Sorelle Friedler

Sorelle Alaina Friedler
Friedler in 2015
Alma materSwarthmore College
University of Maryland, College Park
Scientific career
InstitutionsHaverford College
Alphabet Inc
ThesisGeometric algorithms for objects in motion (2011)

Sorelle Alaina Friedler is an American computer scientist who is an Associate Professor at Haverford College. She is the co-founder Association for Computing Machinery Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency. Her research seeks to prevent discrimination in machine learning.

Early life and education

Friedler earned her bachelor's degree at Swarthmore College.[1] She moved to the University of Maryland, College Park for her graduate studies, where she studied geometric algorithms.[2]

Research and career

Friedler joined Alphabet Inc. as a software engineer,[1][3] where she worked with X on the development of weather balloons that can provide internet access to remote communities.[1]

Friedler has advocated for the careful use of artificial intelligence and machine learning.[4] In particular, she has spoken about how biased data and algorithms reinforce social inequality.[4] In 2015 she was made a Fellow at the Data & Society Research Institute.[citation needed]

Friedler has worked with Josh Schrier and Alexander Norquist on the application of data mining to accelerate materials discovery.[5][6] They created a computer algorithm capable of predicting whether a set of reagents will create a crystalline materials when mixed in a solvent and heated.[7] To create the tool, they compiled a database of almost 4,000 chemical reactions, wrote an algorithm that could mine for patterns in data and provide insight about why some experiments fail while others succeed.[8] The algorithm was correct 89% of the time, whilst researchers (human) predictions only had a 78% success rate.[8] Friedler and her co-workers published the database online (darkreactions.haverford.edu/) to encourage other researchers to share their data.[8]

Awards and honors

  • 2006 AT&T Labs Fellowship Program[9]
  • 2009 Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowship[10]
  • 2019 Chace/Parker Teaching Award[11]
  • 2019 Mozilla Responsible Computer Science Challenge[11]

Selected publications

  • Feldman, Michael; Friedler, Sorelle A.; Moeller, John; Scheidegger, Carlos; Venkatasubramanian, Suresh (2015). "Certifying and Removing Disparate Impact". Proceedings of the 21th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining. New York, New York, US: ACM Press. pp. 259–268. arXiv:1412.3756. doi:10.1145/2783258.2783311. ISBN 978-1-4503-3664-2. S2CID 2077168.
  • "Machine Learning-Assisted Discovery of Solid Li-Ion Conducting Materials". doi:10.1021/acs.chemmater.8b03272.s001. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  • Adler, Philip; Falk, Casey; Friedler, Sorelle A.; Rybeck, Gabriel; Scheidegger, Carlos; Smith, Brandon; Venkatasubramanian, Suresh (2016). "Auditing Black-Box Models for Indirect Influence". 2016 IEEE 16th International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM). IEEE. pp. 1–10. arXiv:1602.07043. doi:10.1109/icdm.2016.0011. ISBN 978-1-5090-5473-2.

Personal life

Friedler is married to Rebecca Benjamin.[12]

References

  1. ^ a b c tferrick (27 November 2016). "Dr. Sorelle Friedler | ENGLISH HOUSE GAZETTE". Retrieved 2020-12-23.
  2. ^ Friedler, Sorelle Alaina (2011). Geometric algorithms for objects in motion. Place of publication not identified. ISBN 978-1-244-64662-9. OCLC 829982183.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  3. ^ "Sorelle Friedler | Auditing, Explaining, and Ensuring Fairness in Algorithmic Systems | Institute for Advanced Study". ias.umn.edu. Retrieved 2020-12-23.
  4. ^ a b "Sorelle Friedler". Computer Science. Retrieved 2020-12-23.
  5. ^ Hernandez, Daniela (2016-05-06). "Why Machines Should Learn From Failures". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2020-12-23.
  6. ^ "Three Haverford Scientists Receive NSF Funding for Collaborative Project". www.haverford.edu. 19 September 2013. Retrieved 2020-12-23.
  7. ^ Ball, Philip (2016). "Computer gleans chemical insight from lab notebook failures". Nature News. doi:10.1038/nature.2016.19866. S2CID 182328783.
  8. ^ a b c Cepelewicz, Jordana. "Lab Failures Turn to Gold in Search for New Materials". Scientific American. Retrieved 2020-12-23.
  9. ^ Friedler, Sorelle A.; Mount, David M. (2010-08-01). "Approximation algorithm for the kinetic robust K-center problem". Computational Geometry. 43 (6): 572–586. doi:10.1016/j.comgeo.2010.01.001. ISSN 0925-7721.
  10. ^ "Dissertation Fellowships | The University of Maryland Graduate School". gradschool.umd.edu. Retrieved 2020-12-23.
  11. ^ a b "Sorelle Friedler Awarded Mozilla Responsible Computer Science Challenge Funding". www.haverford.edu. 29 May 2019. Retrieved 2020-12-23.
  12. ^ "Rebecca Benjamin, Sorelle Friedler (Published 2010)". The New York Times. 2010-07-23. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-12-23.