NOTE: This is one in a series of articles on Brock’s 2025-26 Horizon Graduate Student Scholarship recipients. Read other stories in the series on The Brock News.

Victoria Udechukwu was often the only woman in the room while working in Nigeria’s technology sector, where she spent several years as a software engineer in financial and solar technology companies.

While Udechukwu says a lack of representation and limited access to mentors made it difficult for her to see a path forward at times, those experiences gave her insight into the ways gaps can emerge in both human and technical systems.

Now a Computer Science master’s student at Brock, Udechukwu is among the exceptional researchers to receive a 2025-26 Horizon Graduate Student Scholarship. Her work explores how artificial intelligence (AI) technologies can be developed and governed responsibly, particularly when it comes to preventing AI biases.

Because AI models learn from data, biases in training datasets — such the underrepresentation of different communities or population groups — can lead to biased algorithms and inaccurate or even harmful results.

Udechukwu’s research addresses a particularly complex challenge: identifying bias in AI systems trained on unlabeled data, such as images or text without any contextual information.

“Bias is not always easy to detect in AI systems, especially when data lacks labels such as gender or age,” she says.

Working alongside her supervisor, Assistant Professor of Computer Science Blessing Ogbuokiri, Udechukwu is exploring mathematical approaches to assess fairness, or bias, in AI models that learn by comparing similar and dissimilar data points.

“We hope to get some mathematical guarantees that tell us how much unfairness might show up on new data,” she says. “If it’s not fair, you have to go back and fix the AI system.”

Udechukwu’s goal is to develop tools that can assess whether AI systems meet acceptable fairness thresholds and signal when they don’t.

“I would like to return to industry,” she says. “My goal is to meaningfully solve real-word problems that affect underrepresented communities by facilitating access to technology in sectors like clean energy, education and health care across Africa.”

Beyond industry-based solutions, Udechukwu points to the importance of government involvement when it comes to developing ethical AI practices.

While developing regulations and safeguards can be challenging when technology moves faster than policy-makers, Udechukwu says it’s better to have government policies “even if they are not perfect.” Rather than rigid rules, she proposes adaptive frameworks that evolve alongside the technology they aim to regulate.

“Sector-specific standards such as those in health care can complement government oversight and help ensure minimum requirements are met,” she says.

Beyond her professional and academic impacts, Udechukwu has amplified diverse voices in technology by helping younger women in Nigeria build their technical skills and confidence.

“These spaces gave me strength and reminded me that I wasn’t alone,” she says. “The challenges taught me grit, adaptability and empathy. I’ve learned to speak up, to ask questions and to extend a hand to those behind me. I now see my identity not as a barrier, but as a source of strength and a reason to keep pushing for greater representation.”