🎊 AI Spotlight: Sandi Besen 🎊

We’re excited to present Sandi Besen, Ecosystem Lead + AI Research Engineer, IBM Research | AI Startup Advisor as this week’s AI Spotlight. 

Let’s dive into our interview with Sandi and see how she is using AI.

1. Share your AI origin story

I grew up immersed in the performing arts as a professional actor and classical singer. Never did I imagine I’d end up pursuing what once seemed unattainable for an artsy kid who "wasn’t good at math"—a fulfilling career in technology, with a focus on AI.During university, I shifted from my artistic path to an academic one and discovered a love for exploring a different side of my brain. I thrived in a field where success felt measurable and my performance wasn’t subjective. That led me to pursue a master’s degree in what was then an emerging field: data science. From the moment I started, I knew I had found my “thing”.For the past six years, I’ve worked in various roles in AI. I’m currently focused on bridging the gap between research and open source development building out the next generation of AI frameworks, platforms and protocols at IBM Research.

2. What three AI tools have been most game changing for you? 

1. Perplexity helps me to search for both broad and deep questions on the internet. They've done a great job at reinventing the way we search using the latest AI capabilities. 2. Although this is a standard answer Claude and ChatGPT (particularly the o1 model) really help me quickly understand code and get me unstuck when programming. I check this leaderboard out for the best model to use! https://bigcode-bench.github.io/  3. Hugging face provides me access to interesting datasets and AI models to experiment with. I am a huge proponent of open source and love how they try to recreate close sourced models for the open source community!

3. If you were just starting your AI journey today where would you start? 

I would go deep. I'd pick a field with broad applicability and be the expert in that field with the credentials to back it up. Additionally, I'd tell myself that you don't need to prove anything to anyone but yourself and to be kind to myself if concepts don't "click" right away. Nothing good was ever built over night. 

4. Share the spotlight: Name 3+ women leading in AI we should all follow. 

My friend Tula Masterman who is a powerhouse and rising star, then some well known women in the space like Fei-Fei Li and Allie Miller.

5. As a woman in AI, what do you want our allies to know? 

It can be intimidating to speak up in a room of people who don't look like you. At times that unique person might also feel unjustly "like they might not belong." Make them welcome and encourage them to participate.

Want to be the next in AI Spotlight? It’s a great opportunity to share your voice with our community!

Fill out the WxAI AI Spotlight Nomination Form for your chance to step into the AI Spotlight and to share your voice with the Women And AI community.