Faculty Excellence Program

During the 2021-2022 academic year, I joined the first edition of the Innovation for Society excellence program at Ghent University, which brings together future engineers to explore their role in creating positive and lasting impact. Students worked in small groups on a specific case, meeting regularly for guest lectures and progress presentations. I thoroughly enjoyed the mix of young engineers, from architecture to computer science.

The Challenge

My team’s case was detecting racial bias in facial recognition systems. As this technology is increasingly used in justice and national security, ensuring fair judgment for everyone is crucial, yet biased or unbalanced training data can put innocent individuals at significant risk.

Our Findings

We confirmed the presence of racial bias in facial recognition systems and proposed several mitigation techniques, including synthetic data to balance training datasets.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Prof. dr. ir. Hendrik de Bie for organizing this program and showing us that engineers can and should make a positive impact on society.