Latest News USA Today: Meet Rediet Abebe 1st Black Woman To Earn Ph.D. In Computer Science Cornell University
Rediet Abebe, 28, an Addis Ababa, Ethiopia native, is set to make history by becoming the first Black woman to earn a Ph.D. in computer science from Cornell University, according to Atlanta Black Star.
Abebe is a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, a member of the NIH Advisory Committee to the Director working group on artificial intelligence, co-founder of Black in AI, a non-profit that works to improve diversity in the field of artificial intelligence and co-founder of Mechanism Design for Social Good (MD4SG), “an interdisciplinary, multi-institutional research initiative and workshop series with participants from over 100 institutions in 20 countries.”
She presented her fnal thesis, “Designing Algorithms for Social Good,” which focused on solutions to improve societal welfare, including research addressing issues such as income shocks faced by economically disadvantaged families who are laid off or have gaps in income last month.
According to the computer scientist, a lot of inspiration for her work comes from her home country. She said back home in Ethiopia, income inequality was ubiquitous and quite often, she would see “big mansions” on the same street as “plastic homes.” She said:
“It’s something that’s really shaped my identity as a person, as a researcher. I realized that actually, if you do computer science or applied mathematics and ultimately other fields, you can work on really interesting challenging mathematical questions, you can do a lot of data-driven work, you can play with data. But, you can also think about problems that affect society immediately.”
Abebe graduated from Harvard University with a masters in applied mathematics in 2015.
According to Becauseofthemwecan, “Abebe graduated from Harvard University with a masters in applied mathematics. She also has a Masters in mathematics from the University of Cambridge and a Bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Harvard College. Abebe hopes that through her work and organizations, she can continue to diversify the tech landscape, something she feels is extremely pertinent. ”
Meanwhile, Abebe says “I think the reality is that a lot of institutions just don’t prioritize diversity as much as they should. They prioritize it a lot, but not enough”.
On December 21st, Abebe will graduate from Cornell University.
Congrats to her!
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