Inclusion and Diversity

D&I Invited Talk: Algorithmic Fairness for Graphs
by Evaggelia Pitoura

Abstract: Algorithmic systems that exploit large datasets are increasingly being used to assist or even replace human decision making, a fact that has raised various concerns about the trustworthiness of such systems. Algorithmic fairness addresses such concerns. In this talk, we focus on fairness for graphs and specifically on PageRank fairness. PageRank assigns a score to each node in the graph that signifies the importance of the node. Given that nodes belong to groups, we study fairness in terms of the distribution of the scores assigned to each group. We first present fairness-aware PageRank algorithms that achieve fairness with minimum loss from the original PageRank. Then, we take a different approach where instead of modifying the PageRank algorithm, we ask how to improve the graph. Concretely, we derive analytical formulas for the contribution of each edge to fairness and use them to design link recommendation algorithms for maximizing fairness. We present experimental results using various real and synthetic graphs. We conclude the talk with a list of open problems and promising research directions for algorithmic fairness for both graph and relational data.

Evaggelia Pitoura is a Professor at the University of Ioannina, Greece. She received a BSc degree from the University of Patras, Greece, and an MS and PhD degree from Purdue University, USA. Her research interests are in data management with a recent emphasis on data exploration, graphs, and responsible data management. Her publications include more than 150 articles in top-tier international journals and conferences. Her research has been funded by the EC and national sources. She has served or serves on the editorial board of ACM TODS, VLDBJ, TKDE, DAPD and as a group leader, senior PC member, or co-chair of many international conferences (including PC chair of EDBT 2016 and co-chair of ICDE 2012). She has received three best paper awards (ICDE 1999, DBSocial 2013, PVLDB 2013), a Marie Currie Fellowship and two Recognition of Service Awards from ACM. She is an ACM senior member, chair of the Greek ACM-W event steering committee and member of the sectorial scientific council of Greece National Council for Research, Technology and Innovation.

D&I Panel: Diversity and Inclusion perspectives around the world

Moderators: Genoveva Vargas-Solar, CNRS, France Panos K. Chrysanthis, U. Pittsburgh, USA

The EDBT/ICDT community believes that diversity and culture of support encourage retention and attraction of talent, promote diversity of thought and perspective, and help make the scientific community more flexible and responsive in times of change. However, our conferences still lack diverse voices, and we want to identify the critical barriers to building an inclusive database community.

Therefore, the EDBT/ICDT 2022 panel on Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) is opening borders and is willing to explore the meaning and perception of D&I in scientific contexts across different regions. The EDBT/ICDT D&I panel seeks to have other voices at the table to gain a broader perspective, address challenges, and see solutions from various angles (gender, race, age, experience level, industry, seniority, etc.). The key guiding question is:

What does DnI mean in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, the north and south of Africa, Asia, Oceania, etc.?

The panel will gather voices from scientists who lead actions and integrate DnI policies into their environment.

Panelists

Abdesalam Soudi earned his PhD in sociolinguistics from the University of Pittsburgh. His research focuses on the human-computer interface in doctors’ consultations. In 2014, he completed the Speaking in the Disciplines Fellowship. He won the inaugural 2017 Diversity in the Curriculum Award for his success in creating a diverse and inclusive learning environment for his students. In 2018, Dr. Soudi won a first ever Pitt Seed award for a proposal to build an engagement platform for connecting his program to the community and tech industry. Dr. Soudi holds a full-time faculty appointment with the department of Linguistics at the University of Pittsburgh. He is also a faculty affiliate with the Global Studies, African Studies Center, and Faculty Fellow with Pitt Honors College. Dr. Soudi co-directs a Masters-level cultural competency course, and he serves as the program director for the Linguistic Internship at Pitt. Dr. Soudi spearheads the Humanities in Health (HinH) initiative at Pitt and has chaired five conferences on this topic. Dr. Soudi has published his research in several journals and magazines. Recently, he co-edited a volume on Diversity Across the Disciplines. The book investigates diversity across disciplines with attention to people, processes, policies, and paradigms.

Renata Borovica-Gajic holds the position of Senior Lecturer in Data Analytics in the School of Computing and Information Systems at The University of Melbourne. Dr Borovica-Gajic received her Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. Renata's research focuses on solving data management problems when storing, accessing and processing massive data sets, enabling faster, more predictable, and cheaper data analysis as a result. Her work has repeatedly appeared in the premier data management conferences including SIGMOD, VLDB, and ICDE. In addition to doing research, Renata serves as Diversity and Inclusion Lead for the School. Through this role, she develops a strategic program and leads numerous initiatives towards increasing the sense of belonging of staff and students.

Sourav S Bhowmick is an Associate Professor at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His core research interests lie in data management, human-data interaction, and data analytics. Recently, he is interested in data-driven solutions to detect and manage conflicts-of-interest and bias in peer-review systems. He is the inventor of CLOSET, a comprehensive software for detection and management of COI that is currently been used in multiple conferences. He is a co-recipient of Best Paper Awards in ACM CIKM 2004, ACM BCB 2011, and VLDB 2021 for work on mining structural evolution of tree-structured data, generating functional summaries, and scalable attributed network embedding, respectively. Sourav is serving as a member of the SIGMOD Executive Committee, a regular member of the PVLDB advisory board, and a co-lead in the committee for Diversity and Inclusion in Database Conference Venues. He is a co-recipient of the VLDB Service Award in 2018 from the VLDB Endowment. He was inducted into Distinguished Members of the ACM in 2020. He likes to waste his time painting and sketching.

Tania Cerquitelli is an associate professor at the Department of Control and Computer Engineering at Politecnico di Torino, Italy. Her research interests include novel and effective techniques for explaining black-box models, algorithms for democratizing data science methods, self-learning methods, and innovative data science algorithms for industrial applications. Tania is Chair of the Gender Equality, Non-Discrimination and Anti-Harassment Committee and a member of the Gender Observatory at Politecnico di Torino. Tania is an associate editor of Computer Networks, Future Generation Computer Systems, Knowledge and Information Systems, and Expert Systems with Applications.

Marta Mattoso is a Full Professor at COPPE - Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Her topics of interest in Data Science include aspects of large-scale data management. Among the interests are provenance data to support human analysis during parallel execution of many computational tasks in high performance environments. She has supervised more than 80 graduate students. She is a CNPq's research productivity fellow level 1B. Her research is applied to real problems, addressing scientific experiments in workflows in the area of Computational Science, including deep machine learning. She has coordinated research projects funded by CNPq, CAPES, Faperj and international collaboration projects with INRIA, France, since 2001. She is currently a Mercator Fellow at DFG, Germany and member of the board of experts of the WorkflowsRI project in the U.S. She is a member of ACM, IEEE and a founding member of the Brazilian Computer Society. She serves on program committees of international conferences and is a member of the editorial board of several international journals.

Mirella M. Moro is an associate professor at the Computer Science department at UFMG (Belo Horizonte, Brazil). She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science (University of California Riverside - UCR, 2007), and MSc and BSc in Computer Science as well (UFRGS, Brazil, 2001, 1999). She is a member of the ACM SIGMOD, ACM SIGCSE, ACM-W, IEEE, IEEE WIE, SBC, and MentorNet. She was part of ACM Education Council (2011-2019), Education Director of SBC (Brazilian Computer Society, 2009-2015) and the editor-in-chief of the electronic magazine SBC Horizontes (2008-2012). Mirella has been working with research in Computer Science in the area of Databases since 1997. Her research interests include gender diversity, social networks, scientometrics, query optimization.

Paola Ricaurte is an associate professor in the Department of Media and Digital Culture at Tecnológico de Monterrey and a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. With Nick Couldry and Ulises Mejías, she co-founded Tierra Común, a network of scholars, practitioners, and activists interested in decolonizing data.

Panos K. Chrysanthis is a Professor of Computer Science and a founder and director of the Advanced Data Management Technologies Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh. He is also an adjunct Professor at Carnegie-Mellon University and at the University of Cyprus. He received his BS degree (Physics with a concentration in Computer Science, 1982) from the University of Athens, Greece. He earned his MS and PhD degrees (Computer and Information Sciences, 1986 and 1991) from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His research interests lie within the areas of data management (Big Data, Databases, Data Streams & Sensor/IoT networks), data analytics, exploration & visualization, distributed & mobile computing, operating systems and real-time systems. In 1995, he was a recipient of the U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER Award for his investigation on the management of data for mobile and wireless computing. His editorial service includes VLDB J (2001-2007), IEEE TKDE (2012-2017) and DAPD (2011-present) and his recent conference service include PC Chair of IEEE ICDE (2018), IEEE MDM (2021) and ACM DEBS (2022). He is involved in the Diversity & Inclusion DB initiative, serving as the D&I Chair for EDBT 2021-2023, MDM 2021-2022, and DEBS 2022. Chrysanthis is an ACM Distinguished Scientist, a Senior Member of IEEE, and IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Contributor. He was honored with seven teaching awards, in 2015, he received the University of Pittsburgh's Provost Award for Excellence in Mentoring (doctoral students) and in 2019 the Outstanding Achievement in Education, School of Information and Computer Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Genoveva Vargas-Solar (http://www.vargas-solar.com) is a principal scientist of the French Council of Scientific Research (CNRS) and a member of the DataBase group of Laboratory on Informatics on Image and Information Systems (LIRIS). She is a regular member of the Mexican Academia of Computing. She obtained her Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches (HDR - tenure) from University of Grenoble. She obtained her first PhD degree in Computer Science at University Joseph Fourier and her second PhD degree in Literature at University Stendhal. She obtained her first master’s degree in computer science at University Joseph Fourier and her second master’s degree in Compared Literature at University Stendhal. She did her undergraduate studies on Computer Systems Engineering at Universidad de las Américas in Puebla. She contributes to the construction of service-based database/data science management systems. She proposes query evaluation methodologies, algorithms, and tools for composing, deploying, and executing data science functions on just in time architectures (disaggregated data centres). Her research interests in Literature concern middle age Literature, myths’ critics and myths’ analysis applied to different myths of origins. She promotes gender equality and diversity and inclusion (D&I) actions. She is a member of the gender equality committee at LIRIS and she represents EDBT in the inter-conference group D&I databases. She leads the SINFONIA and JOWDISAI projects on women's work in AI and DS. She actively promotes scientific cooperation in Computer Science between Latin America and Europe, particularly between France and Mexico.