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“Nowadays I am more concerned about girls that don’t want to study technical degrees”

Ana Freire is a post-doctoral researcher with the Research Group on Web Science and Social Computing (WSSC) of the Department of Information and Communication Technologies. She is a promoter of UPF’s new bachelor’s degree in Mathematical Engineering in Data Science and co-organizer of Wisibilízalas, a competition for young people for the dissemination and promotion of women’s work in technology.

09.02.2018

 

Ana Freire is a post-doctoral researcher with the Research Group on Web Science and Social Computing of the Department of Information and Communication Technologies (DTIC). She studies information retrieval techniques to render big search engines more efficient. She has recently undertaken a line of research that studies the detection of suicidal behaviour in social networks. She is a promoter of UPF’s new bachelor’s degree in Mathematical Engineering in Data Science and co-organizer of Wisibilízalas, a competition for young people for the dissemination and promotion of women’s work in technology.

— What projects are you currently working on?

At the Research Group on Web Science and Social Computing we mainly apply computer techniques to the search for solutions to various social needs, always from the web technology point of view. I basically follow two lines of research: how to make search engines more efficient with regard to energy, and detecting users displaying suicidal behaviour on social networks. Outside the field of research, together with Aurelio Ruíz (UPF), we co-organize the Wisibilízalas competition which aims to disseminate the role of women in technology to primary and secondary school students.

I basically follow two lines of research: how to make search engines more efficient with regard to energy, and detecting users displaying suicidal behaviour on social networks 

— Is it true that suicidal behaviour can be prevented by analysing social networks?

What can be said for the time being is that users displaying suicidal behaviour have posted messages on social networks that can be interpreted as signs of such tendencies. Our contribution consists of designing algorithms that can learn these signs, for example by analysing the language used. The end goal will be for these algorithms to trigger psychological intervention warnings in cases of risk.

—  You received a Big Data Talent Award for your doctoral thesis; what was the main contribution of your research?

The thesis puts forward a new mathematical model that allows reducing the energy consumption of major search engines like Google or Bing, which receive billions of user queries each day, by about 30%. This model enables automatically adapting the number of servers dedicated to processing these queries, according to the traffic they receive, so that they are not continuously active, or allowing their re-use for other tasks. The main reason behind this work was the fact that 2% of CO2 emissions worldwide come from the ICT sector. I am still working on this research and I recently published a paper with researchers from Yahoo Research in the journal ACM Transactions on Information Systems.

—  Do you recall any situation or event that determined or influenced your decision to follow a scientific vocation?

I remember my scientific vocation from a very young age, but I think my passion for technology arose when my father bought the first computer for the family business in the early 1990s. For me it became a new form of entertainment and all I used was the text editor on a two-tone screen (light years from a basic tablet today).

— Following your example, are any women taking the bachelor’s degree in Mathematical Engineering and Data Science?

This bachelor’s degree is new for this academic year and the truth is that it has turned around the statistics concerning gender in engineering degrees. To date, at Pompeu Fabra University, the percentage of women studying Computer Engineering or Telecommunications Networks stood at about 12%. The new degree has achieved a surprising balance with 50% of women. Why? It’s a new course whose graduates are in great demand and, above all, whose knowledge can be applied practically in a great many areas of society. in addition, at the DTIC we put in a great deal of effort before launching the degree with the aim of breaking away from male stereotypes associated with engineering degrees.

The new degree has achieved a surprising balance with 50% of women. It’s a new course whose graduates are in great demand and, above all, whose knowledge can be applied practically in a great many areas of society

— What does the Wisibilízalas competition consist of and what do you think you have achieved so far?

Wisibilízalas is a competition aimed at primary and secondary school students in which the students must create a webpage with profiles of Spanish women who are currently working in technology. The best profiles will be added to Wikipedia thus helping to reduce the online encyclopaedia’s gender imbalance. The main aim is for the children to have female referents to encourage them to study technical degrees. By using questionnaires, we saw that before the competition, most participants were incapable of naming even three women in technology. The second edition is already under way for which nearly three hundred participants have registered from throughout Spain. The feedback we are getting from them is really positive because  the competition not only allows becoming aware of inspiring women but also learning to create a webpage and working in a team. In 2017, Wisibilízalas received a special mention from the Catalan Guild of Computer Engineers in the 2nd edition of the equit@T award.

— What would you say to girls interested in technology and maths? What future lies in store for them?

Nowadays I am more concerned about girls that don’t want to study technical degrees. For those who are already interested in the world of technology, I would simply encourage them to get into it as a promising future awaits them. I have seen several publications that predict that by 2020 hundreds of thousands of technology-related jobs will not be covered in Europe due to a lack of qualified personnel. Society needs these profiles for application in different fields (biomedicine, finance, energy, politics...), which makes technological studies highly attractive and makes them a safe bet.

I have seen several publications that predict that by 2020 hundreds of thousands of technology-related jobs will not be covered in Europe due to a lack of qualified personnel

— Do you like science communication and science fiction? Is there any book or author you would specifically recommend? Tell us why!

Science communication has taken on new forms thanks to such initiatives as TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) talks. It’s a great way to broadcast science, the most avant-garde ideas and papers in audiovisual format, which makes them more attractive and entertaining. One of my favourites is the one by Stephen Petranek in 2015. “Your kids might live on Mars. Here’s how they’ll survive”, seventeen minutes of scientific entertainment and, for some, perhaps science fiction.

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