Roberta Sinatra (University of Copenhagen): Quantifying biases and inequalities in science

Abstract | Every day our life is made easier by efficient algorithms that search and rank scientific information. Yet, these algorithms have an issue: they are trained on citation data that is ingrained with human biases. Therefore the output is inherently biased too, creating inequalities and raising concerns of discrimination. In this talk, I focus on recent quantitative efforts to (1) uncover bias mechanisms in science, (2) use this knowledge to gauge the fairness of metrics used in science, and (3) study the evolution of inequalities in the scientific enterprise during the pandemic.

Bio | Roberta Sinatra is a Full Professor in Data Science at the University of Copenhagen (KU), and holds visiting positions at IT University of Copenhagen (ITU), ISI Foundation (Turin, Italy), and Complexity Science Hub (Vienna, Austria). She co-founded the NEtwoRks, Data, and Society (NERDS) Research group at ITU, which she coordinated until 2022, and is a co-lead at the AI pioneer center in Copenhagen. Her research is at the forefront of network science, data science, and computational social science. Roberta did her BSc, MSc, and PhD in Physics at the University of Catania, Italy, and is an alumna of the Scuola Superiore di Catania. She was first a James McDonnell postdoctoral fellow, then a research faculty at the Center for Complex Network Research of Northeastern University (Boston MA, USA). Her research has been published in top-tier venues like Nature and Science, and has been featured in The New York Times, Forbes, The Economist, The Guardian, The Washington Post, among other major media outlets. Her research has been awarded the Complex Systems Society Junior prize, the DPG Young Scientist Award for Socio- and Econophysics, and a Villum Young Investigator grant.