Sent on behalf of the DS Colloquium Series in partnership with the DS & AI Council
The DS Colloquium, in partnership with “Sips, Snacks, and Data Chats,” will take place on Tuesday, December 3rd from 10:00AM – 10:45AM in Unity Hall 400. This week, Prof. Fabricio Murai will be joining us to give a talk followed by a social/meet-greet. Please see details below regarding his presentation. We would love for you to join us!
Title: Fostering a Disability-Inclusive Research Culture with Dynamic Mutual Micro-Accommodations (DyMMAs)
Abstract: A recent NSF DCL (23-160) highlighted the urgent need for inclusive environments to encourage broad participation of scholars and trainees with disabilities (STWD), with sharp dropoffs from post-secondary to graduate degrees (59% drop) and from graduate to faculty (50% drop). In this talk, I will share some best practices and lessons learned from our experiences as neurodivergent and/or disabled PIs, fostering an inclusive and accessible research culture in computer science, emphasizing STWD.
I will introduce Dynamic Mutual Micro-Accommodations (DyMMAs), our novel framework for fostering a disability-inclusive research culture in computer science for STWD. Under DyMMAs, disclosure and access/accommodation requests can morph from painful, invasive bureaucratic processes to granular and open sharing of dynamic disability-based, shifting access needs, all in a supportive and safe environment. DyMMAs are not a replacement for formal, legally mandated accommodations. Rather, we envision DyMMAs as an informal mechanism reducing stigma and smoothing over many of the day-to-day challenges in research environments, especially regarding dynamic disabilities, neurodivergence, and other hidden or variable access needs.
I will share our experience developing and offering DyMMAs in our own labs, and how we lead the process by example. I will share some of the informal micro-accommodations we - as PIs and advisors - have provided in a circular manner by and for team members, with concrete examples. I will close with suggestions for all PIs and team members (whether disabled or otherwise) to foster an access-first culture.
Note: My collaborator Prof. Shiri Dori-Hacohen (UConn) and I first presented this material in September at the CMD-IT/ACM Richard Tapia Conference 2024.
Bio: Dr. Fabricio Murai is an Assistant Professor in Computer Science & Data Science at WPI. Before joining, Fabricio Murai was a tenured faculty member in the Department of Computer Science at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science at University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2016. Dr. Murai's research focuses on developing innovative AI techniques that (i) leverage the interconnections among real-world entities, (ii) enhance our comprehension of society through the analysis of online data, and (iii) ensure equitable outcomes in high-stakes applications. He has published in top conferences in the field of AI and Data Mining, such as the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and the SIAM International Conference on Data Mining, as well as top scientific journals such as Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, ACM TKDD and PLOS ONE. Dr. Murai is a neurodivergent scholar, a Brazilian immigrant, and first-gen college student.