ICSR Events

2024

ICSR Roundtable
Thursday, October 10, 2024

The MIT Initiative on Combatting Systemic Racism (ICSR) hosted a roundtable event on October 10, 2024, convening MIT faculty, industry partners, and HBCU leaders to explore potential research, entrepreneurial and educational collaborations in the realm of systemic racism. The group, welcomed by Chancellor Melissa Nobles, discussed the work of ICSR faculty as well as start-up teams from the MIT Sandbox Innovation Fund. A particular focal point for future collaborations was the IDSS Data Science and Machine Learning – Summer Online Program (DSML-SOP).

The DSML-SOP, launched in 2023, is an 8-week online course offered for free to under-resourced learners. Students learn from MIT faculty with support from MIT Teaching Assistants and delve into critical topics including deep learning, neural networks, recommendation systems, and network analytics. Students selected as fellows into this program receive valuable training, portfolio building, and mentorship, free of charge to them thanks to the generous support of industry sponsors.

In the first pilot in 2023 there were 40 applications for 30 spots. The 2024 cohort had a longer recruitment phase and received over 450 applicants for 65 spots, showing how critical this type of training is for students.

ICSR leaders will be working with those gathered at the event to scale this educational offering to highly-motivated learners from partner HBCUs.

2023

AWS Machine Learning – The Grad Project
Tuesday, September 19, 2023

Ben Lewis and Jessy Han represented the Policing vertical in an online event discussing their work on creating datasets using criminal justice, housing, social media, and other public data linked to areas in our society most influenced by systemic racism.

Big Data & Systemic Racism – Microchat @ MIT Diversity Leadership Conference
Monday, January 30 – 2:30-3:30pm – Zoom

Chris Hays and Erin Walk lead a group discussion on how ICSR combines data science with the extensive social science literature on systemic racism to develop and harness computational tools that can help effect structural and normative change towards racial equity. They discussed the role that algorithms play in the proliferation of extremism online – be it white nationalism or other toxic social phenomena – and how it affects online and offline behavior.