Future Leaders Summit 2024

April 8-10, 2024
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

The annual Future Leaders Summit offers outstanding graduate students, postdocs, and early-career faculty from around the US the opportunity to engage in research discussions with peers and with research leaders, and receive career mentoring, as they grow to become leaders in data science and artificial intelligence (AI) research.

Ethical AI Symposium

Theme: “Responsible Data Science and AI”

Data science and AI are having a significant impact on society in uncountable ways, leading to huge benefits in many cases. Yet, increasingly complex analytical pipelines working with poorly understood heterogeneous data sets can give rise to harms in many ways. Furthermore, there could be deleterious systemic effects such as the magnification of disinformation or surveillance capitalism. There has been tremendous recent interest in understanding and managing these concerns. The Summit will explore in-depth topics in this broad area, including, but not limited to:

  • Equity and fairness, particularly in automated decision making
  • Explainability of analytical results
  • Reproducibility and replication of scientific results
  • Systemic issues, particularly those impacting marginalized populations 
  • Responsible AI in science and engineering. Established in 2022, MIDAS is home to the Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellowship. With this, we are dedicated to promoting responsible data science and AI for natural sciences and engineering.

Summit Activities

  • Attending the annual Ethical AI symposium, and presenting a poster on your research – April 8.
  • Research discussion sessions with fellow FLS attendees and faculty mentors – April 9 – 10.
  • Career mentoring sessions: preparing for job interviews; career opportunities in academia, industry, and other organizations; negotiating job offers; setting up for success as a junior faculty member – April 9 – 10.
  • Networking sessions with FLS attendees – April 9 – 10.
  • Research connection sessions with University of Michigan faculty members and postdocs – April 9 – 10.

Summit Attendees

Maryam BerijanianMichigan State University
Isabela Bertolini CoelhoUniversity of Maryland
Brooks ButlerPurdue University
Lucius BynumNew York University
César ClarosUniversity of Delaware
Anja ConevRice University, Ken Kennedy Institute
Diamond CunninghamTulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine
Matthew DeVernaIndiana University Bloomington
Majid FarhadlooUniversity of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Emily FletcherPurdue University
Neil GaikwadMassachusetts Institute of Technology
Katherine Rose GarciaRice University, Ken Kennedy Institute
Ryan GiffordThe Ohio State University
Bhanu GullapalliUniversity of California, San Diego
Yifei HuangUniversity of Illinois at Chicago
Zachary JacokesUniversity of Virginia
Lavender JiangNew York University
Wenxin JiangPurdue University
Ðorđe KlisuraUniversity of Texas at San Antonio
Olivia KrebsUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison
Jessica LeivesleyUniversity of Toronto
Yaqi LiUniversity of Oklahoma, Health Science Center
Tony LiuUniversity of Pennsylvania
Stephanie MilaniCarnegie Mellon University
Bernardo ModenesiUniversity of Michigan
Nasim SonboliBrown University
Harsh ParikhJohns Hopkins University
Rahul RameshUniversity of Pennsylvania
Ransalu SenanayakeArizona State University
Subhasree SenguptaClemson University
Ryan StandfieldJackson State University
Tiffany TangUniversity of Michigan
Shantanu VyasTexas A&M, College Station
Guanchu WangRice University
Haoyu WangPurdue University
Galen WeldUniversity of Washington
Siyu WuPennsylvania State University
Yuchen ZengUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison

Career Mentors

Brittany Aguilar

Science Associate
Schmidt Sciences

Elizabeth Bondi-Kelly

Visiting Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, College of Engineering
University of Michigan

Bill Currie

Associate Dean, Research and Engagement, Professor of Environment and Sustainability, School for Environment and Sustainability

Jamal El-Hindi

Former U.S. Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) Deputy Director
Clifford Chance

Arya Farahi

Assistant Professor, Dept of Statistics and Data Science
University of Texas, Austin

Kent Foster

Director, Innovation + Society
Microsoft

R. Stuart Geiger

Assistant Professor, Dept of Communication and the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute
Affiliate Faculty, Institute for Practical Ethics,
Computer Science & Engineering, and Computational Social Science,
University of California, San Diego

Min Kyung Lee

Assistant Professor, School of Information
University of Texas, Austin

Michael Tjalve

Chief AI Architect, Tech for Social Impact at Microsoft Philanthropies
Assistant Professor, Linguistics
University of Washington

Elizabeth Yakel

Olivia Frost Collegiate Professor of Information, School of Information;
Faculty Associate, Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, Institute for Social Research
University of Michigan

Sponsors of the 2024 Future Leaders Summit

Microsoft