IAD Days
March 28 - 31, 2023
Celebrating artificial intelligence, big data, and high-performance computing at the University at Buffalo.
IAD Days (formerly CDSE Days) is a signature annual event hosted by the Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science. The event brings some of the nation's most prominent data science and AI scholars to Buffalo for a week of workshops, lectures, and networking. The initiative increases educational opportunities and employability for students, attracts new graduate students to UB, and boosts research opportunities for aligned faculty members.
Keynote Speakers
International student career expert and author of The International Advantage: Get Noticed. Get Hired!
Marcelo Barros is the founder of The International Advantage, LLC, a small firm with a big ambition: to help every international student in the U.S. achieve their job search goals. With a rare combination of career services experience working with international students and 10+ years of work experience with top U.S. global firms, plus the experience of having been an international student himself, Marcelo helps international students, accomplish their job search goals by using innovative job search methods and frameworks. In his book, The International Advantage Get Noticed. Get Hired!, Marcelo shares the strategies he has used to help international students secure quality jobs. Marcelo's work has been noticed by Forbes, Bloomberg, Business Week, American Marketing Association, The Times of India, Inside Higher Ed, Vault, France 2, and several other publications.
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Pumas-AI, Inc.
A renowned scientist in the area of quantitative disease models and their application to decisions, Joga heads interdisciplinary team at Pumas-AI and is instrumental in shaping the company’s vision and roadmap. He is a Professor with the School of Pharmacy and the School of Medicine, University of Maryland, Baltimore and has held various positions at the US FDA between 1999 and 2011.
During his illustrious tenure at the US FDA, Joga oversaw the review of thousands of Investigational New Drug Applications (INDs), over 250 New Drug and Biological Licensing Applications, numerous FDA guidances and policies and was part of the committee responsible for the 21st Review Process. He led both the formation of the Division of Pharmacometrics and a Pharmacometrics Fellowship Program at the FDA. Besides a number of FDA awards, Joga received the Outstanding Leadership Award from the American Conference on Pharmacometrics (2008), the Tanabe Young Investigator Award from the American College of Clinical Pharmacology (ACCP) (2008) and the Sheiner-Beal Pharmacometrics Award from the American Society of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics in 2019.
Joga is on the editorial boards of several journals and a Fellow of ACCP, AAPS and International Society of Pharmacometrics. He has published over 100 papers and book chapters.
Laboratory Fellow, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and Research Professor at Washington State University
Dr. Zhenyu (Henry) Huang is Laboratory Fellow at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA and holds a joint appointment of Research Professor at Washington State University, Pullman, WA. He is also Policy Advisor for the US Department of Energy (DOE)’s Undersecretary for Science and Innovation, leading the DOE crosscutting Grid Modernization Initiative and the White House interagency Net Zero Grid and Electrification Game Changers Initiative. He was a Technical Advisor at the DOE EERE Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) in 2019 – 2020. At PNNL, Dr. Huang is leading the power electronics and renewable integration portfolios and served as Deputy Sector Manager for grid research. Prior to joining PNNL in 2003, Dr. Huang conducted extensive research on power system stability and harmonics at the University of Alberta (Canada), McGill University (Canada), and the University of Hong Kong. Dr. Huang received his B. Eng. from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China, and Ph.D. degree from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. His research interests include high performance computing, data analytics, and optimization and control for inverter- and renewable-dominant power and energy systems. Dr. Huang has over 200 peer-reviewed publications. He is a Fellow of IEEE and is active in several IEEE Power and Energy Society technical committees. Dr. Huang is a registered Professional Engineer in Washington State.
Associate Professor, Associate Chair, Department of Mathematics, University at Buffalo
Bernard Badzioch is an Associate Professor at the Department of Mathematics at UB with research interests in algebraic topology. He has taught several courses on scientific computing and data analysis using Python, pandas and other Python libraries.
Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry, University at Buffalo
Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Dr. Luis R. De Jesús Báez obtained his B.S. in chemistry from the University of Puerto Rico at Cayey. From there, he worked for Prof. Sarbajit Banerjee to pursue his Ph.D. at Texas A&M University, where he focused on mapping electronic structure inhomogeneities and modeling spectroscopic signatures of electrode materials. During his graduate studies, Luis obtained the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and the American Physical Society Robert S. Hyer Graduate Award. Additionally, he was awarded the IUPAC-Solvay International Award for Young Chemists and the 2019 ACS-Division of Inorganic Chemistry Young Investigator Award. He started his postdoctoral fellowship in 2018 as an Eberly College of Science Postdoctoral Fellow at Pennsylvania State University, working under the supervision of Prof. Thomas E. Mallouk. He then moved in 2019 to the University of Pennsylvania as a Provost Postdoctoral Fellowship following his postdoc advisor. His research interests involved the synthesis and functionalization of 2D layered MXene materials. Luis is currently an assistant professor in the department of chemistry of the University at Buffalo – SUNY exploring the relationship between strain and electronic structure modification in solids for developing novel electrodes for energy devices and catalytic systems. He was recently awarded the Scialog: Negative Emission Science Fellowship and the NSF – AGEP Lighthouse Beacon Fellowship for his DEI work in STEM.
Director of Community Translational Research, Department of Family Medicine, University at Buffalo
Laurene Tumiel-Berhalter is the Director of Community Translational Research in the Department of Family Medicine at UB’s Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. In this role, she strives to create infrastructure for other faculty and trainees to engage the community in their research.
Associate Professor, Department of Biostatistics and Associate Director for Education, Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science, University at Buffalo
Dr. Hageman Blair is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biostatistics. She is a co-Director of the Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science. She oversees educational activities and initiatives and serves as the Director of the MPS program in Data Science and Applications. Her research is in Computational Biology. Her research group has made research contributions, and software tools, in network inference and analysis, module detection and data clustering.
Former Head of Customer Success and Pre-Sales Engineering, OpenLegacy.
Shawn M. Crowley was most recently the Head of Customer Success and Pre-Sales Engineering at OpenLegacy. His organization was responsible for technology engagement, engineering, and customer success across North America.
Prior to OpenLegacy, Mr. Crowley was the Executive Director and Enterprise Architect with Oracle Corporation. He specialized in go-to-market strategy, executive customer engagement, industry specialization and technology across North America.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Crowley ran Architecture and Business Development for Oracle’s Middleware organization. He drove the application of Oracle’s Fusion Middleware products, including J2EE containers, SOA products, Security, B2B Integration, and XML technologies.
Prior to joining Oracle, Mr. Crowley was the Director of Engineering at The Gartner Group, where he managed teams responsible for the development of J2EE products and software. Additionally, he has been a member of the Faculty of the University of Buffalo for over 20 years, where he's taught technology, engineering, and information system courses.
Lisa Draper
Speech-Language Pathologist at Royalton Hartland Central School
Lisa M. Draper MSEd., CCC-SLP, is currently working as a Speech-Language Pathologist at Royalton Hartland Central School, providing school-based services to elementary, middle and high school students. She was employed at Oishei Children’s Hospital, Buffalo, NY, for over 25 years, where she was the Clinical Lead Speech Language Pathologist for 5+ years and served on the executive board of the Craniofacial Center of Western New York at OCH. Lisa has also been employed as an adjunct instructor at SUNY Fredonia as well as a guest lecturer for SUNY Buffalo State and UB. Her experiences also include over 25 years of working with infants, toddlers and preschoolers, providing home-based diagnostic and therapeutic services. She is a member of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
Ling-Yu Guo
Associate Professor, Department of Communicative Disorders and Sciences, University at Buffalo
Dr. Ling-Yu Guo received his PhD from the University of Iowa. He is currently an associate professor in the Department of Communicative Disorders and Sciences at UB. His research focuses on how to correctly identify children with language impairment using language samples in the monolingual and bilingual populations. In addition, he is also trying to identify malleable factors that account for grammatical outcomes in children with hearing loss.
Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director, Department of Art, University at Buffalo
Matt Kenyon is a new-media artist and designer. Kenyon’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in such venues as the Museum of Modern Art, New York, MOCAD Detroit, Science Gallery Dublin, Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, and the International Print Center. He is a TED Fellow, a MacDowell Fellow, and his work has been awarded the FILE Prix Lux. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Wired, and Gizmodo, and has also appeared in edited volumes such as A Touch of Code (Gestalten Press) and Adversarial Design (MIT Press). He lives and works in Buffalo, New York, where he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art at the University at Buffalo, and part of PLATFORM, UB's socially engaged design studio.
Lead Data Scientist, USAA
Vi Ly is an analytics professional with 8 years of experience in statistical analyses, predictive modeling and machine learning within the banking/finance industry. Vi currently works as Lead Data Scientist at USAA and has previous work experience at Meta and M&T Bank. Prior to his work in analytics, Vi has 6 years of military leadership experience and is Lean Six Sigma Black Belt certified.
PhD Student, University at Buffalo
Deen Dayal Mohan is a 5th-year PhD student at UB, advised by Venu Govindaraju. Deen’s research focuses on multimodal representation learning, with application in face recognition, audio-visual alignment, image-text retrieval, etc. Apart from research, Deen has taught multiple graduate-level courses in CSE and has won graduate teaching awards from both the department and the graduate school.
Vice President, IDD, Certara
Dr. Mark Sale has more than thirty years in population pharmacokinetic/ pharmacodynamics modeling in both academics and industry. In his current role as Vice President at Certara he is responsible for conducting an overseeing population pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic analyses and strategic consulting on drug development.
Dr. Sale also contributes to the software development group at Certara, supporting development of artificial intelligence and machine learning systems in pharmacometrics.
Prior to this role, Dr. Sale was global director of Modeling and Simulation at GlaxoSmithKline and assistant professor of Medicine and Pharmacology at Georgetown, respectively. He also has faculty appointments at Indiana University School of Medicine and Mercer University School of Pharmacy and State University of New York at Buffalo.
Dr. Mark Sale completed his medical training at the Ohio State University, residency training in internal medicine at Indiana University and a fellowship in Clinical Pharmacology at Stanford.
Liga Savicka
Speech and Language Therapist at Riga East University Hospital
Liga Savicka is a Speech and Language Therapist at Riga East University Hospital with previous experience in the education field. Her main clinical interests include providing speech therapy to neurologic patients as well as children with learning disabilities and articulation disorders. Currently, she is a PhD candidate in Medicine at Riga Stradins University (RSU) and an active participant of the scientific and pedagogical community as an assistant in the Department of Rehabilitation at RSU. Personal interests include running, reading, and traveling.
Associate Professor, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University at Buffalo
Dhaval K. Shah is an Associate Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at UB. Prior to becoming a faculty member, Shah served as a Principle Scientist in the ‘Translational Research-Modeling & Simulation’ group at Pfizer Inc.
His research focuses on understanding the determinants for the absorption, distribution, metabolism, and elimination (ADME) of biologics. His lab uses the principles of Pharmacokinetics-Pharmacodynamics (PK-PD) Modeling & Simulation to support the discovery, clinical translation, and late-phase development of novel biologics like engineered antibodies, antibody-drug conjugates, multi-specific proteins, immuno-oncology agents, engineered T cells, and AAVs.
Professor, Management Science and Systems, School of Management, University at Buffalo
Raj Sharman's research is focused on extreme events from a decision-support system perspective and on health information technology-related issues. This includes factors influencing online health information search, meaningful use of ambulatory EMR, resilience in hospital information systems, health information exchanges, health care social networks as well as a simulation-based study for managing the hospital's emergency room capacity in extreme events, active shooter incidents and mass casualty event management.
His expertise also includes information systems infrastructure management as it relates to information assurance, internet performance and distributed computing. Sharman's papers have been published in a number of national and international journals, and he is the recipient of several grants from the university as well as external agencies, including the National Science Foundation.
He serves as an associate editor for the following journals: Journal of Information Systems Security, Journal of Information Privacy and Security, and Springer Security Informatics Journal.
Associate Professor, Department of Media Study, University at Buffalo
Mark Shepard is an artist, architect and researcher whose work addresses contemporary entanglements of people and data, code and space, knowledge and power. His recent book, There Are No Facts: attentive algorithms, extractive data practices and the quantification of everyday life (MIT Press), examines the uncommon ground we share in a post-truth world. He is an editor of the Situated Technologies Pamphlets Series (The Architectural League of New York) and editor of Sentient City: ubiquitous computing, architecture and the future of urban space (MIT Press). His work has been exhibited at museums, galleries and festivals internationally, including the Venice International Architecture Biennial; the Prix Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria; Transmediale, Berlin, Germany; and the International Architecture Biennial Rotterdam, the Netherlands, among others. Mark is an Associate Professor of Architecture and Media Study at the University at Buffalo, where he directs the Media Arts and Architecture Program (MAAP) and the Center for Architecture and Situated Technologies (CAST).
Associate Professor, Department of Biochemistry, University at Buffalo
Jennifer Surtees is an Associate Professor of Biochemistry. The Surtees lab explores mechanisms of genome stability, the many and varied pathways that protect the integrity of genomes. Surtees believes that scientists have a responsibility to communicate clearly with the public as discoveries push the boundaries of knowledge and technology in biology. An informed public is better able to support science and benefit from it. She serves as co-director of the Genome, Environment and Microbiome (GEM) Community of Excellence at UB, which advances understanding of the genome and microbiome and their interaction with the environment through research, education, community programs and art.
President & CEO, Tech Buffalo
Sarah Tanbakuchi is the President and Chief Executive Officer at TechBuffalo, an organization that is committed to elevating and promoting homegrown tech talent in WNY and raising Buffalo-Niagara’s profile as a top destination for tech. Sarah has led large-scale operations in banking, including the launch of the M&T Tech Academy, served as an attorney, and is an active member of the community serving as a board member of several organizations.
SUNY Empire Innovation Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University at Buffalo
Dr. Jinjun Xiong is currently an Empire Innovation Professor in UB's Department of Computer Science and Engineering. He also serves as the Scientific Director and Co-Director for the NSF National AI Institute for Exceptional Education and Co-Director for the Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science. Prior to that, he was a Senior Researcher and Program Director for AI and Hybrid Clouds Systems at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. He co-founded and co-directs the IBM-Illinois Center for Cognitive Computing Systems Research. His research interests are on across-stack AI systems research, which includes AI applications, algorithms, tooling and computer architectures. Many of his research results have been adopted in IBM’s products and tools. He published more than 150 peer-reviewed papers in top AI conferences and systems conferences. His publication won 8 Best Paper Awards and 8 Nominations for Best Paper Awards.
Various high-performance computing specialists will present including Jon Bednasz, Andrew Bruno, Sam Guercio, Matt Jones, and Dori Sajdak
UB Center for Computational Research (CCR) is a supercomputing center formed in 1998 that enables research at UB, supports the local economy and provides educational outreach to local schools. The center supports computational intensive courses offered at UB in fields such as Computer Science & Engineering, Bioinformatics, and Chemistry. They have developed industrial partnerships with many local companies to help aid in their business development and offer a cluster just for local industrial clients. They also collaborate with our colleagues in the high-performance computing(HPC) field and have been at the forefront of the development of open-source tools for use by HPC centers to provide quantitative and qualitative HPC metrics.
Abstracts will be linked to each presentation topic below. Click on the speaker's name to learn more about each presenter.
Jump to: Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
Tuesday, March 28
| Time | Session Type | Topic | Speaker | Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9:30am - 12:00pm | Skills Workshop A | Introduction Bayesian Networks with Applications in R | Rachael Hageman Blair | Student Union 145 A&F |
| 11:00am - 12:00pm | Skills Workshop B | Introduction to NoSQL Databases Using MongoDB (Virtual Workshop) | Shawn Crowley | Student Union 145 C&D |
| 1:00pm - 3:00pm | Skills Workshop A | Pandas for Non-Programmers | Bernard Badzioch | Student Union 145 A&F |
| 1:00pm - 3:00pm | Skills Workshop B | Deep Learning for Computer Vision | Deen Mohan | Student Union 145 C&D |
| 3:00pm - 3:30pm | Coffee Break | Student Union Theater | ||
| 3:30pm - 4:00pm | Research Talk | Development of Physiologically-Based Pharmacokinetic Models for Biologics | Dhaval K. Shah | Student Union Theater |
| 4:00pm - 5:00pm | Keynote Speaker | Leveraging Scientific ML to Revolutionize Predictive Healthcare Analytics | Joga Gobburu | Student Union Theater |
Wednesday, March 29
| Time | Session Type | Topic | Speaker | Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9:30am - 10:15am | Research Talk | Detecting Misinformation in Online Healthcare Social Networks | Raj Sharman | Student Union Theater |
| 10:15am - 11:00am | Research Talk | Looking for a Signature of Infection in Wastewater | Jennifer Surtees and Laurene Tumiel-Berhalter | Student Union Theater |
| 11:00am - 11:30 am | Research Talk | Tardigotchi: Embodied Artificial Intelligence | Matt Kenyon | Student Union Theater |
| 11:30am - 12:00pm | Research Talk | There Are No Facts: AI and Everyday Life | Mark Shepard | Student Union Theater |
| 1:00pm - 3:00pm | Faculty Research Talks | National AI Institute for Exceptional Education | Jinjun Xiong, Lisa Draper, Liga Savicka, and Ling-Yu Guo | Student Union Theater |
| 3:00pm - 3:30pm | Coffee Break | Student Union Theater | ||
| 3:30pm - 4:00pm | Student Research Talks | Student Union Theater | ||
| 4:00pm - 5:00pm | Keynote Speaker | How to Use Your Network to Get Job Referrals | Marcelo Barros | Student Union Theater |
Thursday, March 30
| Time | Session Type | Topic | Speaker | Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9:30am - 12:00pm | Skills Workshop A | Research Computing with CCR | UB Center for Computational Research | Student Union Theater |
| Skills Workshop B | pyDarwin Workbench for Machine Learning Enhanced Nonlinear Mixed Effects Modeling* *Separate Registration Required | Mark Sale | Pharmacy Building Room 183 | |
| 2:00pm - 3:00pm | Panel Discussion | Tech Layoffs vs. Worker Shortage: Reading Between the Lines with Marcelo Barros, Sarah Tanbakuchi and Vi Ly | Moderated by Caitlin Hoekstra | Student Union Theater |
| 3:00pm - 3:30pm | Coffee Break | Student Union Theater | ||
| 3:30pm - 4:00pm | Research Talk | Lessons Learned from Perfectly Imperfect Layered Materials | Luis R. De Jesús Báez | Student Union Theater |
| 4:00pm - 5:00pm | Keynote Speaker | Grid Modernization in Clean Energy Transition | Henry Huang | Student Union Theater |
| 5:30pm - 7:30pm | Research Poster Session & Reception | Student Union Flag Room | ||
Friday, March 31
| Time | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 9:00am - 1:30pm | Innovation Sprint: How can AI and Data Science be used to predict, prevent, or respond to natural disasters? (Students in data science and AI degree programs will be given priority registration. Participation limited to 60 students.) | Student Union 145 |
Abstracts & Session Details
Probabilistic Graphical Models (PGMs) are used broadly across many fields to model the connectivity relationships between entities in a network. This workshop introduces Bayesian Networks, a special class of directed and acyclic PGMs. BNs are “expert systems” widely used for inference and prediction. Methods for parameter and structural learning will be discussed and implemented using the R programming language. Probabilistic reasoning will be described for making predictions within these networks. In the second part of the workshop, attendees will have a “hands-on” experience with network construction, inference, and visualization using the R programming language. Programming experience is not required. This workshop serves as a preview for a 1-credit course in the IAD’s ‘summer stackable’ graduate elective series.
MongoDB is a non-relational document database that provides support for JSON-like storage. The MongoDB database has a flexible data model that enables you to store unstructured data, and it provides full indexing support, and replication with rich and intuitive APIs.
In this workshop we’ll make an introduction to MongoDB, discuss some of its highlights, use cases in software development, and, how it differs from traditional RDBM’s technology.
Pandas is a Python library for processing tabular data, such as data stored in Excel spreadsheets, CSV files etc. The main goal of this workshop is to provide an introduction to basic pandas functionality and show examples of how it can be used in practice.
This will be a hands-on workshop - we will write and execute code the entire time. All participants should bring laptops. Please see pandas.ubmath.info for additional instructions.
In recent years, deep learning has revolutionized the field of computer vision, enabling significant advancements in tasks such as image classification, object detection, and segmentation. This talk will provide an overview of deep learning techniques, starting from the fundamental building blocks to the latest Transformer architectures, and their applications in computer vision. The talk will survey recent advancements in the area and discuss challenges and limitations associated with current computer vision systems.
The presentation will highlight experimental work and mathematical modeling work done by Dr. Shah’s lab to better understand systemic and tissue-specific exposure of protein, cell, and gene-based therapeutics. The modalities will include monoclonal antibodies, ADCs, T-cells, and AAV-based gene therapy.
Scientific modeling has transformed healthcare phenomenally. There are several problems in healthcare that are not solved yet owing to lack of full understanding of the underlying mechanism. More recently, machine learning has come into prominence. Several problems are shown to be addressed by machine learning. However, the limitation is its indifference to biology and natural principles. A novel hybrid approach called Scientific ML which leverages the best of both approaches will be presented. The potential problems that this revolutionary paradigm can help with will be discussed.
Online Social Networks are rife with misinformation. Online healthcare social networks are no exception. Misinformation can impact patient safety when patients act on information that does not apply to them.
This research focuses on determining the extent of misinformation in online healthcare social networks (OHSN) to develop a misinformation index for OHSN. Given the increase in the use of disease-specific Healthcare Social Networks, and the increased propensity amongst patients to try out advice from fellow patients on such forums, the impact of such sites on patients’ health naturally comes under greater scrutiny. Research shows that the quality of health-related information online, especially patient-generated content, is often suspect. This is likely to compromise patient safety. This research explores the factors associated with the response quality in online Health Social Network Sites (HSNS), focusing on Diabetes and Parkinson’s Disease.
Diabetes is a chronic disease that results in high blood sugar. It is a significant cause of blindness, kidney failure, heart attacks, stroke, lower limb amputation, etc. Parkinson’s is a chronic, degenerative disease often complicated by the presence of comorbidities, thus requiring a lifetime of active management on the part of the patient.
Given the nature of such forums, we study the influence of cohesive subgroups and the dynamics of thread conversation. Our findings show that the relative disease experience of the responders (compared to the person asking the thread question), question completeness, and clique membership influence response quality in a thread. Our findings also indicate that social network cues such as ‘likes’, while commonplace, are inaccurate indicators of response quality.
Co-authors: Srikanth Venkatesan, Sanjukta Das-Smith, and Wencui Han. Srikanth and Wen were doctoral students at the School of Management. Sanjukta Das-Smith is a SOM faculty member.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Surtees has worked with UB colleagues and a number of COVID-19 testing partners to conduct genomic sequencing of virus samples in Western New York. These efforts have aided the region’s COVID-19 response, identifying the arrival of new variants and helping the community understand how SARS-CoV2 infections are changing locally as the virus evolves. She also collaborated with faculty, students and staff to develop K-12 “Covid Chats” and vaccine information for all ages.
Surtees feels strongly that we must learn from the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic and prepare ourselves for future outbreaks and other potential pandemics by building on the infrastructure we have established since 2020. Surtees has assembled a strong interdisciplinary team with expertise in genetics, environmental engineering, and mathematical modeling to develop an early warning system for infectious diseases that integrates multiple types of ecosystem data from a wide range of stakeholders, including the community. But detection is only the first step. We must also develop true partnerships and trust among researchers, public health officials, the government, and the public. To do this, the research group is actively and continuously engaging and partnering with members of diverse community groups. The goal is to promote community resilience and support a proactive response. This work is supported by an NSF Predictive Intelligence in Pandemic Prevention grant.
This talk introduces Tardigotchi, an award-winning interactive artwork that showcases two distinct pets - a living tardigrade and an artificial life avatar. Housed in a portable computing enclosure, this artwork blends biological and artificial life within a single interface.
The artificial life avatar is a caricature of the tardigrade, and its behavior is partially autonomous, reflecting the tardigrade's daily activities. Tardigotchi playfully references the Tamagotchi toy from the 1990s, raising questions about the emotional attachment that can arise from simple interaction and whether biological life is essential for this attachment.
Tardigotchi owners tend to both the real and virtual creatures, feeding the virtual pet through a button, which in turn feeds the tardigrade. The artwork also has a social web presence, allowing users to send an email to the virtual character and trigger a heating lamp that relays a momentary signal of warmth to the tardigrade while prompting the pixelated tardigrade to recline and soak up animated sun rays.
Tardigotchi's design symbiotically merges biological and artificial life, serving as a reminder of the special place humans have in communing with other animals and artificial beings. It offers a salve to our yearnings for care and nurture, emphasizing the precarious nature of the ecosystem we all share.
This talk examines the uncommon ground we share in a post-truth world. It unpacks how attentive algorithms and extractive data practices are shaping space, influencing behavior, and colonizing everyday life. Articulating post-truth territory as an architectural and infrastructural condition, it shows how these spatial architectures of attention and data mining are in turn situated within broader histories of empiricism, objectivity, science, colonialism, and perception.
UB was recently awarded a $20 million NSF/IES grant to establish a National AI Institute for Transforming Education for Children with Speech and Language Processing Challenges (or AI4ExceptionalEd in short). The Institute aims to address the shortage of Speech and Language Pathologists (SLPs) in meeting the needs of more than 3.4 million children who require speech and language services in the US public school system. This session will start with Dr. Jinjun Xiong, Scientific Director and Co-Director for the Institute, who will give an overview of this institute’s vision and the various scientific research challenges. We will then introduce two licensed SLPs to share their clinical experience and domain expertise on this subject:
- Lisa Draper, Royalton Hartland Central School, Middleport, New York
Topic: Communication Sciences and Disorders: the Pediatric Speech-Language Pathologist's role in Service Provision and the Vision of Artificial Intelligence in the Education Setting - Liga Savicka, Riga East University Hospital, Latvia
Topic: Speech and Language disorders in clinical practice in Latvia
The session will end with a research topic by Dr. Ling-Yu Guo on “How to differentiate children with and without developmental language disorder using grammatical measures.”
Feeling stuck in your job search? Marcelo Barros, Founder, The International Advantage, will be back at UB’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences as part of IAD Days to lead a session that will focus on how international students can capitalize on the power of strategic networking to overcome visa challenges, get advice, get smarter, and ultimately secure job referrals.
UB’s Center for Computational Research (CCR) provides computing and data services to the UB community. This workshop will provide a series of presentations to provide information about CCR’s infrastructure and services, from high-performance computing to web-based data analytics and private cloud.
pyDarwin is an open source all Python command line solution implementing a range of machine learning algorithms for model selection using NONMEM. In using pyDarwin, the user defines the different options to be searched, such as the number of compartments, the absorption models, the covariates, the between-subject variability options and the residual error model options. pyDarwin then searches the combinations of those options to find the “best” model, with “best” being based by user-defined criteria. These criteria include the objective function value, parsimony penalties for estimated parameters, penalties for failing to converge etc. There is also an option for R or Python code to be run after each model and return a custom penalty from user-supplied code. Pirana with Darwin incorporates much of the functionality of pyDarwin in a user-friendly graphical interface, with dropdown menus for defining the possible structural models, and optional parameters, such as lag time, covariate relationships and between-subject variability terms. The results of the Darwin search in Pirana can then be used as the basis for additional model testing as well as all the usual plotting and reporting capabilities available in Pirana.
Note that a separate registration is required to attend this event.
In this session, we will discuss recent employment trends in the tech industry and the opportunities that exist for students with AI and data science skills both locally and nationally.
Panelists include: Marcelo Barros, Sarah Tanbakuchi and Vi Ly
Moderator: Caitlin Hoekstra, Career and Internship Coach for Engineering Masters Programs at the University at Buffalo
The discovery and development of new materials tailored to a specific function remain one of the grand challenges for materials scientists. To this end, layered materials have been extensively studied due to the sundry properties that emerge from chemical and physical modifications. Unfortunately, little is still known of the fundamental requirements to generate pronounced and tailored alterations to the electronic structure upon dimensional reduction or functionalization of their active sites. Comprehensive nanoscale characterization is essential to understand how the loss of 3D structural coherence and further modifications of the surface, induced because of ion intercalation, exfoliation to 2D sheets, or functionalization of the basal planes, alter the electronic structure of these materials, which translates into physical properties. In this talk, I will discuss the lessons learned from the mechanisms of lithiation of layered α-V2O5 and the stark inhomogeneities to the crystal and electronic structure of this material during lithiation. Then, I will discuss current work on the synthesis and structural modification of the canonical layered MXene: Ti3C2Tx. Finally, I will discuss the position AI and machine learning techniques in developing the next generation of materials.
Our national power grid has evolved to a pivotal point – not only does the grid need to provide reliable, resilient, and affordable electricity for societal prosperity and economic development, but also the grid needs to ensure a sustainable and equitable energy future, aligning with the new administrative goals of clean electricity by 2035 and fully decarbonized economy by 2050. As a result, the energy mix is shifting toward clean energy resources, and it leads to significant technical and policy challenges. Driven by the big push for deeper electrification and decarbonization, the electricity demand could double in the next two decades, and more than 80% of electricity will be generated, transferred, and/or consumed through power electronics interfaces. These include wind and solar generation, electric vehicle charging, and new building equipment. This is fundamentally changing the system dynamics as the new resources displace conventional inertia-heavy synchronous generators. But this is also bringing an opportunity for a better future grid – more responsive and flexible! To this end, the electric infrastructure needs to expand; energy storage needs to meet grid-scale application requirements; plus, new markets need to be in place to incentivize the support and services from these new resources. This talk will discuss the trends, challenges, and opportunities for grid modernization in this unprecedented clean energy transition.
How can AI and Data Science be used to predict, prevent, or respond to natural disasters?
As part of IAD Days, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science, Blackstone Launchpad, and the AI Club at UB are challenging students to find a new and innovative way to use data science and AI to change the future of natural disasters, disaster preparedness, and post-disaster response.
Teams will compete for Campus Cash with $750 for the first place team, $500 for the second place team, and $250 for the third place team, and a panel of judges will award prizes. Please note that you will sign up as an individual and will be randomly assigned a team the day of the innovation sprint.
To be eligible to participate, students must be studying data science or AI and commit to attending the entire event from 9:00 am -1:30 pm. Participation is limited to 60 students and you can register for the Innovation Sprint at the same time you register to attend IAD Days.
Campus Cash Prizes
1st Place = $750
2nd Place = $500
3rd Place = $250
As part of IAD Days, CDSE students will be expected to participate in a poster session at the reception on Thursday, March 30th from 5:30-7:30 pm. Poster abstracts should be submitted by Wednesday, March 15th at 5:00 pm.
IAD will cover the cost of poster printing. When you submit an abstract, you will also be eligible to participate in the student talk competition. IAD will choose the top three abstracts that have been submitted to additionally present their work in the form of a 10-minute research talk on Wednesday, March 29th from 3:30-4:00 pm. Students selected for talks will be notified by March 17th.
Posters must be submitted by Thursday, March 23rd to ensure they are printed in time for IAD Days. Students can submit both their poster files and abstracts via the link below.
Registration is now closed.
If you have any questions about IAD Days, email us at ub-iad@buffalo.edu.