Kai-Fu Lee, Innovator in Speech Recognition, a Nobel Laureate, and Other World Class Researchers and Entrepreneurs Reveal What's Ahead for Machine Learning

BROOKLYN, N.Y., Oct. 1, 2018 — (PRNewswire) —  Starting Tuesday, October 9, 2018, the NYU Tandon School of Engineering will bring some of the best recognized leaders in artificial intelligence to Downtown Brooklyn for a series of free seminars that will be streamed worldwide.

Delivering the Dean's Lecture on October 9 will be one of China's most prominent Internet figures, widely known for his contributions to continuous speech recognition, Kai-Fu Lee. Founding director of Microsoft Research Asia, former president of Google China, and now the chairman and CEO of the venture capital firm Sinovation Ventures and president of its Artificial Intelligence Institute, Lee will address The Era of Artificial Intelligence. He will discuss the four waves of AI, how the United States and China will drive its development, how it will replace routine jobs, and the new approaches it will require in how humans relate to machines. He will also sign copies of his new book,
  AI Superpowers.

"Dr. Lee is a leading authority in AI and has influenced millions of people including younger students and entrepreneurs through his personal charm, leadership, and generous support," said Zhong-Ping Jiang, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at NYU Tandon. "I just could not think of another person who understands better the present and future of AI both in China and in the United States. I encourage anyone looking for an overview of the prospects and challenges of AI to attend this first Dean's Lecture."

Other technical experts at the forefront of AI will be featured in a series of lectures entitled Modern Artificial Intelligence, which will explore current developments in the field and the future of machine learning.  

Anima Anandkumar, the Bren Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences at the California Institute of Technology and director of machine learning research at computer and AI company Nvidia  will launch the series on October 9. Anandkumar, who is a recipient of a Alfred. P. Sloan Fellowship, Microsoft Faculty Fellowship, and Google Faculty Research Award, will address The AI Trinity: Data, Algorithms, and Infrastructure.

She will explore how large-scale AI services are possible with the right marriage of data, algorithms, and cloud infrastructure. She will explain how building intelligence into data collection and aggregation can pare down the large data sets on which deep learning systems rely for training — data that are often difficult and expensive to obtain.

"We have arrived at a watershed moment in the history of technology: Just as computers began touching all aspects of our lives 40 years ago, artificial intelligence is being deployed in more and more devices, systems, and services. NYU Tandon's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering is taking an important step forward both in becoming a forum on machine learning techniques and technologies and as a growing hub for innovation," said Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Anna Choromanska, organizer of the series.

Upcoming seminars in the Modern Artificial Intelligence series will feature David Blei, professor of statistics and computer science at Columbia University, on October 29; and Nobel laureate Richard J. Roberts, consultant and chair of the Scientific Advisory Board at New England BioLabs, on December 11.

The first series of Modern Artificial Intelligence seminars earlier this year attracted 1,000 students, faculty, and researchers to hear presentations by Yann LeCun, Facebook's director of AI research and a member of the New York University faculty;   Yoshua Bengio, head of the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms (MILA);  Stefano Soatto, founding director of the UCLA Vision Lab; and  Vladimir Vapnik, considered the father of machine learning. Over 4,000 people worldwide viewed the seminars, now archived at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhwo5ntex8iY9xhpSwWas451NgVuqBE7U.

This fall, the department joins the NYU WIRELESS research center to host to a separate series of eight seminars, Circuits: Terahertz (THz) and Beyond. The department also recently held the first-ever conference on biochip security, co-hosted by the NYU Center for Cybersecurity.

"This great lineup of presentations shows how NYU Tandon's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering is driving new areas of inquiry," said Jelena Kovačević dean of NYU's Tandon School of Engineering. "These free lectures are also powerful opportunities for students, faculty and others to learn from world-class visionaries who aren't just looking at what's possible with today's technologies, but what will be possible in months and years to come thanks to fundamental advances in hardware, AI, and wireless, some of which are being engineered right here in Brooklyn."

For more information about NYU Tandon's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, visit https://engineering.nyu.edu/academics/departments/electrical-and-computer-engineering/ece-seminar-series.

About the New York University Tandon School of Engineering
The NYU Tandon School of Engineering dates to 1854, the founding date for both the New York University School of Civil Engineering and Architecture and the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute (widely known as Brooklyn Poly). A January 2014 merger created a comprehensive school of education and research in engineering and applied sciences, rooted in a tradition of invention and entrepreneurship and dedicated to furthering technology in service to society. In addition to its main location in Brooklyn , NYU Tandon collaborates with other schools within NYU , one of the country's foremost private research universities, and is closely connected to engineering programs at NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai. It operates Future Labs focused on start-up businesses in downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn and an award-winning online graduate program. For more information, visit http://engineering.nyu.edu .