Category Archives: Computer Science
Computer science is taught in less than half of the grammar schools. These educators want to change that – PBS NewsHour – Fior Reports
Stuck in the swamp of US immigration, one of Kishore Khandavallis top managers decided to move to India at the end of 2019.
Educated in the United States and living in the country on a three-year renewable visa, the man had waited so long for permanent residency that he eventually gave up.
We are on the way to losing our competitive advantage as a technology powerhouse.
With Khandavalli unwilling to replace him and unable to find skilled workers in the United States for his 40-strong company, Dallas-based software maker 7T, Khandavalli opened a field office for the manager and about 15 other employees outside of Mumbai.
Sooner or later, Khandavalli said, international workers stuck in the US immigration system say, I dont need to be treated like a third-rate citizen in this country, no matter how great this country is. I cant drive a car, I cant rent a space. What am I doing here?
Your answer, increasingly, is to go. And thats a growing challenge for the U.S. technology industry, the economy in general, and an education system that doesnt produce enough Americans with the science skills employers need.
Kishore Khandavalli, CEO of a Dallas-based custom software company, opened an office in India for employees, including a manager who left the United States after getting tired of the immigration system. Photo credit: Kishore Khandavalli
The decline in international student enrollment, competition from Canada and Australia, and higher salaries offered by increasingly dynamic technology sectors in India and China have brought American employers more than 1 million job openings this spring, according to the bipartisan National Foundation for American Policy . The unemployment rate in the technology sector, which is already low at 3 percent, even fell during the pandemic.
While campaigning for immigration reform hampered by political dysfunction, technology leaders and entrepreneurs are also advocating more education in American high schools in computer science, a subject less than half of them teach.
The permanent solution is to get our own people into science and math, said Khandavalli. We have to start early, in elementary and middle schools, and say, Math is not difficult.
The United States remains the worlds leading destination for technical talent in all respects. The Visa lottery is open to skilled workers each year, and the countrys universities are world leaders in educating international students.
But the talent gap is closing as international business competitors benefit from the aftermath of Trumps anti-immigration policies, particularly some of his changes to all, said Gaurav Khanna, assistant professor of economics at the University of California San Diego who studies high-level migration.
Budding engineers choosing between studying in Canada or the United States could be an easy decision, according to Khanna.
The image is really important, said Khanna.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau always says, We really want global talent and were going to make it really easy to get to Canada, they said. President Joe Biden might try that, but the world is still trying to breathe off a pile of weirdness regarding immigration during Donald Trumps presidency.
While the Biden administration has started pulling back some of Trumps immigration restrictions, the White Houses opinion on skilled workers is not clear.
The US Citizenship Act of 2021 would address concerns from proponents of increased immigration of highly skilled workers by making it easier for graduates of science, technology, engineering and math at US universities to stay in the country, among others; In Congress, which last passed comprehensive immigration reform in 1986, it is faced with long opportunities.
Related: Even as universities commit to improving, the proportion of black engineers and mathematicians is decreasing
Workers still spend years on waiting lists, fighting for drivers licenses, renting apartments or buying houses. Children can age if they are not covered by their parents all. Spouses often cannot work.Its nerve-wracking, said Khandavalli and humiliating.
Why would a guy have a six-figure salary to put up with that? he asked.
Indian and Chinese immigrants, including many in the U.S. tech sector, also speak of anti-Asian bigotry, which flared up during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Naren Meadem noticed this bias after riding a motorcycle with a group of Brazilian classmates studying computer science at the University of Washington Tacoma. When he was with them everyone thought he was Brazilian too, Meadem said. When he was alone, however, the mood changed to something less welcoming.
After completing his Masters degree, Meadem interned at Intel outside of Seattle and was then hired full-time. The work was personally and financially rewarding they bought a pair of superbikes to complement a Chevy Camaro theyd bought while college but Meadem wanted to start a business.
With a temporary visa that tied him to his former employer, he was not allowed to work independently and had to return to India to become an entrepreneur.
Since returning in 2017, Meadem has formed three startups employing around 40 people and plans to add more people in the coming months.
The options were very limited [in the United States], limited government support to help my mind [get] brought to life, said Meadem. In comparison, the Indian economy and the general conditions for me as an Indian citizen were pretty good.
Related: How A Decline In Community College Students Is A Big Problem For The Economy
In India, Meadem joined a growing tech economy. Indian engineering and computer science graduates and returning veterans from Silicon Valley have fostered a technology sector that now exports more software than the United States, Khanna said.
US students continue to fall behind in math and engineering. The United States ranks 36th out of 79 countries and regions in the assessment of their 15-year-olds on international math tests administered by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. (The Department of Education places the US ranking at 30th and says that some of the values are so close that they are statistically considered the same.) And the US ranks from first to 11th on the Bloomberg Index the most innovative nations.
Nearly 60 percent of the Masters and 56 percent of PhDs in engineering awarded by US universities go to foreign students, many of whom are returning to their home countries and competing with American firms.
Tech companies are campaigning for laws that would open federal grants for teacher training in computer science, which is supported by both parties in Congress. The industry is also excited about Bidens push to expand technology education at high minority universities, including historically black colleges and universities.
Unfortunately, we have a shortage of skilled workers in this country at the moment, said Karolina Filipiak, Senior Director of Government Affairs at the Information Technology Industry Council.
Sooner or later international workers who have stalled in the US immigration system will say, I dont need to be treated like a third-rate citizen in this country, no matter how great this country is.
If you look at the US workforce, there is an opportunity to put up our memorials to see how we can reach most of the people and make really smart investments, said Filipiak, who is a member of the political advocacy group Amazon, Apple, Owned by Google and Microsoft.
Filipiak said building digital infrastructure at all colleges and universities, including historically black and indigenous and Hispanic institutions, should be a priority. She argued that a robust retraining program could help revitalize the economy as Covid-19 waned.
If we make it easier for people to transition and acquire skills so they can get into the technology pipeline, I think it would be a great achievement, Filipiak said.According to a study by Code.org, a Seattle-based nonprofit dedicated to teaching computer science, only 23 states require high schools to offer computer science classes. The organization found that 53 percent of American high schools dont offer a single computer science class, and where classes are offered, girls and black and Hispanic students are underrepresented.
These are the skills you need now to be a productive member of society, said Sean Roberts, vice president of government affairs at Code.org. All students must have access, or we will exacerbate the opportunity gap.
While some in his industry argue that more temps is the easiest solution, Khandavalli wants to see this profound change. To maintain its position as a global technology leader in the long term, the US must help international students obtain permanent residency while attracting more US-born students to the sciences.If nothing helps, said Khandavalli, we are on the way to losing our competitive advantage as a technology powerhouse.
This technical education story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
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Shens top two students know what its like to overcome obstacles – The Saratogian
CLIFTON PARK, N.Y. Shenendehowa Central School District will hold its 2021 high school graduation on the school campus next week when more than 800 graduating seniors will get a chance to sit in familiar surroundings, commiserate one last time with classmates, and shed a tear or two as their high school experience comes to a close.
With fingers crossed, the district, as well as the students parents, are hoping for a wide, sun-filled sky without so much as a hint of rain in order to give the seniors a sendoff they can remember fondly after missing out on so many school memories during the past 15 months.
Two students who will take the podium that day for a few final remarks to fellow classmates are class Valedictorian Salvatore Brancato II and Salutatorian Yicheng Huang.
In emails with the district and with the two young men themselves this newspaper was able to learn something about them.
Brancato II, 18, is the son of Danielle Brancato and the late Salvatore Brancato. This years class Valedictorian is the definition of having hard work and perseverance pay off.
Having moved into the district with his two sisters in the second grade, the class Valedictorian recalled all three struggling academically. In fact, Brancato said he was in Academic Intervention Services classes and needed extra help all through elementary school and middle school until he found his way onto the learning path.
I started to work much harder in school, not for the sake of a grade but for the sake of simply learning, he said. I actually found my degree of learning diminished when I was focused on a grade instead of simply trying to understand and grasp concepts.
Brancato along with his sister (they are triplets) was raised by a single mom and his grandparents. In talking with his grandfather he heard stories of how the older man had arrived in this country as a child, could not speak the language and was held back because of it. Nevertheless, he overcame all obstacles, balanced school classes with work, and wound up starting a successful business.
His sacrifice and hard work paved the way for our family, so we can take advantage of any opportunity that comes our way, he said.
Brancato will attend Cornell University in Ithaca in the fall where he plans to undertake a pre-med program of study starting with a focus on Biology and Society. He added that he will also take a close look at biological engineering. His career goal is to be a plastic surgeon.
Asked why he chose to go to Cornell, Brancato noted its academic prestige, large undergraduate student population, diversity, proximity to home, the campus and college town atmosphere, and the food.
When asked to recall a special memory he holds of Shen, Brancato noted a Spanish class taught by seora Clarkin. It was thanks to her that he was able to hold conversations with locals on trips to Spain, Ecuador, and Mexico. He plans to minor in Spanish at Cornell.
In his Valedictory speech, Brancato said he will leave his classmates with words about time management and goal setting. He noted that he never stayed up past midnight to complete a school assignment.
This might sound like health class, but it works I promise, he wrote. I manage my time in a way so that I dont have to cram for tests or pull all-nighters to get assignments done. Also, always make sure to budget for fun. Having an active social life is a great way to take a break from the stress of school.
Class Salutatorian Yicheng Huang knows something about overcoming obstacles too. He learned that from his father; the first person from his village to go to college and the first to leave his country and immigrate to the U.S.
Huang, 17, is the son of Zhumin Cheng and Haigou Huang. He has one younger sister. In answering several questions posed to him by Shen's administration for the districts Valedictorian and Salutatorian announcement, he made note of how his father has inspired him through demonstrating that perseverance and determination pay off.
I greatly value my education because I am aware of the hurdles my dad had to overcome so I could learn in this land of opportunity, Huang said.
Huang said it is means a lot to him to receive the honor of being class Salutatorian; a nice testament to all the hard work and effort he invested the past few years.But, he added that his personal motivation has always been fueled by an innate desire to surpass his own limits rather than external rewards.
Its easy to lose motivation after reaching a specific threshold or receiving some award whereas the pursuit of self-improvement is a continuous process so motivation never ceases, he said.
This fall Huang plans to major in computer science with a minor in math at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a school he refers to as his dream school. He has been focused on enrolling there since middle school.
Besides having the best math and computer science program in the world, MIT also has ample research opportunities that students can engage in as soon as freshman year, he said. The Boston area is also definitely nice as it means more opportunities to get internships.
When asked about career plans after college he admitted he has no specific career goal in mind.
I am still just scratching the surface of knowledge so I definitely want to remain flexible and keep an open mind to all the different possibilities, he said. I am not one to worry too much about the future so I guess I will just enjoy the present in the meantime.
In his Salutatory speech, Huang said he will advise his fellow classmates to treasure the moments.
Graduation is bittersweet in that we are starting an exciting new chapter of our lives, but we are also going to, seldom, and perhaps never again, see many of the friends who have been integral parts of our lives up to this point, he said. The future will come soon enough so enjoy the present while you still can.
Looking back on his years at Shen Huang said the memories hell carry with him are centered on the people he met and the friends he made.
They made my Shen experience, he said. Whether it is near-decade-long friends going all the way back to the third grade, or friends just recently made, it was ultimately the people that illuminated my school days. To all my friends, teachers, and everybody else who were part of my life this past decade I would like to thank you all for making my Shenendehowa experience one to remember.
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Shens top two students know what its like to overcome obstacles - The Saratogian
Computer science to count as core credit in high schools; What led to the change? – KSNT News
TOPEKA (KSNT) High school students in Kansas will now be able to swap a computer science course for a core math or science class. The state school board voted to pass the proposal on Tuesday.
As technology advances, advocates of the measure said the workforce is also changing, prompting a much-needed change in what students are taught.
Being 25, and Im entering the workforce, and I know now what I would have liked to learn in high school, Sierra Bonn said.
Bonn, who holds the title of Miss Southwest Kansas 2020 and is a passionate technology advocate, spearheads her own non-profit organization, known as Lets go full STEAM ahead.
The organization encourages young women to pursue careers in the fields of science, math and technology. Its something that Bonn had a hard time pursuing herself, with a lack of guidance to help push her forward after graduating high school.
I didnt end up taking a computer science class until my sophomore year of college. I actually ended up failing that class because I had no background knowledge, she said.
Bonn said having computer skills would have made a big difference as she navigates a career in engineering.
Now, some high schoolers across the state wont have to be stuck in the same position. The state school boards decision allows students to prepare for computer science courses early on. An issue some school board members, like State Board of Education Chair Jim Porter, said was hard to address before.
We are so far behind in meeting the needs of businesses, industry, and students when it comes to computer education, Porter said.
Before the decision, Kansas was one of two states Porter agreed with arguments that Kansas was one of only two states that didnt provide the option to have computer science as a core class, as opposed to an elective.
Porter agreed with advocates, who believe that this would help students get ahead of the competition when looking for jobs or pursuing their future career goals. However, some board members opposed the measure, arguing that there are better solutions to solving that problem.
What we need is a broad range of computer education courses in all 286 districts, so we need more trained teachers, robotics clubs, girls who code clubs, said board member Ann Mah.
After the State Boards vote, local school boards can substitute one unit of computer science for either one unit of science or math as long as the student meets the math and science concepts required in regulations and the school district allows it.
Kansas graduation requirements include a minimum of 21 units of credit, including four English language arts units; three history, government and social studies units; three math units; three science units; one physical education unit; one unit of fine arts; and six units of elective courses.
According to the State Board of Education, the approval of the recommendation doesnt change the minimum 21 credits required for graduation, and it doesnt make computer science a required course for graduation. It does, however, put an emphasis on the importance of computer science and increases the flexibility for students, counselors and administrators to count computer science as a core credit.
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Computer science to count as core credit in high schools; What led to the change? - KSNT News
QS ranks MIT the world’s No. 1 university for 2021-22 – MIT News
MIT has again been named the worlds top university by the QS World University Rankings, which were announced today. This is the 10th year in a row MIT has received this distinction.
The full 2022 edition of the rankings published by Quacquarelli Symonds, an organization specializing in education and study abroad can be found at TopUniversities.com. The QS rankings were based on academic reputation, employer reputation, citations per faculty, student-to-faculty ratio, proportion of international faculty, and proportion of international students.
MIT was also ranked the worlds top university in 12 of the subject areas ranked by QS, as announced in March of this year.
The Institute received a No. 1 ranking in the following QS subject areas: Architecture; Chemistry; Computer Science and Information Systems; Chemical Engineering; Civil and Structural Engineering; Economics and Econometrics; Electrical and Electronic Engineering; Mechanical, Aeronautical and Manufacturing Engineering; Linguistics; Mathematics; Physics and Astronomy; and Statistics and Operational Research.
MIT also placed second in four subject areas: Accounting and Finance; Biological Sciences; Earth and Marine Sciences; and Materials Science.
We deeply appreciate the recognition of our institution and the faculty, staff, alumni, and students that make MIT what it is and we also tremendously admire the achievements of academic institutions around the globe, says MIT President L. Rafael Reif. The world benefits from a strong higher education network that delivers countless benefits for humanity, from fundamental discoveries to novel solutions to pressing challenges in climate and health, to the education of the next generation of talent. We are proud and grateful to belong to this great human community of scholars, researchers, and educators, striving together to make a better world.
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QS ranks MIT the world's No. 1 university for 2021-22 - MIT News
Cybersecurity threats arise when AI is taught to lie – Popular Science
Priyanka Ranade is a PhD Student in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Anupam Joshi is a professor of Computer Science & Electrical Engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Tim Finin is a professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. This story originally featured on The Conversation.
If you use such social media websites as Facebook and Twitter, you may have come across posts flagged with warnings about misinformation. So far, most misinformationflagged and unflaggedhas been aimed at the general public. Imagine the possibility of misinformationinformation that is false or misleadingin scientific and technical fields like cybersecurity, public safety and medicine.
There is growing concern about misinformation spreading in these critical fields as a result of common biases and practices in publishing scientific literature, even in peer-reviewed research papers. As a graduate student and as faculty members doing research in cybersecurity, we studied a new avenue of misinformation in the scientific community. We found that its possible for artificial intelligence systems to generate false information in critical fields like medicine and defense that is convincing enough to fool experts.
General misinformation often aims to tarnish the reputation of companies or public figures. Misinformation within communities of expertise has the potential for scary outcomes such as delivering incorrect medical advice to doctors and patients. This could put lives at risk.
To test this threat, we studied the impacts of spreading misinformation in the cybersecurity and medical communities. We used artificial intelligence models dubbed transformers to generate false cybersecurity news and COVID-19 medical studies and presented the cybersecurity misinformation to cybersecurity experts for testing. We found that transformer-generated misinformation was able to fool cybersecurity experts.
Much of the technology used to identify and manage misinformation is powered by artificial intelligence. AI allows computer scientists to fact-check large amounts of misinformation quickly, given that theres too much for people to detect without the help of technology. Although AI helps people detect misinformation, it has ironically also been used to produce misinformation in recent years.
Transformers, like BERT from Google and GPT from OpenAI, use natural language processing to understand text and produce translations, summaries, and interpretations. They have been used in such tasks as storytelling and answering questions, pushing the boundaries of machines displaying humanlike capabilities in generating text.
Transformers have aided Google and other technology companies by improving their search engines and have helped the general public in combating such common problems as battling writers block.
Transformers can also be used for malevolent purposes. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter have already faced the challenges of AI-generated fake news across platforms.
Our research shows that transformers also pose a misinformation threat in medicine and cybersecurity. To illustrate how serious this is, we fine-tuned the GPT-2 transformer model on open online sources discussing cybersecurity vulnerabilities and attack information. A cybersecurity vulnerability is the weakness of a computer system, and a cybersecurity attack is an act that exploits a vulnerability. For example, if a vulnerability is a weak Facebook password, an attack exploiting it would be a hacker figuring out your password and breaking into your account.
We then seeded the model with the sentence or phrase of an actual cyberthreat intelligence sample and had it generate the rest of the threat description. We presented this generated description to cyberthreat hunters, who sift through lots of information about cybersecurity threats. These professionals read the threat descriptions to identify potential attacks and adjust the defenses of their systems.
We were surprised by the results. The cybersecurity misinformation examples we generated were able to fool cyberthreat hunters, who are knowledgeable about all kinds of cybersecurity attacks and vulnerabilities. Imagine this scenario with a crucial piece of cyberthreat intelligence that involves the airline industry, which we generated in our study.
This misleading piece of information contains incorrect information concerning cyberattacks on airlines with sensitive real-time flight data. This false information could keep cyber analysts from addressing legitimate vulnerabilities in their systems by shifting their attention to fake software bugs. If a cyber analyst acts on the fake information in a real-world scenario, the airline in question could have faced a serious attack that exploits a real, unaddressed vulnerability.
A similar transformer-based model can generate information in the medical domain and potentially fool medical experts. During the COVID-19 pandemic, preprints of research papers that have not yet undergone a rigorous review are constantly being uploaded to such sites as medrXiv. They are not only being described in the press but are being used to make public health decisions. Consider the following, which is not real but generated by our model after minimal fine-tuning of the default GPT-2 on some COVID-19-related papers.
The model was able to generate complete sentences and form an abstract allegedly describing the side effects of COVID-19 vaccinations and the experiments that were conducted. This is troubling both for medical researchers, who consistently rely on accurate information to make informed decisions, and for members of the general public, who often rely on public news to learn about critical health information. If accepted as accurate, this kind of misinformation could put lives at risk by misdirecting the efforts of scientists conducting biomedical research.
Although examples like these from our study can be fact-checked, transformer-generated misinformation hinders such industries as health care and cybersecurity in adopting AI to help with information overload. For example, automated systems are being developed to extract data from cyberthreat intelligence that is then used to inform and train automated systems to recognize possible attacks. If these automated systems process such false cybersecurity text, they will be less effective at detecting true threats.
We believe the result could be an arms race as people spreading misinformation develop better ways to create false information in response to effective ways to recognize it.
Cybersecurity researchers continuously study ways to detect misinformation in different domains. Understanding how to automatically generate misinformation helps in understanding how to recognize it. For example, automatically generated information often has subtle grammatical mistakes that systems can be trained to detect. Systems can also cross-correlate information from multiple sources and identify claims lacking substantial support from other sources.
Ultimately, everyone should be more vigilant about what information is trustworthy and be aware that hackers exploit peoples credulity, especially if the information is not from reputable news sources or published scientific work.
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Cybersecurity threats arise when AI is taught to lie - Popular Science
Governor recognizes Aparna Bhooshanan for national commendation – The Madison Record – themadisonrecord.com
MADISON A national womens organization has acknowledged the technical initiative of Aparna Bhooshanan, a student at Bob Jones High School. In turn, Gov. Kay Ivey and Alabama State Board of Education also recognized Bhooshanan and issued a state resolution.
Bhooshanan received Honorable Mention as a 2021 awardee in the Aspirations for Computing Initiative with the National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT.
Chartered in 2004 by the National Science Foundation, NCWIT unites approximately 1,500 national organizations invested in change leadership to increase influential participation of girls and women in the field of computing, particularly in terms of innovation and development. (ncwit.org)
In 2021, approximately 4,228 applicants submitted collaterals for Aspirations in Computing awards. Less than 10 percent of applicants across the country succeeded in qualifying.
To congratulate Bhooshanans accomplishment, Gov. Kay Ivey issued a resolution that explained the depth Bhooshanans honor. Now that the highly versatile and sought-after computer science skillset is essential in todays information economy, initiatives that promote computer science awareness and lead to increased college graduates with computing-related degrees are more important than ever, Ivey wrote in the resolution.
Inspiring more girls and young women to choose careers in STEM is not about parity but about a compelling issue of innovation, competitiveness and workforce sustainability, including the ability to design technology that is as broad and creative as the people it serves, the resolution stated.
To qualify for Honorable Mention, Bhooshanan had to display a high aptitude and aspirations in technology and computing. She demonstrated this skill with computing experience, computing-related activities, leadership experience, tenacity in the face of barriers to access and plans for postsecondary education.
The Alabama State Board of Education does hereby commend and congratulate Aparna Bhooshanan upon the honor of being selected as one of Alabamas outstanding young women who display excellence in computer science, the resolution stated.
Bhooshanan accepted her state resolution during a ceremony with Dr. Wayne Reynolds, a member of Alabama State Board of Education. Other state board members attended the presentation.
Bhooshanan frequently earns honors at Bob Jones, such as her 2021 finalist entry in Reflections Fine Arts Contest and a scholarship from U.S. Department of State to study in China. She has received awards for her poetry and for playing chess.
For more information about National Center for Women and Information Technology, visit ncwit.org/about-ncwit.
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Talk to explore power of taxonomy and embedding in text mining | Penn State University – Penn State News
Jiawei Han, Michael Aiken Chair Professor in the Department of Computer Science at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. Jiawei Han, Michael Aiken Chair Professor in the Department of Computer Science at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will present a talk as part of the Penn State Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence Distinguished Lecture Series at 11:30 a.m. on June 14 via Zoom. In the talk, Han will discuss his work to explore the power of taxonomy and embedding in text mining.
This lecture is free and open to the Penn State community. Find the Zoom link for Hans talk and learn more about the CSRAI Distinguished Lecture Series at ai.psu.edu/distinguished-lecture.
About the talk
Real-world big data are largely dynamic, interconnected and unstructured text. It is highly desirable to transform such massive unstructured data into structured knowledge. Many researchers rely on labor-intensive labeling and curation to extract knowledge from text data. Such approaches, unfortunately, may not be scalable, especially when such texts are domain-specific and nonstandard (such as social media). Han and his team envision that massive text data itself may disclose a large body of hidden structures and knowledge. Equipped with domain-independent and domain-dependent knowledge-bases, researchers can explore the power of massive data to transform unstructured data into structured knowledge. In this talk, Han will introduce a set of methods developed recently in his group for such an exploration, including joint spherical text embedding, discriminative topic mining, taxonomy construction, and taxonomy-guided knowledge mining. They show that a data-driven approach could be promising at transforming massive text data into structured knowledge.
About Jiawei Han
Han is the Michael Aiken Chair Professor in the Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received the ACM SIGKDD Innovation Award (2004), IEEE Computer Society Technical Achievement Award (2005), IEEE Computer Society W. Wallace McDowell Award (2009), and Japan's Funai Achievement Award (2018). He is a Fellow of ACM and Fellow of IEEE and served as the director of the Information Network Academic Research Center (2009-2016) supported by the Network Science-Collaborative Technology Alliance program of the U.S. Army Research Lab, and co-director of KnowEnG, a Center of Excellence in Big Data Computing (2014-2019), funded by the NIH Big Data to Knowledge Initiative.
About the CSRAI Distinguished Lecture Series
The Penn State Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence Distinguished Lecture Series highlights world-renowned scholars of repute who have made fundamental contributions to the advancement of socially responsible artificial intelligence. The series aims to provoke attendees and participants to have thoughtful conversations and to facilitate discussion among students, faculty and industry affiliates of the center.
Last Updated June 08, 2021
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Biology’s Role As A Driver of the Future of Computation Development – Bio-IT World
By Allison Proffitt
June 9, 2021 | At the DECODE: AI for Pharmaceuticals forumyesterday, Puneet Batra, director of machine learning at the Broad Institute, outlined the mission of the new Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center at the Broad: to position biology to drive the next era of computing.
The EWSC was launched at the end of March thanks to a $150 million endowment from Eric and Wendy Schmidt that was matched by The Broad Foundation. The Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center seeks to understand the programs of life and how theyre organized across three biological scales: cells, tissues, and organisms, Batra explained. We are doing thisand promoting thisby convening a community of computational scientists and biologists. The goal is not just to bring the tools of modern machine learning to bear on biological discoverythough thats a great goalits also to make biology a key driver of advances in computation itself, he added.
The group is international by design. Twenty-five percent of the combined $300 million endowment is committed to use outside of Boston, and the community of collaborating computational scientists, biologists, and clinicians is already fairly extensive. Beyond the Broad Institute, MIT and Harvard communities, collaborators include Mila (Quebec AI Institute), led by Yoshua Bengio; European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems, Tuebingen, led by Bernhard Schoelkopf; The Alan Turing Institute, directed by Sir Adrian Smith; Oxford Big Data Institute, directed by Cecilia Lindgren; clinicians and researchers at Mayo Clinic and Geisinger; biopharmaceutical companies, including Genentech (a member of the Roche Group), AstraZeneca, and Novartis; technology and research companies focused on scientific inquiry, including DeepMind, Google Research, and Microsoft; Mikhail Belkin (UC San Diego), David Blei (Columbia University), Marzyeh Ghassemi (University of Toronto), Jennifer Listgarten (UC Berkeley), and Mihaela van der Schaar (Cambridge University).
The Schmidt Center is co-directed by Caroline Uhler, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society at MIT and an associate member of the Broad Institute; and Anthony Philippakis, Broads chief data officer.
Biology as Driver
Biology and machine learning can together untangle some of the fundamental questions about the programs of life, Batra said. We think there are a lot of neat problems in biology that need to be addressed by new developments in machine learning, he said. For instance: how do genes interact to form cell types? How do cell types give rise to tissues? And, at the organism level, how do genotypes map to phenotypes?
There are two great revolutions of the 21st Century: the explosion in data technologies (machine learning, cloud, etc.) as well as the blossoming of biological technologies (sequencing, single-cell genomes, medical imaging, etc.). These two revolutions are converging, Batra said, and together they will open a new door on biological research.
But Batra insisted that the goal is not simply to apply machine learning to biological questions. Machine learning, thus far, has been driven by image recognition and predictive accuracy. Driverless cars are a prime example. But for biological questions, he argues, our aim is to understand natural laws. Machine learning needs to move from predictive accuracy to causal modeling, from what? to why?.
Biologyand these unique biological questionscan serve as a key driver to advances in computing.
ML4H: Machine Learning for Health
From its beginning EWSC partnered with the Machine Learning for HealthML4Hproject at Broad. Batra co-leads this 25-person, cross-disciplinary team of computer scientists and clinician researchers . The three pillars of what ML4H does, Batra said, are looking at rich data and outcomes, applying deep learning, and driving clinical questions. We are not just interested in applying models to data, but were really interested in changing how patients are treated, he said. Understanding not just the machine learning side, but also does it mean to improve patient care is a critical driver for the problems we choose to work on.
ML4H work is driven by the deep phenotype hypothesis: the supposition that there are many more phenotypes with genetic bases waiting to be discovered in rich data sets. Once we have these phenotypes, itll accelerate clinical impact in a variety of ways, Batra believes. He expects these deep phenotypes to enable biological discovery, identifying precise genetic architecture of disease and its progression; create new biomarkers and improve trial selection; and improve patient screening, predicting who will get sick and to which therapeutics he or she will respond.
To support the search of these deep phenotypes, Batra and his group are using real-world data from a 500,000 primary care cohort with an average of seven years of follow up per patient. Its deep-learning scale, Batra said, comprising 60-billion-word tokens, 7 million ECGs, rich imaging echoes, and tens of thousands of longitudinal outcomes including stroke, heart attacks, heart failure, and more.
These are the kinds of datasets that one needs to be able to build these deep phenotypes and be able to validate their impact on outcomes, he adds.
Big Data, New Strategies
But even this large dataset still requires thoughtful, new machine learning strategies. Batra outlined some of the steps ML4H takes to maximize the machine learning impact.
First, events and data labels are precious, Batra said. We dont have them at unlimited scales, so we found that its really important to apply pre-trained models from either outside the healthcare industry or inside that weve built ourselves, he said, for example, BERT, DenseNet, and PCLR. When you use [pre-trained models], it really improves data efficiency to make sure your models are learning as fast as they can on the limited data you have.
Second, choice of data representation is crucial. We often take these rich datasets and reduce them to a smaller dimension. When that happens, we need to make sure that the representation is faithful: it captures the biology and doesnt lose it, but also doesnt enhance bias and protocol differences, he said.
Third, Batra has not found clinical relevance to be captured by the area under the curve and believes that carefully considering how the models or tools will be applied in the clinic and in trials is essential. That gives you a different way of evaluating whether its useful or not, which is why the collaboration with clinicians is so important.
Its these practical observations that will drive EWSCs vision along with the work ML4H has been doing.
Our vision is not just to combine these two fieldsto bring modern machine learning to bear on biology, which is happening in many places, Batra said. Its also to start to make the central questions of biology needs to address, this causal aspect, this mechanistic aspect, to make those key needs drivers of additional advances in computing.
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Biology's Role As A Driver of the Future of Computation Development - Bio-IT World
Quality and Quantity | The UCSB Current – The UCSB Current
With commencement week underway for the UC Santa Barbara Class of 2021, several graduating seniors and one faculty member have earned special recognition for their contributions to undergraduate research. Chancellor Henry T. Yang and the UCSB Library have each announced their award winners for 2021.
The Chancellors Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research has four student winners: Noelle Barr, who will earn bachelor of art degrees in music and in the history of art and architecture; Alec Cao, who is graduating with a degree in physics; Irene Chen, who has completed a degree in communication; and Jack Kilgore, whose degree is in computer science.
David Weld, an associate professor of physics, has received the chancellors faculty award for mentoring undergraduates in research. Weld and Cao, who worked in Welds lab, nominated each other for the honor.
As a double major, Barr combined her interests to produce a senior thesis for which she engaged in both musicological and art historical research. Focusing on paintings by Impressionist painter Berthe Morisot of her daughter Julie playing the violin, Barr explored the social history of violinists particularly women violinists in the 19th century and considered the gendered spaces of modernity.
It can be difficult for an undergraduate to find something original in the heavily researched area of Impressionism but Noelles efforts convinced me otherwise, wrote Laurie Monahan, chair of the history of art and architecture department, in nominating Barr for the award. Using French documents and knowledgeable in the details of the violin and performance, Noelle elucidated the kinds of acceptable performances for women in public and in private quarters, arguing for the instrument as something more than a token of refinement befitting a bourgeois woman. Her arguments grew stronger as her theoretical understanding of feminist theory and research expanded.
Barr has also received a UCSB Library Award for Undergraduate Research and the Howard C. Fenton Award, a research fellowship. She was invitated to participate in the prestigious Richard Macksey National Undergraduate Humanities Research Symposium, and published a paper in The Macksey Journal.
Cao, too, has published during his years at UCSB, and worked in the lab of physicist David Weld, who specializes in experimental ultracold atomic physics. In his nomination of Cao, who he first met as a high school student, Weld described his mentee as a truly unusual talent in the lab and stated, I can say unequivocally that he is the strongest undergraduate scientist I have worked with in my career.
Ultracoldatomic physics is a technically demanding field; the complex optical and electronic systems which comprise a quantum degenerate gas machine stretch the limits of tabletop experimentation, Weld wrote. Most strong undergraduates spend their entire time at UCSB working on a subset of these systems; Alec has already mastered them all.
Cao has also been recognized nationally for his accomplishments, named a Goldwater Scholar and offered competitive National Science Foundation and National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate fellowships. He is the third UCSB student ever to win a Churchill Scholarship, which he will use to pursue research at Cambridge University.
Chen will graduate with a degree in communication. She joined the honors program in her third year, the only junior to be admitted. Passionate about the student of human-computer interaction, Chen designed an experimental study and completed an honors thesis in fall 2020 for which she developed a community-based disaster preparedness framework to address the research question of how the design of social media platforms can support disaster preparedness on a communal level. She adapted her thesis into a paper that has been accepted for publication.
Nominator Jennifer Gibbs, a professor of communication, described Chen as an exceptional student and scholar who has demonstrated outstanding research potential.
She holds herself to the highest standards of excellence in her work and in everything she does, which is reflected in her top-notch writing and analytical skills. She is relentless in her pursuit of knowledge, Gibbs wrote, further characterizing her student as a thorough and rigorous researcher.
Chen is moving on to graduate study at Carnegie Mellon University and is considering an academic career.
Jack Kilgore will stay on at UCSB after earning his bachelors degree in computer science, choosing to next pursue a master of science in the universitys Media Arts and Technology program. Kilgore spent nearly two years working with MAT professor Curtis Roads on a research project sparked by his own initiative to develop a new application for granular synthesis.
Jack Kilgores research exemplifies UCSBs commitment to interdisciplinarity as it combines engineering and the arts, Roads wrote in his nomination, which also cited Kilgores initiative, determination, commitment and team mentality.
The Chancellors Faculty Award for Undergraduate Research Mentoring winner is David Weld. He was nominated by colleague Claudio Campagnari, professor and chair of physics, who noted his demonstrated, longstanding commitment to enhancing undergraduate research at UCSB, as well as the quality and quantity of [his] direct mentorship activities.
Weld also was nominated by two of his students including Alec Cao, one of the student winners of the same award.
His mentorship has catalyzed my tremendous growth, providing me opportunities and achievements ranging from national level scholarships to multiple first-author publications. Cao wrote of Weld. He is committed to empowering undergraduate students with projects they can take full ownership of providing them the necessary scientific guidance to achieve success in these roles.
Undergraduate research mentorship has been a strong focus for Weld since he joined the UCSB faculty in 2011. He has directly mentored more than 30 undergraduate researchers in his lab, and served as an instructor for more than 35 student-quarters of the independent-research course Physics 199. He has been a faculty mentor for 7 L&S honors projects in independent research, and has supervised 10 undergraduate theses.
His students have won national awards and fellowships and published in peer-reviewed publications in some cases as first authors. Many have gone on to prestigious graduate programs at institutions including Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, and Caltech. Weld also trains other faculty mentors of undergraduate researchers and secured federal funding for a career pathways program to support underrepresented minority students in STEM disciplines.
The increasingly competitive Library Award for Undergraduate Researchers (LAUR) recognizes students who produce a scholarly or creative work that makes expert and sophisticated use of the collections, resources and services of the UCSB Library. First- and second-place recipientsin each of three broad categories receive $750 (1st place) and $500 (2nd place).
Among the six recipients for 2021 is Noelle Barr, also a Chancellors Award winner, who won first place in the Humanities and Fine Arts category for her paper, Reinterpreting Gendered Spaces of Modernity in the Portraits of a Violinist. Second place for HFA went to Stephanie Ando, a double-major in the history of art and architecture and political science, for the paper New Japanese Photography (1974): An Introduction to Postwar Japanese Photography.
In the social sciences, first place went to environmental studies major Samantha Ellman for her project The Pedestrianization of State Street and its Effect on Greenhouse Gas Emissions; second place was awarded to France Woo, a sociology major, for United Front Article - Living History Project.
Both spots in the science and engineering category were snared by third-year chemistry students. Yilin Cao for Avoid Relying on Hazardous Organic Solvents for your Organic Reactions: Water as the Reactive Medium, won first place; and Ziguang Yang took second place for Literature Review of Gold Catalyzed Ring Enlargement.
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Would-be AWS bomber pleads guilty, faces 5 to 20 years behind bars for plot to take out government servers – The Register
The leak of US federal tax returns filed by the world's richest tycoons sent shock waves this week. To put it simply, the headlines stemming from the ProPublica report appear damning.
According to the leaked documents the non-profit saw, in 2007 and 2011, Jeff Bezos, today the world's richest person, didn't pay a thing in federal income tax indeed in 2011, the Amazon multi-billionaire claimed and received a $4,000 tax credit for his children. In 2018, Tesla and SpaceX supremo Elon Musk, the second richest person, did not pay a bean in federal income tax, either.
In a splashy investigation, journalists at ProPublica said they'd clapped eyes on: "data provid[ing] an unprecedented look inside the financial lives of America's titans, including Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg. It shows not just their income and taxes, but also their investments, stock trades, gambling winnings and even the results of audits."
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