Towards Tackling Gender Bias in Artificial Intelligence [Self-Funded Students Only]

Keywords: Gender Bias, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data

Background

Gender bias is an interdisciplinary challenge that affects all aspects of everyday life. It can be seen in the design of the tools we are using every day, the quality of healthcare we are receiving, the legal policies we are dealing with, and the way we conduct our research among many other things. The discriminatory behaviour of new tools developed by major companies such as Amazon or Apple, is being reported by the media ever more frequently. The increasing need for AI technologies and the repeatedly biased nature of the new proposals poses huge risks for the society as well as industry. However, gender bias is not only about fairness and equality; not taking it into account costs lives, as recently exposed in the case of cardiovascular disease research.

Aims, Methods and Deliverables

The PhD student will work on developing methods and automated tools that fall in the scope of 1) detecting, 2) prevent, and 3) correct biases in data, data collection methods, and algorithms.

The specific tasks and application domains will be determined based on the interests of the student. Possible examples include developing tools for debiasing medical data for training machine learning models or detecting and correcting biases in credit scoring algorithms. It is expected that the student will rely on various data quality, data mining, AI, and digital humanism approaches, as applicable.

For more information on this project, please contact Dr Polberg, [Email Address Removed]

Academic criteria: A 2:1 Honours undergraduate degree or a master's degree, in computing or a related subject.  Applicants with appropriate professional experience are also considered. Degree-level mathematics (or equivalent) is required for research in some project areas.

Applicants for whom English is not their first language must demonstrate proficiency by obtaining an IELTS score of at least 6.5 overall, with a minimum of 6.0 in each skills component.

This project is open to students worldwide.

How to apply:

Please contact the supervisors of the project prior to submitting your application to discuss and develop an individual research proposal that builds on the information provided in this advert. Once you have developed the proposal with support from the supervisors, please submit your application following the instructions provided below

This project is accepting applications all year round, for self-funded candidates via https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/research/programmes/programme/computer-science-and-informatics 

In order to be considered candidates must submit the following information: 

• Supporting statement 
• CV 
• In the ‘Research Proposal’ section of the application enter the name of the project you are applying to and upload your Individual research proposal, as mentioned above in BOLD
• Qualification certificates and Transcripts
• Proof of Funding. For example, a letter of intent from your sponsor or confirmation of self-funded status (In the funding field of your application, insert Self-Funded)
• References x 2 
• Proof of English language (if applicable)

If you have any questions or need more information, please contact [Email Address Removed]