Gwladys Kelodjou

I recently completed my PhD in computer science at the University of Rennes, where I worked on Explainable Artificial Intelligence within the LACODAM Inria team at the IRISA Laboratory, France, under the supervision of Alexandre Termier, Laurence Rozé, and Véronique Masson. My work aims to improve the quality of model decision explanations, making them more reliable, interpretable, and useful.

I am currently seeking postdoctoral opportunities.

Keywords:
Explainable AI Interpretable ML Fairness Trustworthiness Robustness Stability

Education

Ph.D. in Computer Science

Dec 2022 - Jan 2026

University of Rennes, France

Machine learning models achieve increasingly strong predictive performance, yet their decision processes often remain opaque and difficult to understand. This lack of transparency limits their deployment in sensitive and high-stakes settings, where predictions must be explained to be trusted and used. Explainability encompasses approaches that aim to make model behavior more understandable to users. In particular, local feature attribution methods quantify the contribution of each input variable to a model’s output by assigning importance values, which constitute the explanation for a given prediction. Approaches based on the Shapley value are widely adopted within this family due to their strong theoretical guarantees. In practice, however, exact Shapley values are generally not tractable and must be estimated. Most existing approaches rely on stochastic sampling procedures, which introduce variability into the resulting explanations and thus compromise stability, leading identical inputs to receive different feature importance values and undermining the reliability of the results. To address this issue, my thesis introduces ST-SHAP, a feature attribution method designed to improve stability by limiting the effect of randomness in the estimation process, and StratoSHAP, which defines a family of deterministic feature attribution methods that remove randomness and yield fully stable results. Together, these contributions lead to more stable feature attributions and enable more consistent analysis of machine learning model outputs.

Master's degree in Computer Science

2019 - 2022

University of Yaoundé 1, Cameroon

At the University of Yaoundé 1, research master's programs in computer science are structured into different specializations. In 2019, when I started my master's, the available options were "Data Science'', "Software Engineering'', "Networks and Systems'', and "Cybersecurity''. I chose Data Science because I was inspired by the vast opportunities Artificial Intelligence offers and its potential to drive innovation.

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science

2016 - 2019

University of Yaoundé 1, Cameroon

At the University of Yaoundé 1, computer science bachelor's programs are structured into different specializations. In 2019, when I was pursuing my degree, the available options included "Software Engineering'', "Networks and Systems'', and "Cybersecurity''. I chose to specialize in Software Engineering.

Publications

Shaping Up SHAP: Enhancing Stability through Layer-Wise Neighbor Selection

Gwladys Kelodjou, Laurence Rozé, Véronique Masson, Luis Galárraga, Romaric Gaudel, Maurice Tchuente, Alexandre Termier

AAAI'24

Teaching

L2 Computer Science - Formal Tools for Computer Science

2023 - 2025

ISTIC - Univ Rennes

42 hours (21 hours each year) of tutorials

Some of the concepts discussed: Logic, sets and relations, functions, induction, grammars, automata, etc.

L1 Computer Science - Algorithms and Complexity

2023 - 2024

ISTIC - Univ Rennes

18 hours of practical sessions

Some of the concepts discussed: Recursion, complexity analysis, programming paradigms (divide and conquer), etc.

Language: Java

Techwomen Factory Training Program

2022

Caysti - Yaoundé

40 hours including lectures, tutorials, and practical sessions

Courses taught:

  • Evaluation of data mining models (20h)
  • Relational database modeling (20h)

L2 Computer Science - Algorithms and Data Structures

2020 - 2021

CS Department - Univ Yaoundé 1

20 hours of tutorials

Some of the concepts discussed: Arrays, recursion, complexity analysis, strings, pointers, stacks and queues, trees, graphs, greedy algorithms, etc.

Talks

Oral and Poster at CAp 2024 - French Conference on Machine Learning

Title: Affiner SHAP : Améliorer la stabilité grâce à la sélection de voisins en couches.

July 2024

Lille, France

Poster at AAAI 2024

Title: Shaping Up SHAP: Enhancing Stability through Layer-wise Neighbor Selection

February 2024

Vancouver, Canada

Dissemination

Services

  • Reviewer for ESANN'24, AIMLAI'25
  • Sub-reviewer for XAI'25
  • Scientific Committee Assistant for CRI'21 - Cameroon National Conference on Computer Science
  • Member of the scientific outreach team of the DKM department - IRISA Laboratory

Outreach

  • L codent, L créent

    • Facilitation of interactive workshops (8 x 45 min) on creative programming in Python for middle school girls (8th grade). Edition 2023-2024.
    • 9th-grade internship - Facilitation of creative programming workshops in Python for middle school girls.
  • Member of the organizing team for IWD 2023 with the Women Techmakers Yaoundé community (Google)

  • Lead Organizer for IWD 2022 with the the Women Techmakers Yaoundé community (Google)

  • Member of the organizing team for IWD 2021 with the Women Techmakers Yaoundé community (Google)

  • Web development learning mentor with the SEED community.

Contact

gwladys.kelodjou@gmail.com