Biniyam Assefa

Background

About Biniyam Assefa

Experience is a word with many meanings and it takes on many forms. Although I studied Information Science in school, I subsequently moved to Japan to teach English. My loved ones were puzzled about my decision but I did it all for the sake of experience. I think being able to see the world in a different way from which you were socialized is key to succeeding in any field. I myself am an immigrant from Ethiopia, raised in a predominately Hispanic area, who grew up seeing and absorbing the cultures of all my peers around me. In my time in Japan, I learned about the local culture, the language, and most of all learned how to see the world through the perspective of the people around me. Now that I have returned home to Maryland, I want to take the experiences I made and apply them to my degree in Information Science to facilitate understanding and exchange in a time where the world is both more connected and more divided than ever. I am particularly interested in Data Analytics and Machine Learning. We’ve seen time and time again how human bias can affect something as empirical as technology. The way engineers interpret data, the way data is collected, or even the way end-users use a given product can drastically change and transform said product to create unintended flaws. For example, when training a facial recognition algorithm, if a developer doesn’t consider using a variety of faces, the algorithm could fail to detect a person from a minority group. This could result in small annoyances, such as an automated dispensers not working, to big grievances like cases of mistaken identity. While I have not experienced everything our wonderful planet has to offer, I wish to use what I have learned to ensure that the technology that we as a society create is accessible, sustainable, and most of all, equitable.