Breaking Barriers: Why Representation Matters in Tech and Science The IEEE/ACM CHASE 2025 Revelation

The Harmful Side of "These Things Aren't for Me"

It's never as complicated as we think, and why representation matters.

Attending the IEEE/ACM CHASE 2025 conference on connected health peeled away a veil of naivety for me. As someone from Africa, I used to read about these people who publish papers and attend such conferences, thinking they were geniuses, next-level humans who knew things we didn't or operated on a level close to alien super-geniuses. But one thing attending this week's event showed me was that they are just people like you and me, doing the same things you did in class for your undergraduate, high school, or PhD. The only difference is they show up.

Sitting in that room, I realized something, and I'm going to speak from a Black African perspective. I had never understood what they meant when they said representation matters, but I understand it more than ever now. The room was filled mainly with Asian people and a few whites. Now, we all know the stereotype: Asians and math, engineering, and science. But seeing what they represented, the work they did, I was puzzled by why Black people don't do the same. I know there's a system in place, and it's more complicated than it seems, but the work they do, the way they do it, and how they present it are all things we do in my graduate classes every day—a class mainly filled with international people from Africa. So why don't we do the same? We have the same teachers, the same professors, and we are taught the same things. At the end, it all looked like the same class work, projects, and homework we do, if you just gave them a little more time.

This was bothering because I used to think that by the time you get to present at IEEE, you have done something no one understands, that it's typically not taught, or that there's a whole realm of skill or knowledge or level of operation or something normal humans don't have or can't access or just aren't. Only to realize that no, most people just pick a topic, like we usually do in class, pick a data set, like we do in class, find a problem like we do in class, and propose a solution, like we do in class. It was striking to me because I realized for the first time that hey, I and my people can do this too. So why was the room filled with 80% Asian and 20% white people? I will leave that for politicians to debate.

My experience was amazing, though. I got to meet a lot of people, interact with so many brilliant minds, and the 9 Black people I counted at the whole conference of around 140 participants. Again, not trying to be political, just wondering why we don't do more of such.

Why Showing Up Matters and Representation Matters

Personally, I think it's because we simply don't know. The many African students at my school I told you about, I can assure you most of them have never heard of IEEE, and even though you tell them, most will think, "This isn't my thing," or like me, will assume it's too complicated or needs some sort of superpowers they simply don't possess. This is why showing up matters: If I had never shown up to that conference, I would never know that these research papers are like the work we do in class, just with more time dedicated to it. The formula is the same. I would have never known how possible it is. I would have never known that I myself could do it. I would still remain ignorant, thinking, "These things are hard, and I can't handle them." But showing up removed that veil of doubt, fear, or self-doubt or inferiority complex. Now I know that if I ever wanted to, I could. Now the hundreds of other country mates in school, mates who didn't get the chance to be in this room and get exposed to this didn't get that insight or revelation and will continue walking around like, "These things aren't for me."

Why Representation Matters

We never get to see many Black people in such spaces, be it pop culture like movies or TV shows. It's always the Asian kid who's good at math and the Black kid who's good at basketball and rap. Yet the core, we are born alike. Studying MIT's Nancy Kanwisher, the human brain, and Stanford's Robert Sapolsky, human behavioral biology, taught me anything. It's that we are born with the same things: arms, parts, same moods. We all come out of the womb knowing only how to cry and how to suck on breasts for milk. Everything else is taught and learned. Yet somehow, our society teaches us that certain things are for certain people. Black people can and are capable of doing math, but if a kid is never shown that, he will grow up thinking, "These things aren't for me." If we keep seeing only Asian people when it comes to things like IEEE publications and conferences and no other races, we might not think they are meant for that when, in reality, every single human race is capable of such. In fact, they are taught the same and can do the same. They just need to see and be told and represented.

The harmful bit about this is that even though other races do the exact same, the people judging, the professors, the institutions, and other parties might not take their work seriously because of bias. I saw people present papers on fields in psychology and mental health, topics I have done research in and tried dabbling in myself. Most weren't even as deep as I went, but here they were at IEEE, and the best I got was presenting at a school thing where my professors didn't even take it seriously. To be fair, my paper didn't go into technical details and exploratory deeper means—the more time aspect I was talking about—but still. Anyway, it was good knowing that this is possible and that when people are funded and given more time and attention by their schools, institutions, and professors, they too can reach such heights because, trust me, even the people we see presenting also started from zero and didn't have any clue. The only difference is someone looked at them as people who can, invested in them money-wise and time-wise, and with time, they are up at an IEEE conference. And investment is huge. To attend the conference was a thousand dollars plus. The schools and institutions and labs that sent these people paid for that.

 

Everyone is capable of doing this. It's not as complicated or hard as we assume. The formula is the same. The knowledge is the same. It just needs institutions to invest in the people, something I feel is lacking. Because well, as one student will start with a novel idea and get a professor to pick them up, hold their hand, invest in them time and money to take that idea further and do research and give them the means and resources to take that idea to IEEE publishing level, another student will have the same idea, and no one will even bother to hold their hand simply because "these things are for that kind of people."

Outside of that, I learnt a lot, met some amazing people with genius ideas: people from high school, undergrad, graduates from all over the states and all over the world. We had people who flew in from Finland, Korea, and states like Alabama, New Hampshire, and all over. The energy was nice. The ideas were endless. You could finish all of them, and I can't even talk about all of them. The papers presented, some were unique and new. Others were just research ideas that any normal person like you and me with resources and funding and basic common sense, undergraduate understanding, could do or arrive at or publish.

AI was the word of the day, and I could take a shot every time someone said the word AI or the word model. Homer Simpson would be proud of me. It was all AI this and AI that and our model this and prediction that. Basically, the process is: we found a dataset, did some analysis, found a thing (trend, problem, gap, etc.), thought of a solution, got help in terms of funding, money, professor time, etc., to do more research and test in the real world (most didn't even test in the real world), built a model to predict or ascertain our findings (last didn't even do this stage), and then sent our work to IEEE. A process I personally have done several times in work, class projects, and course works and even final semester projects. The only difference is no one told me that's what it actually takes to ask to be published in IEEE.

Anyway, all in all, these things are not hard or complicated or need genius brains. It's a time and resources problem, mostly time, because, like I said, most didn't even do real-world testing.

Anyone is capable of doing this in whatever research field you want. This was mainly health-focused, but the formula is the same for most, I'm guessing.

Never count yourself out: 90% of the work is "showing up," as they say. Show up, try and get into these rooms, and get exposed. I always remember a video of Obama saying the exact same thing: that you walk into these rooms and realize that these people aren't all that. They have been exposed and given the confidence to think they belong, but they aren't the smartest or brightest or some sort of gods and geniuses.