Author Archives: XRDS Staff

About XRDS Staff

How to Change a Career

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 By Joseph Kakande, 2011 Marconi Society Young Scholar
This post originally appears on the Marconi Society Blog.
Marconi Society Young Scholars

“Being selected as a Young Scholar and interacting with the Marconi Fellows is a constant source of inspiration for dreaming and doing big things.”
Salman Baset, Recognized in 2008, CTO, IBM Security, IBM Blockchain Solutions

“Becoming a Young Scholar has broadened my perspective on how my research benefits humanity.”
Aakanksha Chowdhery, Recognized in 2012, Machine Learning Engineer, Google Brain

“I found the award indispensable in establishing myself and making connections. The publicity generated from the award provided a platform to share my research and to form potential collaborations.“
Joe Lukens, Recognized in 2015, Research Scientist and Wigner Fellow, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

“I’m really honored to be considered worthy of joining the Marconi Society Young Scholars. I think that this award will definitely encourage more women in the region to enter the field of science and to accomplish even greater things.”
Qurrat-Ul-Ain Nadeem, Recognized in 2018, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of British Columbia

“I am humbled and honored to be chosen for the Paul Baran Young Scholar Award.  It is easier to be known in your own area, but the fact that my work translates to broader audiences in the communications arena makes me very proud. It gives me assurance that I’m moving in the right direction.”
Negar Reiskarimian, Recognized in 2017, Assistant Professor, MIT EECS

We are 41 strong and come from every continent except Antarctica.

We studied at universities ranging from Telecomm ParisTech to The Technion to King Abdullah University of Science and Technology to Stanford to KAIST.

We have all had the good fortune to have had a professor, advisor or mentor with the foresight and generosity to nominate us for the career-changing Marconi Society Young Scholar award.

For me personally – and for others receiving this prestigious award – being a Marconi Society Paul Baran Young Scholar is a game-changer.

When Gioia Marconi Braga, Guglielmo Marconi’s daughter, formed the society in 1974, it was called the Marconi International Fellowship Foundation.  Gioia envisioned this group as a true community of colleagues with a shared passion for both intellectual achievements and “recognizing and sustaining those spiritual aspirations that a creative thinker may wish to apply to the establishment of a better world in which to live.”

Young Scholars not only get meet the luminaries in our fields – we are privileged to be treated like family by these legends of communications.  In my case, this has meant job offers, valuable counsel and introductions for my startup and leadership opportunities to work closely with Marconi Fellows on the board and on various projects.

The Young Scholar cohort is an exceptional group of likeminded innovators.  While we studied different areas of communications in different parts of the world, many of us share a passion for social impact and leveraging technology to bring the power of the network to everyone, particularly the half of the world that does not have access today.  It has been gratifying for me to discover that shared vision and work with other Young Scholars to bring the Celestini Program to life, offering resources and support to technical undergrads in emerging nations to give them hands-on experience solving critical local issues through telecommunications network innovations.

As Gioia intended, my relationships with the Marconi Society extend far beyond work and academics.  The Young Scholars, Fellows and staff have become true friends and part of my community, taking part in some of my most important life events.

If you are an academic or business leader who knows an exceptionally talented young researcher in information and communications technology, I urge you to nominate him or her.  And if you think you are a candidate for a Marconi Society Young Scholar award, please ask for a nomination.

Nominations will be accepted from February 1 through May 15, 2020.  We seek gender, discipline and geographic diversity.

Take the time to make a true difference in a young researcher’s career.

ACM SIGAI Launches its 2018 Student Essay Contest…Apply Now!

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It’s fall in the States and that means it’s time for the 2018 ACM SIGAI Student Essay Contest on Artificial Intelligence Technologies! Win one of several $500 monetary prizes or a Skype conversation with a leading AI researcher including Joanna Bryson, Murray Campbell, Eric Horvitz, Peter Norvig, Iyad Rahwan, Francesca Rossi, or Toby Walsh.

(The following text is from the ACMSIGAI blog “AI Matters“)

The Contest

The ACM Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence (ACM SIGAI) supports the development and responsible application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. From intelligent assistants to self-driving cars, an increasing number of AI technologies now (or soon will) affect our lives. Examples include Google Duplex (Link) talking to humans, Drive.ai (Link) offering rides in US cities, chatbots advertising movies by impersonating people (Link), and AI systems making decisions about parole (Link) and foster care (Link). We interact with AI systems, whether we know it or not, every day.

Such interactions raise important questions. ACM SIGAI is in a unique position to shape the conversation around these and related issues and is thus interested in obtaining input from students worldwide to help shape the debate. We therefore invite all students to enter an essay in the 2018 ACM SIGAI Student Essay Contest, to be published in the ACM SIGAI newsletter “AI Matters,” addressing one or both of the following topic areas (or any other question in this space that you feel is important) while providing supporting evidence:

  • What requirements, if any, should be imposed on AI systems and technology when interacting with humans who may or may not know that they are interacting with a machine?  For example, should they be required to disclose their identities? If so, how? See, for example, “Turing’s Red Flag” in CACM (Link).
  • What requirements, if any, should be imposed on AI systems and technology when making decisions that directly affect humans? For example, should they be required to make transparent decisions? If so, how?  See, for example, the IEEE’s summary discussion of Ethically Aligned Design (Link).

Each of the above topic areas raises further questions, including

  • Who is responsible for the training and maintenance of AI systems? See, for example, Google’s (Link), Microsoft’s (Link), and IBM’s (Link) AI Principles.
  • How do we educate ourselves and others about these issues and possible solutions? See, for example, new ways of teaching AI ethics (Link).
  • How do we handle the fact that different cultures see these problems differently?  See, for example, Joi Ito’s discussion in Wired (Link).
  • Which steps can governments, industries, or organizations (including ACM SIGAI) take to address these issues?  See, for example, the goals and outlines of the Partnership on AI (Link).

All sources must be cited. However, we are not interested in summaries of the opinions of others. Rather, we are interested in the informed opinions of the authors. Writing an essay on this topic requires some background knowledge. Possible starting points for acquiring such background knowledge are:

  • the revised ACM Code of Ethics (Link), especially Section 3.7, and a discussion of why the revision was necessary (Link),
  • IEEE’s Ethically Aligned Design (Link), and
  • the One Hundred Year Study on AI and Life in 2030 (Link).

ACM and ACM SIGAI

ACM brings together computing educators, researchers, and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources, and address the field’s challenges. As the world’s largest computing society, ACM strengthens the profession’s collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence. ACM’s reach extends to every part of the globe, with more than half of its 100,000 members residing outside the U.S.  Its growing membership has led to Councils in Europe, India, and China, fostering networking opportunities that strengthen ties within and across countries and technical communities. Their actions enhance ACM’s ability to raise awareness of computing’s important technical, educational, and social issues around the world. See https://www.acm.org/ for more information.

ACM SIGAI brings together academic and industrial researchers, practitioners, software developers, end users, and students who are interested in AI. It promotes and supports the growth and application of AI principles and techniques throughout computing, sponsors or co-sponsors AI-related conferences, organizes the Career Network and Conference for early-stage AI researchers, sponsors recognized AI awards, supports AI journals, provides scholarships to its student members to attend conferences, and promotes AI education and publications through various forums and the ACM digital library. See https://sigai.acm.org/ for more information.

Format and Eligibility

The ACM SIGAI Student Essay Contest is open to all ACM SIGAI student members at the time of submission.  (If you are a student but not an ACM SIGAI member, you can join ACM SIGAI before submission for just US$ 11 at https://goo.gl/6kifV9 by selecting Option 1, even if you are not an ACM member.) Essays can be authored by one or more ACM SIGAI student members but each ACM SIGAI student member can (co-)author only one essay.

All authors must be SIGAI members at the time of submission.  All submissions not meeting this requirement will not be reviewed.

Essays should be submitted as pdf documents of any style with at most 5,000 words via email to https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=acmsigai2018.

The deadline for submissions is January 10th, 2019.

The authors certify with their submissions that they have followed the ACM publication policies on “Author Representations,” “Plagiarism” and “Criteria for Authorship” (http://www.acm.org/publications/policies/). They also certify with their submissions that they will transfer the copyright of winning essays to ACM.

Judges and Judging Criteria

Winning entries from last year’s essay contest can be found in recent issues of the ACM SIGAI newsletter “AI Matters,” specifically  Volume 3, Issue 3: http://sigai.acm.org/aimatters/3-3.html and  Volume 3, Issue 4: http://sigai.acm.org/aimatters/3-4.html.

Entries will be judged by the following panel of leading AI researchers and ACM SIGAI officers. Winning essays will be selected based on depth of insight, creativity, technical merit, and novelty of argument. All decisions by the judges are final.

  • Rediet Abebe, Cornell University
  • Emanuelle Burton, University of Illinois at Chicago
  • Sanmay Das, Washington University in St. Louis
  • John P. Dickerson, University of Maryland
  • Virginia Dignum, Delft University of Technology
  • Tina Eliassi-Rad, Northeastern University
  • Judy Goldsmith, University of Kentucky
  • Amy Greenwald, Brown University
  • H. V. Jagadish, University of Michigan
  • Sven Koenig, University of Southern California
  • Benjamin Kuipers, University of Michigan
  • Nicholas Mattei, IBM Research
  • Alexandra Olteanu, Microsoft Research
  • Rosemary Paradis, Leidos
  • Kush Varshney, IBM Research
  • Roman Yampolskiy, University of Louisville
  • Yair Zick, National University of Singapore

Prizes

All winning essays will be published in the ACM SIGAI newsletter “AI Matters.” ACM SIGAI provides five monetary awards of USD 500 each as well as 45-minute skype sessions with the following AI researchers:

  • Joanna Bryson, Reader (Assoc. Prof) in AI, University of Bath
  • Murray Campbell, Senior Manager, IBM Research AI
  • Eric Horvitz, Managing Director, Microsoft Research
  • Peter Norvig, Director of Research, Google
  • Iyad Rahwan, Associate Professor, MIT Media Lab and Head of Scalable Corp.
  • Francesca Rossi, AI and Ethics Global Lead, IBM Research AI
  • Toby Walsh, Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence, UNSW Sydney, Data61 and TU Berlin

One award is given per winning essay. Authors or teams of authors of winning essays will pick (in a pre-selected order) an available Skype session or one of the monetary awards until all Skype sessions and monetary awards have been claimed. ACM SIGAI reserves the right to substitute a Skype session with a different AI researcher or a monetary award for a Skype session in case an AI researcher becomes unexpectedly unavailable. Some prizes might not be awarded in case the number of high-quality submissions is smaller than the number of prizes.

Questions?

In case of questions, please first check the ACM SIGAI blog for announcements and clarifications: https://sigai.acm.org/aimatters/blog/. You can also contact the ACM SIGAI Student Essay Contest Organizers at sigai@member.acm.org.

  • Nicholas Mattei (IBM Research) – ACM SIGAI Student Essay Contest Organizer and AI and Society Officer

with involvement from

  • Sven Koenig (University of Southern California), ACM SIGAI Chair
  • Sanmay Das (Washington University in St. Louis), ACM SIGAI Vice Chair
  • Rosemary Paradis (Leidos), ACM SIGAI Secretary/Treasurer
  • Benjamin Kuipers (University of Michigan), ACM SIGAI Ethics Officer
  • Amy McGovern (University of Oklahoma), ACM SIGAI AI Matters Editor-in Chief

 

Shafi Goldwasser’s Role in Securing the Internet of Things (IoT) 

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We keep hearing in today’s technology-driven world that advancements such as 3D printing, next-gen robots, and virtual reality are made everyday, but we often learn little about the real people behind these inventions. Instead, we are constantly exposed to false stereotypes such as “Women can’t code”, which is still not dead despite the increasing numbers of women who’ve succeeded in tech, currently and historically.

Notwithstanding their contribution, women continue to face discrimination in patriarchal societies, such as reduced opportunities for education, not being recognized as equal to men, and being prevented from holding high offices or posts that are stereotyped for men.  What keeps women going forward in the face of this adversity is the sheer human determination to perform and excel.

The archetypal poster woman in this argument, Ada Lovelace, was one of the first programmers. She had written a program in English to operate Bernoulli’s numbers, which can be taken as our modern day ‘algorithm.’ But people ought to understand that she was hardly the only one! Women have always been present in the field, contributing every step of the way since even before the advent of modern computers, it’s just that their work has not been widely publicized.

An area where women have made a significant difference was advancing the now-fashionable Internet of Things (IoT), and in particular addressing privacy and security concerns that arise with it. First let’s understand what the IoT is all about.

Continue reading →

Digital Fabrication

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In the past decade, digital fabrication (digital manufacturing) has gained immense attention as a topic of interest and research. Before we get into the specifics, let us first understand what digital fabrication (digital fab) even means. A quick search on Google gives you this:

Digital fabrication is a type of manufacturing process where the machine used is controlled by a computer. The most common forms of digital fabrication are: CNC Machining: where, typically, shapes are cut out of wooden sheets.

This is somewhat true, however there are few things I would like to clarify —  Continue reading →

Parallel Programming through Dependence Analysis – Part II

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In my previous post, I briefly mentioned that if the execution order of iterations in a loop can be altered without affecting the result, it is possible to parallelize the loop. In this post, we will take a look at why this is the case, i.e., how is execution order related to parallelism. Moreover, we will see how this idea can be further exploited to optimize code for data locality, i.e., how can reordering of loop iterations result in using the same data (temporally or spatially) as much as possible, in order to efficiently utilize the memory hierarchy. Continue reading →