Hybrid BSC RS/Life Session/Bioinfo4Women: Sex and gender differences in brain and mental health: Selected use cases on how to tackle them and Sex and gender bias in artificial intelligence for health

Abstract: Over the last years, sex and gender differences have been studies across several diseases yet a full elucidation and pratical solutions addressing those are still lacking. The Women's Brain Project aims is a non-profit organization which has been studying sex and gender differences in brain and mental health for the past year being at the forefront and collaborating with scientists, pharmaceutical companies and policymakers. During this talk we will introduce the work of the Women's Brain Project and explore 3 use cases of how sex and gender differences can be further elucidated and tackled via non-traditional partnerships with: startups, digital health providers, pharmaceutical companies.

Short bio: Simona is a Life Sciences Manager at Accenture in Basel. She focuses on product strategy, commercial and digital health topics. Prior to joining Accenture, she worked at Procter and Gamble and Coty as Product Development Manager and as a Life Sciences Consultant at EY. A scientist by background, Simona holds a PhD in Computational Chemistry from Oxford University (UK) and a Master in Healthcare Management, Economics, and Policy (MIHMEP), to be completed in 2022. She has a passionate interest in digital health, has published blogs with WBP, a review on Npj Digital Medicine, a book chapter on digital biomarkers and more. Simona is the Vice President of the Women’s Brain Project.

Title: Sex and gender bias in artificial intelligence for health

Abstract: The Life Sciences department of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center created the Bioinfo4Women (B4W) programme in 2018 with the aim to enhance gender awareness, in particular in the areas of Personalised Medicine, Bioinformatics and High Performance Computing. For this, B4W is building an international network of outstanding women researchers with training and mentoring plans, study visits at our center and webinars, and thereby multiplying their impact in the society. In addition, the programme is involved in different research projects related to biomedicine with a focus on sex and gender issues, in particular sex and gender differences and biases in biomedical data and Artificial Intelligence (AI). We will present some of the most recent research achievements of the BSC Life Sciences department and B4W in this area, including our work on (1) sex differences in comorbidities and drug administration from electronic health records; (2) the state of sex and gender bias in AI technologies; (3) sex bias assessment in worldwide large repositories of human data; (4) the qualitative analysis of gender bias in AI in the LGBTIQ+ communities.

Short bio: Davide Cirillo is the Head of the Machine Learning for Biomedical Research Unit at the Life Sciences Department of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). He received the MSc degree in Pharmaceutical Biotechnology from University of Roma ‘La Sapienza’, Italy, and the PhD degree in Biomedicine from Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) and Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG) of Barcelona, Spain. His research is devoted to the development and application of computational methods in Precision Medicine with a special emphasis on Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.