TOWARDS INCLUSIVE RESEARCH COMMUNITIES:
What will move the needle?
Support for equity, standing up against marginalization of under-represented groups, and authentic inclusiveness are long-standing values of our IAPR community. However, how can we efficiently and effectively pursue these values? What can we do better and different to encourage new attitudes, systems, and processes that are more suited to our goals?
The aim of this panel is to try to tackle these questions, as well as other relevant questions from the audience. Panelists include both established and early career women researchers. The panel is an initiative of the IAPR Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) committee led by Maria De Marsico.
Panel composition (in alphabetical order):
Alexandra Branzan Albu (moderator) is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Victoria (BC), Canada. Dr. Branzan Albu’s research focus is on computer vision. From a practical standpoint, her contributions to this field address research questions that are closely linked to societal needs such as environmental monitoring, document image analysis, and medical imaging. Dr. Branzan Albu has served as the Special Advisor to the Dean of Engineering at UVic in 2021. She has a long-standing record of service on the IAPR executive committee, first as secretary, then as first vice-president, from 2014 to 2021.
Silvia Cascianelli (panel member) received the Ph.D. cum laude in Information and Industrial Engineering from the University of Perugia, in 2019, working on deep learning-based knowledge representation methods for service robotics applications. She was a Visitor Researcher at the Queen Mary University of London in 2018. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Engineering “Enzo Ferrari” at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. Her research interests include vision and language, embodied AI, and AI for cultural heritage. She regularly serves as a Reviewer for international conferences and journals and is an Associate Editor for the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.
Nina S. T. Hirata (panel member) is a professor in the Computer Science Department, Institute of Mathematics and Statistics, at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. Her research covers multiple aspects of Pattern Recognition, from concepts and algorithms to applications, especially in image processing and analysis. From an early stage, she has developed a particular interest in machine learning, and the emergence of Big Data scenarios led her to many opportunities for multidisciplinary research. Her current research projects involve problems in diverse fields such as Astronomy, Oceanography, Document and Biomedical Imaging. She also enjoys teaching and demystifying machine learning.
Ingela Nyström (panel member) is a professor with the Center of Image Analysis at Uppsala University, Sweden. Her research interests are interactive segmentation, visualization, digital geometry, and quantitative shape analysis of volume images with their medical applications. She has held a number of national and international leadership positions, for example, as the Director of the Centre for Image Analysis since 2012. She served as member of the IAPR Executive Committee (2nd Vice-President 2008-2010, Secretary 2010-2014, President 2014-2016, Past President 2016-2018). Currently, she is the Chair of the Board of the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC) as well as member of the Board of Directors of the Norwegian UNINETT Sigma2.
