Nashlie H. Sephus is an American

computer engineer Computer engineering (CoE or CpE) is a branch of electrical engineering and computer science that integrates several fields of computer science and electronic engineering required to develop computer hardware and software. Computer engineers ...

and entrepreneur specialized in

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

and

algorithmic bias Algorithmic bias describes systematic and repeatable errors in a computer system that create "unfair" outcomes, such as "privileging" one category over another in ways different from the intended function of the algorithm. Bias can emerge from ...

identification. She is a

technology evangelist A technology evangelist is a person who builds a critical mass of support for a given technology, and then establishes it as a technical standard in a market that is subject to network effects. The word ''evangelism'' is borrowed from the context ...

Amazon Web Services Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Amazon that provides Software as a service, on-demand cloud computing computing platform, platforms and Application programming interface, APIs to individuals, companies, and gover ...

. Sephus is co-founder and chief executive officer of Bean Path, a nonprofit startup company developing Jackson Tech District, a

planned community A planned community, planned city, planned town, or planned settlement is any community that was carefully planned from its inception and is typically constructed on previously undeveloped land. This contrasts with settlements that evolve ...

and

business incubator Business incubator is an organization that helps startup companies and individual entrepreneurs to develop their businesses by providing a fullscale range of services starting with management training and office space and ending with venture ca ...

in Jackson, Mississippi.

Life

Sephus was born in

Jackson, Mississippi Jackson, officially the City of Jackson, is the Capital city, capital of and the List of municipalities in Mississippi, most populous city in the U.S. state of Mississippi. The city is also one of two county seats of Hinds County, Mississippi, ...

, where she was raised in an all-female household. She attended a two-week sleepaway engineering camp for girls that introduced her to computer engineering. Sephus graduated from

Murrah High School Murrah High School is a public high school located in Jackson, Mississippi, United States. It is a part of the Jackson Public School District. History Prior to desegregation in the 1960s, the school was majority white. Donna Ladd, in an article i ...

in 2003. In 2007, she completed a B.S. in computer engineering at

Mississippi State University Mississippi State University for Agriculture and Applied Science, commonly known as Mississippi State University (MSU), is a public land-grant research university adjacent to Starkville, Mississippi. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Unive ...

. After graduating, Sephus won a GEM fellowship, which provided her a full-tuition graduate scholarship, internships, and a job placement at Delphi Electronics & Safety upon finishing her Ph.D. She earned a master's degree and Ph.D. (2014) in electrical and computer engineering from the

Georgia Institute of Technology College of Engineering The College of Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology provides formal education and research in more than 10 fields of engineering, including aerospace, chemical, civil engineering, electrical engineering, industrial, mechanical, ma ...

. Her dissertation was titled ''A framework for exploiting modulation spectral features in music data mining and other applications''. Sephus' doctoral advisors were and . In 2013, Sephus, then a doctoral student, began working part-time for the all

black women Black women are women of sub-Saharan African and Afro-diasporic descent, as well as women of Australian Aboriginal and Melanesian descent. The term 'Black' is a racial classification of people, the definition of which has shifted over time and acr ...

startup Partpic, where she developed visual recognition algorithms and

prototype A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process. It is a term used in a variety of contexts, including semantics, design, electronics, and Software prototyping, software programming. A prototyp ...

s. Sephus later worked as a software engineer at

Exponent Exponentiation is a mathematical operation, written as , involving two numbers, the '' base'' and the ''exponent'' or ''power'' , and pronounced as " (raised) to the (power of) ". When is a positive integer, exponentiation corresponds to re ...

in New York. In 2015, she joined Partpic full time as their chief technology officer. In 2016, Amazon acquired Partpic, and Sephus became leader of the Amazon Visual Search team in

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

. Sephus later became a machine learning and applied science manager at

Artificial Intelligence. Her team develops tools for bias-identification for machine learning models. She is currently a

at Amazon. In 2018, Sephus began plans to create a technology community and

in Jackson, Mississippi as part of her nonprofit startup company Bean Path. She is the company's cofounder and CEO. In 2019, Sephus and Julie Cwikla were awarded an

Ada Lovelace Award The Ada Lovelace Award is given in honor of the English mathematician and computer programmer, Ada Lovelace, by the Association for Women in Computing. Founded in 1981, as the ''Service Award'', which was given to Thelma Estrin Thelma Estrin (n ...

. On September 11, 2020, Sephus purchased 12 acres next to

Jackson State University Jackson State University (Jackson State or JSU) is a public historically black research university in Jackson, Mississippi. It is one of the largest HBCUs in the United States and the fourth largest university in Mississippi in terms of studen ...

to create the Jackson Tech District.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Sephus, Nashlie Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Businesspeople from Jackson, Mississippi 21st-century African-American women 21st-century African-American scientists 21st-century American businesswomen 21st-century American businesspeople 21st-century American engineers Mississippi State University alumni Georgia Tech alumni Technology evangelists Amazon (company) people Engineers from Mississippi American women computer scientists American computer scientists Computer engineers African-American computer scientists African-American women engineers 21st-century American women engineers African-American engineers

Life

See also

References

External links