🌟 The 3rd Annual Hack4Her Event June 7-9, 2024 🌟

Workshops

Click here to sign up for workshops.

All non-challenge workshops are in Room NU-3B19.

Challenge Workshops are in the following rooms

• Optiver: NU-4A67

• DuckDB: NU-2B17

• ServiceNow: Theater 1

• Booking.com: NU-3A57

Saturday

Challenge Workshops

1A. ServiceNow Workshop: Create Herstory: An Introduction to the ServiceNow platform

• Time: 10:15 AM - 10:45

• Person: Mo Fagir, Anna Farell

• Title: Technical Consultant/Developer

• Affiliation: ServiceNow

• Biography: Mo: AI Technical Consultant within ServcieNow, he has graduated with honours in AI Bsc programme at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

• Biography: Anna: Customer Success Manager and former Service Now developer she has a degree in management information systems from the University of Ohio and over 12 years of ServiceNow development experience.

• Workshop Description: Join us for a hands-on workshop exploring the ServiceNow platform to create innovative solutions. Learn about ServiceNow’s core components, workflow automation with Flow Designer, GenAI capabilities with NowAssist and best practices for enhancing user experiences. Discover the Generative AI Controller’s potential in transforming data-driven decisions and personalized interactions. Gain practical skills through interactive sessions and live demonstrations, collaborating with peers to develop cutting-edge platforms. To prepare feel free to look into the resources on the ServiceNow Community YouTube channel here.

1B. Booking.com Workshop: An Introduction to Booking.com

• Time: 10:15 AM - 10:45

• Person: Gaby Patenaude

• Title: Early Careers Engagement Lead

• Affiliation: Booking.com

• Biography: Gaby joined Booking.com in early 2022 to kick start an Early Careers program at the Booking.com headquarters in Amsterdam. As an Early Careers Engagement Lead her focus is on bridging the gap between top tech talent studying in the Netherlands and exciting entry level roles at one of the world’s leading tech travel companies.

• Workshop Description: By investing in the technology that helps take the friction out of travel, Booking.com seamlessly connects millions of travelers with memorable experiences, a range of transport options, and incredible places to stay – from homes to hotels and much more. Come hear about Booking.com and the Early Career programs and opportunities available at the Amsterdam HQ!

1C. DuckDB Workshop: An Introduction to DuckDB

• Time: 10:15 AM - 10:45

• Person: Max Gabrielsson

• Title: Software Engineer

• Affiliation: DuckDB Labs

• Biography: Max Gabrielsson is a software engineer at DuckDB Labs where he works on the DuckDB database system in general and is the primary developer of the DuckDB spatial extension in particular. Previously he’s held a variety of roles at different small-scale startups and co-founded a company selling maps, which sparked his interest in geospatial data management and processing. Max holds a BsC in Computer Science from Uppsala University. For more information check out his LinkedIn.

• Workshop Description: In this workshop, we’ll give an introduction to the DuckDB, a local-first database engine designed for analytical workloads with a focus on efficiency and user-friendliness. We will also go through some “GIS” basics with DuckDB’s geospatial extension, and showcase how to use it to access, process, and transform data from the Overture Maps dataset, a curated and free source of global geospatial data backed by tech industry giants.

1D Optiver Workshop: Introduction to Optiver, Finances, and Trading

• Time: 10:15 AM - 10:45

• Person: Zuotian Tatum

• Title: Head of Tech Education

• Affiliation: Optiver

• Biography: Zuotian holds a B.S. in Computer Science and a B.E. in Bioengineering from the University of Washington, Seattle. With experience in both big tech and academia, she now serves as the Head of Tech Education at Optiver’s Amsterdam office. Additionally, Zuotian is the chairperson of the Knowledge Network for Optiver Women, where she passionately supports new hires to ensure they achieve their full potential. In her free time, she enjoys knitting and practicing yoga. Zuotian Tatum LinkedIn,

• Biography: Greg is a software developer, originally from Sydney Australia. After working in Optiver’s Sydney office for 10 years on trading systems, he moved to the Amsterdam office where he worked on options pricing and compliance systems. He is now part of the tech education team. He mainly works with Python and C++. In his spare time he likes travelling, reading, and is trying to learn calligraphy. Gregory Pandechis LinkedIn

• Workshop Description: According to a 2024 study, men are 91% more likely to invest in the stock market than women, preventing women from realizing life-changing gains from their savings. With this challenge, we want to help you to beat the statistics and show you how you can trade too! In fact, you will be creating your very own trading algorithm in python which you will use to trade on our simulated exchange, Optibook. If you don’t know anything about trading, don’t worry! Then you are exactly the kind of person we want to see doing our challenge! In our workshop, we explain the basics of finance and trading and of course we are here to help through the weekend!

Workshop 2: An Introduction to Jax Programming

• Time: 11:00 AM - 11:55

• Person: Samuele Papa

• Job Title: PhD Candidate

• Affiliation: University of Amsterdam and the Netherlands Cancer Institute

• Biography: Samuele Papa is a PhD candidate at the University of Amsterdam and the Netherlands Cancer Institute. His primary research focus is deep learning for improved imaging in cancer care, and his biggest interest is representation learning for scientific applications and 3D reasoning. For more information check out his website: https://samuelepapa.github.io/ or feel free to reach out at s.papa@uva.nl.

• Workshop Description: Why JAX? Because it is uniquely fast in many settings, and it will give you an edge over PyTorch when you need a bit more flexibility. During this workshop, you will learn about how JAX handles compilation and why it is fundamentally a functional programming framework. We will go through a simple image classification example to learn all the basic elements that will get you started and ready to tackle your next project even faster!

Workshop 3: Axini

• Time: 12:00 PM - 13:00

• Person: Machiel van der Bijl, Lou Ottens

• Title: Machiel: CEO and founder Axini.

• Title: Lou: Software developer Axini

• Affiliation: Axini

• Workshop Description: We will give a hands-on demo about model-based testing. Model-based testing is a next-generation test-automation technique where tests are not programmed but generated.

Workshop 4: Demystifying the Technical Interview

• Time: 13:05 PM - 14:00

• Person: Hilary McReynolds

• Title: Engineering Manager

• Affiliation: Booking.com

• Biography: Hilary is a software engineer currently working for Booking.com as a manager of engineers. She has more than 10 years of experience in the tech industry with 5 years of experience in management in 4 different countries. In her career, she has done hundreds of technical interviews and has seen all kinds of good and bad responses. For more information on Hilary check out her LinkedIn.

• Workshop Description: Learn about the assessment process for technical roles. What kind of experience should I expect? What form would an interview take? Understand the goals of interviews and programming tasks to demystify the process. This way you can approach your technical recruitment journey with a clear plan of approach.

Workshop 5: How to Use Usage Data to Build Great Products

• Time: 15:00 PM - 16:00

• Person: Aida Rikovic Tabak

• Title: VP Product Management Analytics and Telemetry

• Affiliation: ServiceNow

• Biography: With over 15 years of experience in building analytics products across various domains, Aida has developed a deep passion for leveraging data to inform and enhance decision-making processes. Her work focuses on creating and nurturing cross-disciplinary teams, ensuring that diverse expertise comes together to build exceptional products. By integrating different perspectives and skills, she aims to drive innovation and achieve outstanding results in product development. For more information check out her LinkedIn.

• Workshop Description: In this workshop, participants will learn how to leverage usage data to develop successful products. Key topics include methods for collecting and analyzing usage data, setting data-driven goals, and implementing iterative improvements based on user behavior insights. Through case studies and best practices, attendees will gain practical skills to enhance product features and user experience, ultimately leading to greater product success

[CANCELLED] Workshop 6: Can LLMs promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in tech teams? A joint look on the past, present, and future

• Time: 16:30 PM - 17:30

• Person: Dr. Mairieli Wessel

• Title: Assistant Professor

• Academic Title: Dr.

• Affiliation: Radboud Universiteit

• Biography: Mairieli Wessel is an assistant professor at Radboud University. Upon receiving her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of São Paulo (USP), she was awarded the Best Brazilian Ph.D. Thesis on Software Engineering in 2021. Her research interests include software engineering (SE) and computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW). Recent projects include the development of tools and strategies to support open-source software communities and the design of automated tools like bots and chatbots. For more information check out her website.

• Workshop Description: Advances in large language models (LLMs) have driven an explosion of interest in their societal impacts. Much of the discussion on how they will impact diversity, equity, and inclusion has been primarily negative, focusing on questions like “How might LLMs be biased, and how would we mitigate those biases?” This is a vital discussion: how AI generally, and LLMs specifically, can entrench biases has been studied. But equally important, and much less discussed, is the more opportunity-focused counterpoint: “What promising applications do LLMs enable that could promote diversity, equity, and inclusion?” This talk will discuss opportunities for LLMs to foster diversity, equity, and inclusion in society, especially in teams building tech solutions like software development and hackathon teams.

[REPLACEMENT] Workshop 6: Geometric Deep Learning

• Time: 16:30 PM - 17:30

• Person: Isabella Venancia (Bella) Gardner

• Title: Course Organizer, MsC AI

• Affiliation: VU Amsterdam, UvA

• Biography: Check out my profile here

• Workshop Description: “Group Equivariant and Geometric Deep Learning” provides a comprehensive overview aimed at fostering a deeper understanding and application of these advanced deep learning techniques. Gardner begins by introducing the fundamental concepts of Group Equivariant Deep Learning (GEDL), which focuses on neural networks that maintain equivariance under transformations like rotations and translations, thus enhancing model robustness and generalization. She then delves into Geometric Deep Learning (GDL), which extends deep learning to non-Euclidean data types such as graphs and manifolds by incorporating geometric priors and principles. The talk emphasizes the motivation for using these techniques, highlighting their ability to overcome traditional deep learning limitations and improve performance across diverse fields, including medical imaging, autonomous driving, and molecular modeling. Gardner also touches on the theoretical underpinnings, including group theory and Clifford algebra, and discusses future directions and applications, aiming to inspire new ideas and collaborations in the audience’s own work.

Sunday

Workshop 7: Inclusive AI: Advancing Accessibility

• Time: 11:15 AM - 12:15

• Person: Dr. Çiçek Güven

• Title: Assistant professor in the Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence department

• Academic Title: Dr.

• Affiliation: Tilburg University

• Biography: Çiçek is an assistant professor in the Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence department at Tilburg University. Her research interests, in general, are network analysis and learning on graph-structured data. She has a mathematical background, her thesis involved algebraic graph theory and combinatorics. She also worked in the industry for a period of four years in banking and consultancy environments as a quant and data analyst, working with financial and trade data mainly. Data science projects with a social aspect motivate her a lot. This interest is effectuated in multiple research projects she is involved in utilising AI to create a more inclusive and accessible world. Some examples are the ‘Child Growth Monitor’ by Zero Hunger Lab; focusing on malnutrition detection in children, Ilustre, a project to support the energy transition efforts in the Caribbean, and the Icon project of Zero Poverty Lab, linking brain networks and poverty.

• Workshop Description: AI’s potential to enhance inclusion becomes evident when it actively identifies and addresses the needs of underprivileged groups, those who are struggling to have access to their basic needs, such as food and education. In light of this, we have been focusing on contributing to the solutions to societal problems such as poverty, malnutrition school dropout. With this talk, I want to give examples of how we center our research around inclusivity, accessibility, and societal problems, both in the problems we focus on and in the methods we use and frameworks we develop.

Workshop 8: Logic Synthesis for AI

• Time: 12:45 PM - 14:15

• Person: Marcel Walter

• Academic Title: Prof. Dr.

• Job Title: Visiting Professor and Postdoc

• Affiliation: University of Bremen and Technical University of Munich

• Biography: Marcel Walter is a Visiting Professor in Computer Science at the University of Bremen, Germany, where he also received his Ph.D. in 2021 for his work on algorithms for the physical design of emerging post-CMOS nanotechnologies. He also works as a Postdoc at the Chair for Design Automation at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and has been working for the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). He is the initiator and maintainer of the “fiction” framework for the logic synthesis, physical design, verification, and simulation of Field-coupled Nanotechnologies.

• Links: Github, LinkedIn

• Workshop Description: Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence are the defining technologies of this decade. However, training and running state-of-the-art models require significant computational power, typically provided by large GPU clusters. One promising solution is the development of Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs), which are custom hardware designed to accelerate specific applications. In this workshop, attendees will learn about the logic synthesis and physical design processes used to create ASIC layouts from specifications. They will apply these techniques to generate custom machine-learning accelerators and inference engines ready for tape-out. The workshop includes a hands-on session for practical experience.

Workshop 9: Changing the perspective of cybersecurity, from the risk conversation to the goals-driven one.

• Time: 15:00 PM - 16:00

• Person: Ilse Parra

• Title: President Women4Cyber Nertherlands

• Affiliation: Microsoft, Women4Cyber

• Biography: I am a Mexican woman currently residing in The Netherlands, passionately dedicated to championing women’s empowerment within the Cybersecurity industry and fostering inclusivity for diverse communities, cultures, and perspectives within corporate environments. My commitment is translated with Women4Cyber NL where we actively work in fostering D&I. In my role as a Security Channel Sales Manager at Microsoft, I support partners to increase their security offer to the market and landing their GTM/commercial strategy to empower our SMB customers, looking to seamlessly integrate Copilot into their innovative work processes and prevent cybercrime.

• Workshop Description: In the workshop we will work together to define their main objectives at the company level, and what is valuable and essential for the company, from those business objectives we will explore the assets that support those objectives, their core assets and how to start recognizing the threats to these assets. What is their role as board members or C-Level/Management team in the company vs security? And how they can contribute to making security a competitive edge.

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