Sabrina Burtscher

I am a PhD candidate at the faculty of informatics/computer science at TU Wien. My bachelor's program focused on medical IT - this is where I found out about my interest in politics, activism and society and the connections in between these topics and computer sciences. In my master's, I focused on inclusion and exclusion in and through digital technologies. My master thesis is a set of recommendations on how to make (research) projects more inclusive.
For several years, I was a student representative and political activist on various university levels (Österreichische Hochschüler_innenschaft). Outside of university, I am a member of Chaos Computer Club Wien (c3w).

It's in my activism at university where I discovered my passion for speaking -- I like to learn new things and love to try and break them down for others to understand.

Things I can talk about aka what does "informatics and society" mean for me:
* diversity in CS -- what does diversity mean, why is it important, how can it be improved? My master thesis focuses on including intersectionality in HCI research, and I was invited to coach the department for "Gleichstellung und Diversität" at University of Vienna on "Geschlecht und Digitalisierung" in November 2019.
* teaching in CS -- with inputs from TU Wien, how can teachers make CS (and, tbh, pretty much every subject) more interesting for all but "the usual suspects"?
* history of CS -- where did it come from, what did it do? focus on things CS courses like to ignore, like computers in Nazi Germany.
* surveillance and how it affects people (with focus on Austria, #überwachungspaket)
* technology and ethics -- for example, I have done talks co-authored articles on algorithmic bias. a term paper on intimate partner violence and digital technologies is currently work in progress.