Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Statement

The SFI Centre for Research Training (CRT) in Artificial Intelligence values diversity among its staff, students, and supervisors.

We have a commitment to our students to provide an equal and inclusive learning environment. Respecting our students’ backgrounds and perspectives.

We understand that Diversity within our community will drive the innovation required to make this PhD programme a success.

Key to this is our awareness and commitment to ensuring a balanced and representative community of students, supervisors, management and leadership team.

We want to ensure that we create and follow the values of equality, diversity and inclusion, by assessing, planning, implementing and evaluating our efforts to ensure that we improve our practice and visibility.

The current make-up of our CRT in AI  management, supervisors and students includes:

• a 50/50 equal representation of male and female academics on our leadership team
• 40%+ female students in our cohort of 66 students
• 26% female supervisors in our cohort of 70+ supervisors;
• Students from 22 different countries around the world are internationally represented.
• Approximately 20% of students come from fields other than STEM.

The CRT in AI Executive management team believes strongly that we can actively cultivate a community where all students/staff/partners feel welcome, heard and are represented.

 To achieve this, the CRT will:

• Promote a culture of celebrating diversity, where the principles of equality and inclusion are embedded in all aspects of our work and where everyone is valued and treated with dignity and respect.

This means, we ensure that we are respectful of each other’s cultures and cultural and religious practices.

Students returning to study are welcomed and accepted, taking flexible approaches to accommodate students with families or caring obligations.

• Assess and monitor our recruitment processes to ensure that these are fair, transparent, and inclusive.

This means, recruitment decisions are made by a gender-balanced panel. We have purposeful intent to accept qualified female applicants to correct for bias and achieve specific diversity targets.

• Actively increase the participation and proportion of women in STEM-related activities.

This means, our student led Newsletter is representative, currently now stands at by over 75% female students across all cohorts for equal representation.

We have a well-established group of female students who are active in the Women in AI Consortium.

• Ensure that the gender dimension is considered in research content by designing our training with close collaboration with our students.

This means that we survey our students and obtain feedback to ensure that our training content is relevant and satisfactory.

Gender Bias in AI, has been a main focus for our Newsletter committee sharing information, knowledge and the latest research to help students to be more aware and counteract bias in their research.

• Manage and progress the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion agenda with the engagement of our students, staff and supervisors.

Our EDI committee has not formally met in 2022, but will meet in November 2022 for its inaugural meeting.

Our CRT Welcomes

All Races

All Religions

All Countries of Origin

All Sexual Orientations

All Genders

All Abilities