Abeba Birhane is a cognitive scientist who works at the intersection of complex adaptive systems, machine learning, algorithmic bias, and critical race studies. Birhane's work with Vinay Prabhu uncovered that large-scale image datasets commonly used to develop AI systems, including ImageNet and 80 Million Tiny Images, carried racist and misogynistic labels and offensive images. She has been recognized by VentureBeat as a top innovator in computer vision. Birhane was born in Ethiopia. She received her Bachelors of Science in Psychology and a Bachelors of Arts in Philosophy from The Open University. In 2015, she completed her Master of Science in Cognitive Science and, in 2021, her Ph.D. at the Complex Software Lab in the School of Computer Science at University College Dublin. Birhane studied the impacts of emerging AI technologies and how they shape individuals and local communities. She found that AI algorithms tend to disproportionately impact vulnerable groups such as older workers, trans people, immigrants, and children. Her research on relational ethics won the best paper award at NeurIPS’s Black in AI workshop in 2019. She has also studied and written about algorithmic colonization. Her work in decolonizing computational sciences addressed the inherited oppressions in current systems especially towards women of color. Fekadu Shewarega (Member, IEEE) received the Dipl.-Ing. degree in electrical engineering and the Ph.D. degree in power engineering from the Technical University of Dresden, Dresden, Germany, in 1985 and 1988, respectively. After graduation, he joined the Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia as an Associate Professor, where he served in various teaching and administrative capacities. Currently, he is a member of the research staff at the University Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany. His research interests are focused on power system analysis and renewable energy technologies. Girmaw Teshager Bitew (PhD) is an Assistant Professor at Bahir Dar University, Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Power System and Automation Engineering (2019) from North China Electric Power University, China; a M.Sc. degree in Electrical Power Systems (2011) from Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia; and a B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering (2006) from Arba Minch University, Ethiopia. With over fourteen years of academic experience in universities and four years of industry experience at Goldwind Science & Technology Co., Ltd., he has contributed to teaching, research, project accomplishments, and IEC standard development for microgrid protection and control. Bitew has supervised Ph.D. and M.Sc. students, published many papers, co-authored books and book chapters, and served as a reviewer in journals and conferences for IEEE, Springer, IET, and more. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of the ICAST book series publications and has been invited as a keynote speaker, technical committee member, and session chair at international conferences. Tamir Anteneh Alemu is a senior lecturer for Information Technology at the Faculty of Computing, Institute of Technology (BiT), Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia. His research interests include artificial intelligence, machine learning, data mining, big data analytics, information retrieval, knowledge discovery, data science, knowledge-based systems, and cloud computing. Mekuanint Agegnehu Bitew received the bachelor’s degree from Mekelle University, Mekelle, Ethiopia, in 2005, the master’s degree from Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 2007, and the Ph.D. degree from the College of Electrical and Computer Science, National Taipei University of Technology, Taipei, Taiwan, in 2016. He has been a Postdoctoral Researcher for two years with the National Taipei University of Technology. Since 2022, he has been an Associate Professor with the Faculty of Computing, Bahir Dar Institute of Technology, Bahir Dar University, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia. His research interests include WSNs, ad-hoc networks, wireless communication, optical networks, and AI.
