IDSS News May 2023
Munther Dahleh photo by Lillie Paquette MIT School of Engineering
I'm so deeply grateful to everyone who could join us at the IDSS Celebration, and to those who were speakers and panelists. It was a great week of connecting with colleagues from different parts of the world, hearing about the development of new statistical methodologies to address complex societal challenges, and reflecting on all we have strived to accomplish since we launched IDSS in 2015.

The Celebration gave me the opportunity to highlight the folks who have been instrumental in making IDSS what it is today, and to present IDSSx, our online education offerings which includes the MicroMasters in Statistics and Data Science. I was also fortunate to experience one of the most satisfying rewards of an academic career: hearing from former students who are taking what they have learned to new and interesting places in academia, industry, and policy.

Earlier this spring, we also held our annual Women in Data Science conference, which provides an outstanding showcase of impactful work from women in the field at MIT and beyond. Keeping with that theme, we're sharing recent news about the research and accomplishments of some of the many talented women affiliated with IDSS!

Best wishes for the rest of the semester!

Munther Dahleh, Director
William A. Coolidge Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

A two-day conference at MIT reflected on the impact of the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society since its launch, as founding director Munther Dahleh prepares to step down.
Academics, industry experts, and practitioners shared their stories, accomplishments, and knowledge at the seventh annual Women in Data Science (WiDS) Cambridge conference.

Below is a collection of recent stories featuring women doing groundbreaking work in statistics and data science here at MIT and IDSS.
If reactors are retired, polluting energy sources that fill the gap could cause more than 5,000 premature deaths, researchers including IDSS core faculty Noelle Selin estimate.
With the right building blocks, MIT researchers including IDSS faculty Caroline Uhler show that machine-learning models can more accurately perform tasks like fraud detection.
IDSS affiliate Tamara Broderick and colleagues build a “taxonomy of trust” to identify where confidence in the results of a data analysis might break down.
Careful planning of charging station placement could lessen or eliminate the need for new power plants, a new study co-authored by IDSS faculty Jessika Trancik shows.
The award will support her project “Learning for Generalization in Large-Scale Cyber-Physical Systems.”
SES student Manon Revel, who works at the intersection of computational social choice and political theory, hopes to uncover ways to improve governance in AI systems, democracies, and corporate environments.
Subscribe to the IDSS podcast Data Nation to hear conversations with MIT faculty about how data can be used to analyze complex, high-impact systems in society, and to lead, mislead, manipulate, and inform the public’s viewpoints and decisions on societal level challenges.
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