2016 Gordon Research Conference on the Auditory System

/ BiasWatchNeuro

2016 Gordon Research Conference: Auditory System

Organizers: Stephen G. Lomber (Chair) and Jeffrey Holt (Vice Chair)
Invited speaker gender ratio: 20 Women : 29 Men (41%)
Estimated* base rate of women in the field: 37% 

*Method of estimation: we searched NIH RePORTER with text keywords “auditory” AND “system” and counted the number of women among unique PIs in pages 4, 15, 25 & 35 of the 37 pages of results (notably, the first two pages we counted, 4 and 35, were exactly evenly split — hooray for auditory systems research!)

Neuroscience Methods in Human-Robot Interaction

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IEEE RO-MAN workshop on Neuroscience Methods in Human-Robot Interaction

Organizers: Burcu A. Urgen, Ayse P. Saygin and Emily S. Cross
Invited speaker gender ratio: 4 Women : 1 Man (80%)(or 50% if we don’t count the organizers as invited speakers)
Estimated* base rate of women in the field: 15%??

*Method of estimation: we are not sure how to estimate the base rate in this subfield. In general there is a dearth of women in robotics, for instance, the proportion of women faculty in CMU’s Robotics Institute is a mere 6.7% (although women make up 15% of the affiliated faculty of the institute and 19% of its postdoctoral fellows) so this has got to be an all time high.

International Summer School on Maps in the Brain

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International Summer School on Maps in the Brain

Organizers: Charl Linssen and Tansu Celikel
Invited speaker gender ratio: 0 Women : 10 Men (0%)
Estimated* base rate of women in the field: 34%

*Method of estimation: Since the course is advertised as bringing together “the world’s leading scientists in spatial, cognitive and functional maps”, we searched NIH RePORTER with text keywords (“spatial” OR “cognitive” OR “functional”) AND “map” AND (“neuroscience” OR “brain”), and counted the number of women PI’s in pages 6 & 18 of the 24 pages of results

6th Motivation and Cognitive Control (MCC) symposium

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6th Motivation and Cognitive Control (MCC) symposium

Organizers: Martin O’Neill , Redmond O’Connell, Jerome Sallet, Steve Kennerley, and Verity Brown
Invited speaker gender ratio: 6 Females : 18 Males (25%)
Estimated* base rate of females in the field: 33%
[an artist in residence at MCC 2016, Claire Anderson, will be exploring gender bias in research in her project in residence at the conference]

*Method of estimation: NIH RePORTER with text keyword “motivation” OR “cognitive control”