Community involvement

There are a lot of things in the world that need to change…and if you ask 1k people what these things are, you will get 1k different answers. Honestly, I’m not entirely sure what I would say, but I think there’s one aspect that unites all of them: community. More precisely, an open, fair and inclusive community that aims to achieve something for the greater good and targets social responsibility, as well as critical thinking in a dedicated manner. I’m aware that this sounds overly optimistic and that even the best initiatives have tremendous flaws. However, I still believe that community-driven efforts are the only way forward and thus support several projects that aim to improve things following the above mentioned axioms. Please note that all of this (and the things that follow below) are my opinions and based on my perception and experience, without any claims regarding universal validity. Additionally, I don’t want to position myself as someone that wants to be perceived as “Oh look at all these selfless things I do and that make me better than you”. In fact, such a statement would be far from being true. I just want to outline that things can be achieved and changed for the better if folks work together, as well as start, stimulate and support respective discussions. All of this is of course easy to say for someone that never experienced systemic sexism and/or racism and doesn’t have to fear/care about potential repercussions….so why not use the privileges one has to help working towards changing them to something everyone has. Given the state of the world, there are a lot of ways to get active and help out, everything helps no matter how little or insignificant it seems. Below, you’ll find some of the initiatives I decided to dedicate time and effort to. Again, these are nothing but my opinions and I don’t mean to paternalize anyone on anything.

Data science for social good

Catch a fire

Statistics without Borders

BrainHack

OHBM Sustainability & Environment SIG

AI Campus

Ring-a-scientist

Letters to a Pre-Scientist