Meet the Speaker – Susan Wei

We talk to Dr Susan Wei from The University of Melbourne about definite answers, the next big questions in her field of research and the superpower Dr Wei wished she had.

1. How do you explain your work and its real-world impact to people outside of the mathematical sciences (think friendly chat at a BBQ)?

I like to tell people that as a statistician, my research is all about grappling with uncertainty. That’s why you can never get a statistician to give a definitive answer to anything.

2. What are the next interesting “big questions” or challenges you hope to tackle?

I hope to contribute theoretical understanding towards the unreasonable effectiveness of deep learning.

3. What are your favourite applications of your work?

My DECRA was awarded to study algorithmic fairness. I’m currently working on incorporating fairness into machine learning algorithms where the training data exhibits strong sample bias. This could have applications to areas like loan lending and admissions policies.

4. If you could have any superpower, what would it be?

I’d like to be able to fall asleep anywhere, anytime.

Dr Susan Wei will be co-presenting the topic Neural Networks and Related Models with Dr Robert Salomone at the 2021 Winter School at Queensland University of Technology from 12-23 July