Women in Data Science (WiDS) IBM at Silicon Valley Lab
We're excited to announce that the third annual Women in Data Science (WiDS) at IBM returns to the Bay Area at IBM's Silicon Valley Lab in San Jose on Friday, October 24!
Join us to hear from leading experts on open technologies in AI and get hands-on experience with AI tools and frameworks.
This event is free and open to all! You must be 18+ to attend in person.
🩷 New this year! Help support individuals affected by breast cancer!
Stop by the Volunteer Kiosk to decorate bandanas with vibrant designs and heartfelt messages - bringing warmth, dignity, and encouragement to survivors.
✨ Want to win cool IBM swag? Click on 'Invite a Friend' in Luma to refer friends and peers. Person with the most number of referrals wins! Or post on LinkedIn, tag us, and use the hashtags #WiDS2025 and #WiDSBayArea. The most creative post will win a swag prize!
Speakers
🎙️Executive welcome
Priya Srinivasan, General Manager, IBM Software Products (Core & ALM), Software Support & SRE
🎙️Storytelling with Agentic AI
Rynne Whitnah, Senior Ecosystem Engineer/Developer Relations, IBM
🎙️Logs Are All You Need
Sam Zeitlin, Founder and Owner, Radically Different Data Science
🎙️What's Next for AI Agents?
Shelby Heinecke, Senior AI Research Manager, Salesforce
🎙️The Rise of Meeting Intelligence
Shruti Bhutaiya, Senior Machine Learning Engineer, ServiceNow
🎙️Beyond Obedience: What Building AI Teaches Us About Courage
Anjali Samani, Senior Director of Data Science and AI Engineering, Salesforce
🎙️Ethics in Action: A Practical Toolkit to Build Ethical Tech
Manuela Travaglianti, Project lead - Ethics Toolkit, Stanford University's McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society
🎙️Analytics in Motion: Meeting Diverse Needs in a Fast-Changing Environment
Cordelia Radin, Vehicle Performance Analyst, BART
🎙️From Imposter Syndrome to Influence: Finding My Voice in Data Science
Sravya Madipalli, Senior Manager of Data Science, Grammarly
🎙️Fireside chat
Ruchi Bhatia, Product Marketing Manager, Amazon (Youngest 3x Kaggle Grandmaster)
🎙️Closing remarks
Suja Viswesan, Vice President, Security and Runtime Products, IBM
Workshops:
💻 Hands-On with IBM Granite: Exploring Generative AI in Action
Led by James Busche, IBM Senior Software Development Manager, Open Technologies at IBM Research
Explore the open-sourced IBM Granite AI foundation models for a number of use cases that demonstrates the value of generative AI. You'll learn about the recently released Granite 4 models, and use them on with Google CoLab with your Windows or Mac laptops.
💻 Learn to Unlock Document Intelligence with Open-Source AI
Led by Ming Zhao, IBM Developer Advocate
Learn Docling, an open-source Python package which is one of GitHub's top 500 repositories with 40,000+ stars. You'll get an in-depth introduction to Docling and how it can streamline your AI workflow, and get a chance to walk through a hands on workshop to create your first custom doc ingestion pipeline with Docling.
Agenda:
• 9:00am - 9:30am: Registration
• 9:30am - 10:30am: Workshop: Hands-On with IBM Granite: Exploring Generative AI in Action
• 10:30am - 12:00pm: Workshop: Learn to Unlock Document Intelligence with Open-Source AI
• 12:00pm - 1:00pm: Lunch, Networking & Volunteering
• 1:00pm - 4:00pm: Talks
• 4:00pm onwards: Networking
Note: Virtual attendees only get access to talks, in-person attendees get access to workshops, networking, and talks.
Check out the recap of our event from 2023 and 2024!
WiDS at IBM Silicon Valley Lab is independently organized by Grishma Jena to be part of the mission to increase participation of women in data science and to feature outstanding women doing outstanding work.
WiDS Worldwide is a global non-profit that aims to celebrate women's achievements and inspire others. The WiDS mission is to achieve 30% representation for women in education, innovation and leadership by 2030 with a long term vision of full and equal representation in Decision Making, Economic Prosperity and opportunities.