The Libraries is pleased to announce a new speaker series, African Americans in STEM, resulting from a partnership between the Mason Libraries’ Teaching and Learning Team and NEOACM. This new series will commence in Spring 2022 and continue over subsequent fall and spring semesters.
The first two events, which will be virtual, will take place on Monday, April 25 and Thursday, April 28, 2022.
Think Black: IBM’s First Black Software Engineer, Monday, April 25, 6 p.m. EST, Register here.
Clyde W. Ford is a software engineer, a chiropractor, and a psychotherapist. He’s also the award-winning author of twelve works of fiction and non-fiction. THINK BLACK, Clyde’s most recent book published by Amistad/Harper Collins in September 2019, is a memoir about his father, the first Black software engineer in America. It is an examination of a father-son relationship that traces Ford’s story as a system engineer at IBM, and his father’s life as the first Black software engineer hired by Big Blue. The story is both a memoir and an exploration of the slow change in race relations, compared with the lightning speed of change in technology.
Telling Robot S.T.O.R.I.E.S., Thursday, April 28, 6 p.m. EST, Register here.
Cameron Hughes, Software Epistemologist and author of eight software development books including Robot Programming: A Guide to Controlling Autonomous Robot published by Pearson Education, will be presenting about the obligations and challenges of a software engineer in an age of machine learning hype. The talk is presented from the perspective of those who must program computers and robots to engage in activities that are typically associated with human beings. The presentation will cover the moral and ethical obligations of software engineers when charged with implementing strategies for complex problem solving that interface with the public. The presentation will discuss laymen-level definitions of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Autonomous Robots, and Computer Ethics.