We are happy to announce that on Monday, 31 of August our colleague MaryBeth Defrance defended her PhD thesis titled “Towards Better Evaluation and Understanding of Group Fairness in AI”.
Congratulations to MaryBeth, all of her collaborators, and to her family and friends!
A heartfelt thank you to
the jury members: prof. dr. Rik Van de Walle (chair), prof. dr. Toon Calders, prof. dr. Hilde Weerts, prof. dr. Femke De Backere, prof. dr. Aleksandra Pizurica
advisor dr. Maarten Buyl,
and promotors: prof. dr. Tijl De Bie, prof. dr. Jefrey Lijffijt.
Marybeth began her doctoral studies in Computer Science Engineering at AIDA in 2022, under the supervision of Prof. Tijl De Bie and Prof. Jefrey Lijffijt. Her doctoral research focused on fairness in AI. During her PhD, MaryBeth authored three papers at leading international AI conferences, published one journal article, and co-authored another. Beyond her research, she has been an active member of the AI fairness community, co-organizing the BIAS workshop at ECML PKDD for three consecutive years and serving as a general chair of the European Conference on Algorithmic Fairness (ECAF), held in Ghent in September 2026.