Information School News

BHCC 2020 - 2nd Symposium on Biases in Human Computation and Crowdsourcing Dr Alessandro Checco Human Computation and Crowdsourcing have become ubiquitous in the world of algorithm augmentation and data management. However, humans have various cognitive biases that influence the way they make decisions, remember information, and interact with machines. It is thus important to identify human biases and analyse their effect on complex hybrid systems. On the other hand, the potential interaction with a large pool of human contributors gives the opportunity to detect and handle biases in existing data and systems. The goal of this symposium is to analyse both existing human biases in hybrid systems, and methods to manage bias via crowdsourcing and human computation. We will discuss different types of biases, measures and methods to track bias, as well as methodologies to prevent and solve bias. An interdisciplinary approach is often required to capture the broad effects that these processe...

Over 40 of Peter Willett’s ex-PhD students and long-time collaborators gathered in Sheffield in mid-September to celebrate Peter’s long and very influential career and to thank him for the personal support that he has provided to very many throughout this time. It is a mark of the very high regard in which Peter is held that so many people attended. They had travelled from as far as Canada, North America, Germany and Taiwan, as well as from all over the UK. Many of the attendees are now in very influential positions of their own including in academia, software companies and industry. Their connections to Peter spanned the full range of Peter’s career with one of his early PhD students having obtained her PhD over 30 years ago. A number of presentations were given that included reflections on Peter’s contribution to the fields of Chemoinformatics, Information Retrieval and Bibliometrics, a “Peter Willett: This is your Life” tribute, as well as many personal messages of thank...

Tuesday 4th December 2018 was the date of our annual ‘industry day’ event organised for students on the MSc Data Science programme. The event invites speakers from various sectors in industry to share their experiences with utilising machine learning, AI and data science for applications within their domain. This year speakers from 6 organisations presented at the event: · Billy Blythe, Head of Data Science, Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) · Leanne Fitzpatrick, Head of Data, Hello Soda · Lauren Rodgers, Data Scientist, and Tom Liptrot, Head of Data Science, Peak.ai · Lisa Clark, Data Scientist, Virgin Media Business (VMB) · Ben Chamberlain, Head of Machine Learning, AOS.com · Hayden Sansum, Senior Data Scientist, Ministry of Justice (MoJ) Speakers discussed various topics such as the challenges, benefits and technologies involved in utilising data-driven analytical methods; current technological trends; and what role data scie...

My name is Wasim Ahmed , and I am a doctoral student at the Information School. I recently attended the launch of the Information School research magazine Inform . This blog post highlights my key take-homes from the launch of the research magazine. Information is all around us and due to technological developments information is more readily available at speed. Our research at the Information School focuses on understanding the power of information and how it affects people, organisations, and society. The new research magazine Inform provides a cross-section of the research within the school, stories about our research, impact, recent successes, facts and figures, research culture and environment, and provides an overview of staff and students within the school. The event highlighted the international reputation of the department for world-class research. It was wonderful to see the range of multi-disciplinary areas of research which the school undertakes. The event a...

Doctoral candidate Wasim Ahmed , in collaboration with Chrysi Dagoula from the Journalism Department hosted an event at the Information School on Tuesday the 30th of May on the theoretical and practical aspects of social media research. The event was attended by delegates from across the UK ranging from PhD students, post-doctoral researchers as well as a number of senior academics. Dr Andrew Cox congratulates co-organiser Wasim Ahmed for successfully running the event  Dr Andrew Cox , Senior Lecturer, introduced the event and highlighted its interdisciplinary nature and thanked the Faculty for funding the event. The event also featured a talk by Sally Sanger whose PhD looks at alcohol online support groups. Event organisers would like to thank Xiaomei An for taking pictures of the event throughout the day.