[AI Seminar] Computational Sustainability Network Virtual Seminar (October 25, 4-5pm)

[Priya Donti]

Dear faculty and students,

As Carla Gomes mentioned in her talk last week, she is one of the founders
of CompSustNet <http://www.compsust.net/>, a network of researchers working
at the intersection of computation and environmental sustainability. This
network hosts a computational sustainability virtual seminar series
<http://www.compsust.net/seminar.php> every few weeks, the next installment
of which is this upcoming Tuesday, October 25 (details below). We hope
you'll join for all or part of this special seminar series!

We're additionally launching a new mailing list for computational
sustainability at CMU (https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/listinfo/comp-
sustainability). Please consider joining if you would like to keep updated
on research and happenings at the intersection of computation and
environmental sustainability/related societal applications.



Seminar details:


*CompSustNet Seminar Tuesday, October 25, 4-5pm EDT *(register here
<https://cornell.zoom.us/webinar/register/bd32153c3d474589c5b9141539e44ee6>
):
*Information below from the CompSustNet website.*

*Speakers:* Milind Tambe and Eric Rice, University of Southern California

*Title:* How Can AI be Used for Social Good? Key Techniques, Applications,
and Results

*Abstract:* Discussions about the future negative consequences of AI
sometimes drown out discussions of the current accomplishments and future
potential of AI in helping us solve complex societal problems. At the USC
Center for AI in Society <http://cais.usc.edu/>, CAIS, our focus is on
exploring AI research in tackling wicked problems in society. This talk
will highlight the goals of CAIS and three areas of ongoing work. First, we
will focus on the use of AI for assisting low-resource sections of society,
such as homeless youth. Harnessing the social networks of such youth, we
will illustrate the use of AI algorithms to help more effectively spread
health information, such as for reducing risk of HIV infections. These
algorithms have been piloted in homeless shelters in Los Angeles, and have
shown significant improvements over traditional methods. Second, we will
outline the use of AI for protection of forests, fish, and wildlife;
learning models of adversary behavior allows us to predict poaching
activities and plan effective patrols to deter them. These algorithms are
in use in multiple countries, and we discuss concrete results we have
obtained in a national park in Uganda. Finally, we will focus on the
challenge of AI for public safety and security, discussing game theoretic
algorithms for effective security resource allocation that are in actual
daily use by agencies such as the US Coast Guard and the Federal Air
Marshals Service to assist the protection of ports, airports, flights, and
other critical infrastructure. These are just a few of the projects at
CAIS, and we expect these and future projects at CAIS to continue to
illustrate the significant potential that AI has for social good.

*Bio:* Milind Tambe is Founding Co-Director of CAIS, the USC Center for AI
for Society, and Helen N. and Emmett H. Jones Professor in Engineering at
the University of Southern California(USC). He is a fellow of AAAI and ACM,
as well as recipient of the ACM/SIGART Autonomous Agents Research Award,
Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation Homeland security award, INFORMS
Wagner prize for excellence in Operations Research practice, Rist Prize of
the Military Operations Research Society, IBM Faculty Award, Okawa
foundation faculty research award, RoboCup scientific challenge award, and
other local awards such as the Orange County Engineering Council
Outstanding Project Achievement Award, USC Associates award for creativity
in research and USC Viterbi use-inspired research award. Prof. Tambe has
contributed several foundational papers in AI in areas such as multiagent
teamwork, distributed constraint optimization (DCOP) and security games.
For this research, he has received the "influential paper award" and a
number of best paper awards at conferences such as AAMAS, IJCAI, IAAI and
IVA. In addition, Prof. Tambe pioneering real-world deployments of
"security games" has led him and his team to receive the US Coast Guard
Meritorious Team Commendation from the Commandant, US Coast Guard First
District's Operational Excellence Award, Certificate of Appreciation from
the US Federal Air Marshals Service and special commendation given by LA
Airport police from the city of Los Angeles. For his teaching and service,
Prof. Tambe has received the USC Steven B. Sample Teaching and Mentoring
award and the ACM recognition of service award. He has also co-founded a
company based on his research, Avata Intelligence, where he serves as the
director of research. Prof. Tambe received his Ph.D. from the School of
Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.

Thanks and best regards,
Priya


------------------------------------------------------------------
*Priya L. Donti*
*Ph.D. Student*

Department of Computer Science
Department of Engineering and Public Policy
Carnegie Mellon University
------------------------------------------------------------------

On Wed, Oct 5, 2016 at 2:08 PM, Ellen Vitercik <vitercik at cs.cmu.edu> wrote:

> Dear faculty and students,
>
> We look forward to seeing you this Tuesday, October 11th, at noon in NSH
> 3305 for AI Seminar. To learn more about the seminar and lunch, or to
> volunteer to give a talk, please visit the AI Lunch webpage
> <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~aiseminar/>.
>
> On Tuesday, Carla P. Gomes <http://www.cs.cornell.edu/gomes/>, Professor
> of Computer Science at Cornell University, will give a talk titled
> "Challenges for AI in Computational Sustainability."
>
> *Abstract: *Computational sustainability is a new interdisciplinary
> research field with the overarching goal of developing computational
> models, methods, and tools to help manage the balance between
> environmental, economic, and societal needs for a sustainable future. I
> will provide examples  of computational sustainability problems,  ranging
> from wildlife conservation and biodiversity, to poverty mitigation, to
> materials discovery for renewable energy materials. I will also highlight
> cross-cutting computational themes and challenges for AI at the
> intersection of constraint reasoning, optimization, machine learning,
> citizen science and crowd sourcing.
>
> *Bio:* Carla Gomes is a Professor of Computer Science at Cornell
> University, with joint appointments in the Dept. of Computer Science, Dept.
> of Information Science, and the Dyson School of Applied Economics and
> Management. Gomes obtained a Ph.D. in computer science in the area of
> artificial intelligence and operations research from the University of
> Edinburgh. Gomes’s central research themes are the integration of concepts
> from constraint and logical reasoning, mathematical programming, and
> machine learning, for large scale combinatorial problems; the study of the
> impact of structure on problem hardness; and the use of randomization
> techniques to improve the performance of search methods. More recently,
> Gomes has become deeply immersed in research in the new field of
> Computational Sustainability.  From 2007-2013 Gomes led an NSF
> Expeditions-in-Computing in Computational Sustainability. Gomes and
> collaborators have successfully pioneered and nucleated the new field of
> Computational Sustainability. Gomes is currently the lead PI of a new NSF
> Expeditions-in-Computing that established CompSustNet, a large-scale
> national and international research network, to further expand the field
> and Computational Sustainability. Gomes is a Fellow of the Association for
> the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and a Fellow of American
> Association for the Advancement of Science.
>
> Best,
>
> Ellen and Ariel
>
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