Mila > News > Three Mila Researchers selected to participate in the Rising Stars in EECS 2020 Workshop for Women

11 Nov 2020

Three Mila Researchers selected to participate in the Rising Stars in EECS 2020 Workshop for Women

Mila PhD students Amy Zhang, Khimya Khetarpal and Nan Rosemary Ke took part in the intensive workshop that brings together outstanding women interested in pursuing academic careers in electrical engineering and computer science (EECS). This year’s edition was virtually hosted by the University of California, Berkeley, from November 9-10.

The three Mila members were among 152 women doctoral/postdoctoral participants from 68 institutions in 11 countries—a record number of participants in the Rising Stars workshop. Participants are selected based on academic excellence and commitment to advancing equity and inclusion.

From left to right: Khimya Khetarpal, Nan Rosemary Ke and Amy Zhang

The prestigious event aims at increasing the number of women interested in pursuing academic careers in computer science, computer engineering and electrical engineering, while offering them support and guidance. Launched at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2012, the annual Rising Stars workshop has also been hosted by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Carnegie Mellon University and Stanford University.

This year’s event featured panel discussions covering topics that will help graduate students and postdocs navigate the early stages of an academic career, as well as one-on-one mentoring opportunities with 87 faculty members representing seven of the 10 top-ranked EECS universities in the United States.

All three Mila members gave poster presentations, as presented below:

Learning Invariant Representations for Reinforcement Learning without Reconstruction
Amy Zhang, PhD Candidate, Mila / McGill University
EECS Rising Stars Profile

Bridging Perception and Action: Towards Continual Reinforcement Learning
Khimya Khetarpal, PhD Candidate, Mila / McGill University
EECS Rising Stars Profile

From “What” to “Why”: towards causal deep learning
Nan Rosemary Ke, PhD Candidate, Mila / Université de Montréal
EECS Rising Stars Profile

For more information about the event, visit the Rising Stars in EECS 2020 website.