WiDS Ambassadors plan an event in their area that coincides with the Women in Data Science (WiDS) Worldwide Conference. They are in their regions supporting women who are currently in the field and inspiring other women to become data scientists. The New Zealand WiDS co-ambassadors for 2024 are Kate Kolich, Ivy Liu and Bing Xue who volunteer their time to organise WiDS NZ.
This is Kate's seventh year as a WiDS ambassador and this year she is also a member of the global WiDS ambassador advisory council
https://www.widsconference.org/aac.html
Kate Kolich - Reserve Bank of New Zealand
Kate is the Assistant Governor/General Manager Information, Data and Analytics at Reserve Bank of New Zealand. Kate joined RBNZ in 2022. Her team is responsible for statistics, data strategy, data science, data governance and records and information management. Kate has had an extensive career in digital, data and technology leadership roles across the public and private sectors. Her experience includes almost 20 years in financial services including at Bank of New Zealand where she held a number of data leadership roles including Head of Enterprise Data and Information Services. In her time at BNZ, Kate led many strategic data initiatives and teams across the bank. Prior to joining the RBNZ, Kate led the Evidence, Insights and Innovation team at EECA (Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority). Prior to that, she was the Director of Data Systems and Analytics at the Social Investment Agency. Kate is passionate about supporting continued education and was a member of the Victoria University of Wellington Human Ethics Committee for a number of years. She was also a member of the MIT Sloan CISR Data Research board for three years where she contributed to industry data research. As a recognised thought leader on digital and data innovation, Kate is active in promoting women in STEM through her work as a Global Women in Data Science Ambassador where Kate has been instrumental in bringing the Women in Data Science to New Zealand conference to New Zealand and is a member of the Women in Data Science Worldwide Advisory Council.
Ivy Liu - Victoria University of Wellington
Ivy Liu - Victoria University of Wellington
Ivy Liu is an Associate Professor in Statistics and Deputy Director in the Centre for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at Victoria University of Wellington. Her main research area is in Categorical Data Analysis, including ordinal response data analysis, cluster analysis, longitudinal data analysis, repeated measurements, and their applications. A/Prof Liu is currently the Postgraduate Coordinator for Statistics in School of Mathematics and Statistics and an Associate Editor for Australian & New Zealand Journal of Statistics. Previously, she was the Head of School in School of Mathematics and Statistics to lead the development of several programmes.
Bing Xue - Victoria University of Wellington
Bing Xue - Victoria University of Wellington
Bing Xue is currently a Professor of Artificial Intelligence, and Deputy Head of School in the School of Engineering and Computer Science at Victoria University of Wellington. She has over 300 papers published in fully refereed international journals and conferences and her research focuses mainly on evolutionary computation, machine learning, classification, symbolic regression, feature selection, evolving deep NNs, image analysis, transfer learning, multi-objective machine learning. Dr Xue is currently the Chair of IEEE CIS Evolutionary Computation Technical Committee and Editor of IEEE CIS Newsletter. She has also served as associate editor of several international journals, such as IEEE CIM, IEEE TEVC and ACM TELO. She is also a Fellow of Engineering New Zealand.
