COVID-19 UPDATES • 3/4/2022
Inside UB’s SMART Motion Capture Lab, students create a simulated environment to demonstrate how autonomous air and ground robots can work together. Credit: Douglas Levere, University at Buffalo.
Release Date: March 15, 2022
Venu Govindaraju
David Doermann
Nalini Ratha
BUFFALO, N.Y. – Last year, the University at Buffalo merged two institutes on data science and artificial intelligence to form a new Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science.
Its purpose is to help UB grow its research and educational expertise in AI and data science, which are at the forefront of innovation in sectors that are key to the United States’ future economy and security.
Now, the institute has launched a speaker series designed to bring the fields’ most thought-provoking leaders to UB.
“Artificial intelligence and data science offer hope for solving the world’s most pressing problems, such as climate change and developing new treatments for diseases. It’s fitting, then, that UB provide a forum for some of the most accomplished scholars in these fields to discuss how their innovative work can reshape the world,” says Venu Govindaraju, vice president for research and economic development at UB.
The series kicks off today, March 15, at 3:30 p.m.
Alex Pentland, Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will deliver a lecture titled “Building a New Economy: Data as Capital” via video conference. Attendees may attend either in-person at Room 330 in the Student Union, or via Zoom. For more information, visit IAD’s event webpage.
From Pentland’s MIT bio: “Professor Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland directs MIT Connection Science an MIT-wide initiative, and previously helped create and direct the MIT Media Lab and the Media Lab Asia in India. He is one of the most-cited computational scientists in the world, and Forbes declared him one of the “7 most powerful data scientists in the world” along with Google founders and the Chief Technical Officer of the United States.”
The series aims to bring a new speaker to UB on the third Tuesday of the month, either virtually or in person. The lectures are free and open to the public. Attendees must register.
“We want to bring the brightest minds of artificial intelligence and data science to UB,” say co-organizers of the series David Doermann and Nalini Ratha. “Events like this ignite ideas and foster connections that help change the world.”
Doermann is director of the Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science, and an Empire Innovation Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. Ratha is an Empire Innovation Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.
Other speakers lined up include Milind Tambe, Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science
Center at Harvard University. He will deliver a lecture titled “AI for Social Impact: Results from deployments for public health and conservation” at 3 p.m. on April 19 at Room 330 in the Student Union
Also included is Yann LeCun, Silver Professor of the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University. LeCun, who is also vice president and chief AI scientist at Meta, will deliver a virtual lecture at 2:30 on May 17. For details, visit the Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science website.
Cory Nealon
Director of News Content
Engineering, Computer Science
Tel: 716-645-4614
[email protected]
Twitter: @UBengineering
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