e.g., using an API.
How do I join?
You can join the Hackathon by registering firstly for the conference and then using the following form:
Please, note that your registration number is required. The Hackathon is included in the fee request to attend the conference. General registration instructions are here and the form to register in the hackathon is here.
Which are the deadlines?
Key dates are the following:
Registration (to join hackathon) opens April 22, 2024
Early registration (to join hackathon) due May 22, 2024
Late registration (to join hackathon) due June 19, 2024
Team composition published June 21, 2024
Hackathon day June 26, 2024
Why join?
Your ideas and skills have the power to address global challenges. Engage with inspiring individuals, expand your knowledge, receive mentorship from industry and academic experts, pitch your team’s achievements to an audience and to esteemed judges, and compete for prizes.
Be part of womENcourage and register now for our hackathon! This one-day event offers you the chance to showcase your skills, collaborate with a diverse team, and enjoy making new friendships!
How long it lasts?
This hackathon will be one day only, the first day of the conference. Teams will reunite in the morning and will work throughout the day, until they pitch their ideas in the late afternoon.
What are prizes?
Hackathon winners will get free registration for the next womENcourage conference!
More prizes to be announced later.
Program
09:00-09:15
Hackathon Opening & Group Exercise
Welcome, presentation and meet in person, get to know your group, and prepare for the morning!
09:15-09:30
Instructions from NEC
Presentation from Chia-Chen Hung & Jaime Fuster
09:30-13:00
Working!
Use this time to work on your project. Talk with your mentor/other groups, take a break… you decide!
13.00-14.00
Lunch
Lunch break
14:00-14:30
Submit work and prepare your pitch
Submit your work (drive folder) and prepare your pitch presentation
14:30-15:30
Pitch time!
Pitch your project to the jury and the audience (3 minutes for each team + 2 minutes for questions)
Mentors
Meet our Mentors:
Dr. Israel González Carrasco holds a PhD in Computer Science from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid since 2010. He is an associate professor in the Computer Science Department of this University. His main lines of research are Soft Computing, Software Engineering and Accessibility. He has been involved in different national and international projects. Moreover, he is a member of the editorial reviewer board of international journals and a member of the organizing committee at international conferences. Currently, he is the manager of the Spanish Center for Captioning and Audio Description (CESyA).
Dr. Elisabeth Ortega-Carrasco is the Research, Development, and Innovation Manager at HPCNow!, and one of the co-founders of the MAR chapter, a South-European chapter of the Women in HPC initiative. After finishing her PhD in Theoretical and Computational Chemistry in 2015, she joined a software company to develop scientific solutions for pharmaceutical companies, where she learned about programming, product development, and agile techniques. Seven years later, she joined HPCNow!, a High-Performance computing services and consulting company. Here, she leads different projects related to different technologies (storage, scientific applications provisioning, user experience solutions, monitoring, …), and is currently developing a solution to orchestrate HPC with quantum computers.
Dr. Mohammad Hajarian is a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow and Professor at the University Carlos III of Madrid. His research focus is Online Social Networks, Gamification, and Human-computer Interaction. He leads an EU-funded project (ROSNUB) that investigates different methods to prevent problems like misinformation and online hostility in social networks. As the founder and director of the Gegli social network, he applies his research ideas to practical scenarios in this social network. He has taught 35+ computer courses, supervised 10+ theses, and authored 50+ publications. His innovative contributions have been exploited in the social media industry.
Ontiretse Ishmael holds an MSc in Computer Science. She is currently pursuing her passion as a PhD research student at ATU in Ireland. Her research focuses on learning analytics using natural language processing techniques. As a 23/24 gold award recipient, she has made significant contributions as a Student Ambassador. She actively participates in hackathons and was a winner in the Irish leg of the ‘Invent for the Planet’ competition. Additionally, she volunteers with ‘Global Play2Learn,’ an initiative that encourages young people to learn coding and sustainability through low-cost sensors. Her commitment to fostering a supportive environment for young girls in STEM fields is commendable, and she exemplifies the positive impact of technology in social contexts. Team spirit is the cornerstone of our better tomorrow!
Paula González is the Head of Cybersecurity for GMV Group. Paula is a Telecommunications Engineer from UC3M and an International Strategic Management Master from CTO Business Excellence School. Paula started her career in offensive security, achieving the eJPT, OSCP, eWAPT, GCFA, and Security + certifications. Since 2021, she has focused her career on defensive security. Paula has also collaborated with UC3M and UPM as an Adjunct Professor and as lecturer for different topics related to cybersecurity. She has also collaborated with the STEM Talent Girl and the Royal Engineering Academy Women mentoring programs.
Jaime Fúster de la Fuente received a Double Master’s Degree in Telecommunications Engineering and Cybersecurity from Comillas Pontifical University, ICAI in 2021. After being awarded the Vulcanus in Japan scholarship from the EU, he worked as a researcher at Rakuten Mobile in Tokyo, exploring topics such as Autonomous Networks and Web3. As a Research Engineer at NEC Laboratories Europe, he is now delving into the intersection of Large Language Models (LLMs) and cybersecurity, focused on developing practical solutions for real-world problems.
Dr. Teresa Onorati holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Technology and is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, where she collaborates with the DEI research group in several national and international projects. Her research interests focus mainly on semantic visualizations, visual analytics, and immersive analytics for a better understanding of how information systems can empower social knowledge in domains of public interest, like crisis management, biology, learning, and politics. She participates in various activities to promote the role of women in science and engineering, and she is the deputy director of the Telefónica Chair of Women and Technology.
Jury
Meet our Jury members:
Chia-Chien Hung is a research scientist at Human-Centric AI Group at NEC Labs Europe, working in the field of natural language processing. Her research is centered on the development of domain and language specialization methods aimed at enhancing the efficiency of domain and language transfer techniques. She leads research project for business application, and is dedicated to bridging the gap between technological advances and practical applications.
Dr. Aseel Berglund holds a PhD in Computer Science from Linköping University in Sweden. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science at the university. Her research interests include serious games, gamification, and human-computer interaction, with a particular focus on user and player experience. She investigates how game principles, mechanics, and techniques can be applied in non-game contexts to motivate, engage, and reinforce positive behaviors or effect behavior change. She brings extensive experience from both teaching and industry to her academic and research activities. Currently, she leads a team developing a gamified digital gym for the workplace that makes micro training fun during the workday by playing movement games.
Dr. Ana Isabel Gonzalez-Tablas Ferreres is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. She has a M. Sc. in Telecommunications Engineering by the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain, in 1999, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain, in 2005.
Her main research interests are cybersecurity education and training, and security and privacy in the Internet of You/Internet of Things. Over the last years she has worked in security and privacy of vehicular networks, social networks and location based services; also in digital signature applications. She has participated in several national and international research projects and has published in several conferences and journals. She frequently undertakes innovation in education projects, focused on better teaching and learning cybersecurity. She loves cryptography… It’s like magic!
