Sharon Ferguson

Sharon Ferguson

PhD student in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto

About Me

I am a 3rd year Ph.D. student at the University of Toronto. I work at the Ready Lab under Dr. Alison Olechowski and I am also a graduate research fellow with the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. My doctoral work is supported by the National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC). I was formerly a graduate research fellow at the university’s Centre for Ethics, Ethics of AI lab from 2021-2022.

My research looks at how engineers are using new enterprise communication tools such as Slack and Microsoft Teams, and how we can use natural language processing tools and the mass amounts of digital trace data that are created every day to learn about engineering design. My recent work looked at how we can identify cycles of convergence and divergence within the engineering design process using Topic Modelling. Currently, I am analyzing Slack communication using a gender lens: what gendered communication patterns exist on these platforms, and do they impact how individuals are treated? Moving forward, I hope to investigate how these platforms help or hinder idea spread and innovation within engineering design teams.

I also lead a project investigating student persistence in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, supported by the Ethics of AI lab at University of Toronto’s Centre for Ethics. I presented the first part of this project at the American Society for Engineering Education Conference in June 2022, and you can see a summary of this work in video form or podcast form.

I also work as a research assistant under Dr. Anastasia Kuzminykh at the COoKIE Group investigating explanations generated by large language models, and how these compare to human explanations.

I am passionate about increasing diversity in Engineering, and currently serve as the President of the Graduate Society of Women Engineers, after serving as the Vice President of Finance from 2021-2022.

I hold a Bachelor of Applied Science in Industrial Engineering from the University of Toronto, and have work experience in the energy industry.

News

  • January 2023: I presented a poster entitled “Measuring Gendered Communication Patterns on Enterprise Communication Platforms” at the 2023 ACM Conference on Supporting Group Work.
  • December 2022: We are presenting our comparative analysis of human and AI explanation text at the Neurips Workshop on Human Centered AI on December 9th.
  • November 2022: I gave a talk on hybrid and virtual engineering communication at the ILead Community of Practice Conference.
  • November 2022: Our short paper “Measuring Gendered Communication Patterns on Enterprise Communication Platforms” was accepted as a poster for the ACM Conference on Group Work in January 2023.
  • June 2022: Our paper “Communication Patterns in Engineering Enterprise Social Networks: An Exploratory Analysis using Short Text Topic Modelling” is now live online! Read it here.
  • June 2022: I was selected as a Graduate Fellow at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. Read about this year’s cohort here.
  • May 2022: My paper “‘Why couldn’t we do this more often?’: Exploring the Feasibility of Virtual and Distributed Work for Product Design Engineers” was accepted for publication in Research in Engineering Design
  • April 2022: I was awarded a Canada Graduate Scholarship - Doctoral from NSERC
  • March 2022: I was invited to present a talk titled “Advancing a Model of Students’ Intentional Persistence in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence” at the Centre for Ethics, Ethics of AI in Context: Emerging Scholars speaker series
  • March 2022: My paper “Advancing a Model of Students’ Intentional Persistence in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence” was accepted for publication at the 2022 American Society of Engineering Education Conference
  • March 2022: My paper “Communication Patterns in Engineering Enterprise Social Networks: An Exploratory Analysis using Short Text Topic Modelling” was accepted for publication in Design Science
  • July 2021: I was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Graduate Scholarship in Science and Technology
  • July 2021: My presentation “Exploring Short Text Topic Models in the Context of Product Design Enterprise Social Network Messaging” won first place in the Data Analytics, AI, and Robotics section of the University of Toronto Engineering Research Conference
  • June 2021: I was selected as an Ethics of AI Graduate Research Fellow at the University of Toronto Centre for Ethics
  • May 2021: I was selected to participate in the first annual Toronto Human-AI Interaction Summer Research School held by the Faculty of Information