Mohini Misra Receives Fulbright Scholarship
05-22-23
Undergraduates Mohini Misra, Margaret Sui, and Arielle Tycko have been selected to receive Fulbright scholarships. The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, created by the U.S. Congress in 1946, is a cultural exchange program that offers grants to students who wish to perform research or pursue creative activities abroad.
Misra, who studies computer science and biology, will attend the Technical University of Munich and work on integrating DNA/RNA-based logic circuits into cell-like systems. The larger goal of this work "is to attain more sophisticated control over biological components that depend on information in nucleic acids, such as CRISPR-Cas systems," Misra says.
After her fellowship, Misra will attend Stanford University to pursue a PhD in bioengineering. [Caltech story]
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Mohini Misra
Algorithms: The Cause of and Solution to Our Modern Problems? A Conversation with Eric Mazumdar
05-19-23
Many academics choose to study one thing and one thing only. Eric Mazumdar is not one of those academics. As an assistant professor of computing and mathematical sciences and economics at Caltech, Mazumdar uses tools and ideas from economics to understand emerging problems in machine learning. Some of those problems have grown immensely more complicated with the development of algorithms that steer our choices about the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the movies we watch, the information we digest online, or even whether to grant someone bail or give them a home loan. But algorithms are a double-edged sword; for all the complexity they add to our lives, their behaviors can be easier to model and understand than human behaviors. [Caltech story]
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Eric Mazumdar
Watson Lecture on May 24: Yaser Abu-Mostafa Will Discuss the Promise and Perils of AI
05-15-23
On Wednesday, May 24, at 7:30 p.m. PDT in Beckman Auditorium on the Caltech campus, Yaser Abu-Mostafa (PhD '83), professor of electrical engineering and computer science, will cap the 100th anniversary season of the Earnest C. Watson Lecture Series with "Artificial Intelligence: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly."
ChatGPT has rocked the general public’s perception and expectations of artificial intelligence (AI). In this lecture, Abu-Mostafa will explain the science of AI in plain language and explore how these details illustrate the risks and benefits of AI. Between the extremes of "AI will kill us all" and "AI will solve all our problems," the science can help us identify what is realistic and what is speculative, and guide us in our planning, legislation, and investment in AI. [Caltech story]
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Yaser Abu-Mostafa
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Ask a Caltech Expert: Machine Learning for Conservation
05-08-23
As part of Conversations on Artificial Intelligence, a webinar series hosted by the Caltech Science Exchange, two artificial intelligence (AI) researchers—Pietro Perona and Suzanne Stathatos—discussed AI’s potential as a powerful tool for wildlife conservation and biodiversity research.
Perona is the Allen E. Puckett Professor of Electrical Engineering at Caltech, and Stathatos is a graduate student who was a software engineer at Amazon and JPL, which Caltech manages for NASA, before coming to Caltech.
In conversation with Caltech science writer Robert Perkins, the engineers describe AI applications for identifying and tracking wildlife that offer fresh insights to biologists and other individuals interested in the environment. [Caltech story]
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Pietro Perona
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Suzanne Stathatos
Anima Anandkumar Named a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow
04-06-23
Anima Anandkumar, Bren Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, has been selected as a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow in the field of computer science. Professor Anandkumar is one of 171 writers, scholars, and artists honored across 48 fields and disciplines. Created in 1925, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has sought since its inception to “further the development of scholars and artists by assisting them to engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions.” [Caltech story]
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Animashree Anandkumar
Changhao Xu Receives AI4Science Fellowship
04-03-23
Medical Engineering student Changhao Xu has been selected as a recipient of the 2022-2023 AI4Science Fellowship. The AI4Science program recognizes graduate students and postdoctoral scholars that have had a remarkable impact in artificial intelligence and machine learning, and in their application to fields beyond computer science. The awards are selected by a committee of faculty including those from both CMS and beyond. This program is enabled by a partnership with Amazon. The fellowship makes opportunities available to the awardees throughout the year where they can present and meet with researchers at Amazon.
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Changhao Xu
