Johns Hopkins University made a special effort to connect to the “Black in AI” conference this weekend, at the Palais des Congrès de Montréal (Montreal Convention Centre) in Montréal CANADA. The conference was co-located with the 32nd Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems.
Johns Hopkins sent one of their doctoral candidates from the Department of Computer Science. The student was introduced to the conference by Assistant Dean Darlene Saparou who was approached by a CS faculty member who had reached out to the organizers of the conference to see how JHU could get involved. Dr. Saparou approached grad students and postdocs of color regarding the conference since the PROMISE Engineering Institute provides opportunities for professional development. JHU is pleased to be involved in discussions about how to increase diversity in AI.
Links to the conference can be found below.
https://blackinai.github.io/workshop/2018/programs/#oral-research-presenters
PROMISE Engineering Institute (PEI) 
I attended BAI 2018 and was excited to meet with many bright scientists in AI in the black community from around the world. The keynote talks were particularly outstanding with important work being done within AI by renowned researchers in the field. It’s clear that the organizers are passionate about the work they conduct in bringing the event to fruition. They challenged every attendee to do their part to increase diversity in their current institution or company. As a representative from Hopkins, I felt empowered by this community and received guidance on how to do more within Computer Science at Hopkins to increase our diversity by encouraging smart and qualified students to apply. This is a fantastic workshop that is doing very important and valuable work. Thank you to all involved in organizing and funding students to attend this!
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