Artificial Intelligence Day of Impact

Session Overview:

While AI has become ubiquitous in the lives of the majority of the people in the world, many of the AI researchers and practitioners are still not representative of the world and populations whose lives AI technologies greatly impact. The advances in the field of AI, particularly during the last few years have been remarkably promising, but also deeply concerning. There is a lot of interest in this space, and people want to come into this field, but don't know where to start or have the sufficient resources. This day of impact aims to bring together a set of sessions, panels, and workshops on topics in AI to address these, including but not limited to: 

Focus Areas:

Career in AI

• Switching careers and transitioning into AI with success
• 0-1. How to Begin.
• Breaking barriers preventing a diverse set of professionals entering into AI
• Roadmaps, paths to upskilling to become successful in the field

Diversity in AI

• The state of the field and growing concerns (regulation, bias, societal impact, equity, open source AI, etc.)
• What can we, the practitioners who are in the field today, do to build an equitable future with AI?
• Why do we need a diverse set of voices in AI, more than ever?
• Increasing women and nonbinary representation in AI
  

AI Governance

• Explainable, Responsible AI
•  AI Safety
• AI for Equity 

Innovative AI

• Applications in the real-world 
• Novel architecture at par with existing benchmarks
• Datasets evaluation

Technical Talks

• Large Language Models (LLMs): Benefits and concerns (ChatGPT, DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, etc.)
• Technical workshops demonstrating AI technologies
• Will AGI replace humans (programmers)  in the workplace (IT industry) ? 

Dr. Lalitha Krishnamoorthy  is a seasoned technologist with over 20 years of experience at IBM Corporation, where she directed IBM’s Digital Business Transformation strategy and oversaw numerous portfolios. Her key strengths are technology strategy, business transformation, global markets expansion, incubating & advising startups, executive leadership coaching, artificial intelligence neural networks, and venture capital investment.  She is the Co-Founder and CEO of OpenTeams Global, responsible for driving Open Source innovation, expanding partner networks across global business markets, defining portfolio investment strategies, and delivering transformative client experiences.  On the social front, Dr. Lalitha serves on the champions board of the Texas Girls Collaborative Project at the University of Texas, Austin motivating women to pursue STEM careers.  Dr. Lalitha holds a PhD in Neuro-Symbolic Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence with several invention patents; she sits on the Austin Venture Capital Board, regularly speaks at industry conferences, and is a strong advocate for diversity & inclusion with a mission to make technology equitable for everyone.

Ipsita Mohanty is a Software Engineer, Machine Learning - Technical Lead, working on several key product and research initiatives at Walmart Global Tech. She has a MS CS degree from Carnegie Mellon University. Prior to her Master’s program, Ipsita worked as an Associate for six years, developing trading and machine learning algorithms at Goldman Sachs in their Global Market Division at Bengaluru & London locations. She has published work on Natural Language Understanding, and her research work spans across disciplines of computer science, deep learning, and human psychology.

Jita Dash is Principal Software Engineering Manager at Microsoft. With over 16+ years of Software engineering experience and 8+ years of leadership experience with multiple enterprise companies. She has the experience in building successful high performing teams and delivering products/platforms to cater business vision and customer satisfaction. Jita holds a master’s degree in Biotech & Computer Science and a Post graduate diploma in Human Resource Management. She has led several women’s network initiatives in various Enterprise companies including Girls Who Code and Women’s Software Analytics meet-up groups and delivered several keynote speeches in many public forum and conferences as guest speaker and participated in technical panel discussions representing women’s networks. She was featured in the Women in Tech profile by AOTMP in 2022.

Madhavi Puvvada currently holds the position of Principal Software Engineering Manager at Microsoft, bringing with her an impressive 23-year industry experience of working in fast-paced and dynamic corporate environments. She has a remarkable leadership track record of 15 years, building and leading highly efficient and successful global engineering teams from scratch.  Madhavi is passionate about creating an inclusive work environment where individuals feel valued, appreciated, and motivated to contribute their best efforts towards achieving team goals. She believes in building diverse and inclusive teams that are capable of solving complex technical challenges with innovative solutions while providing high value to customers.  Madhavi is a computer science master's degree holder who has demonstrated her passion for diversity and inclusion (D&I) by taking part in and leading various initiatives in different organizations. As an engineering leader in CMDB, she has delivered several speaker sessions at Knowledge conferences spanning over six years (2016-2022). Additionally, she has contributed her expertise as a panel member for women in Tech.

Dr. G Shobha, Professor, Computer Science and Engineering Department, RV College of Engineering, Bengaluru, India has teaching experience of 26 years, her specialization includes Data mining, Machine Learning and Image processing. She has published more than 150 papers in reputed journals / conferences. She has also executed sponsored projects worth INR 200 lakhs funded from various agencies nationally and internationally.  She is a recipient of various awards such as Career Award for young teachers 2007-08 constituted by All India Council of Technical Education, Best Researcher award from Cognizant 2017, GHC Faculty Scholar for Women in Computing in 2018, IBM Shared University Research Award in 2019, HPCC Systems community recognition award 2020. She is also an advisory committee member for IET India Scholarship Award 2021.

Tanvi Singhal is a Data Science Consultant in Professional Services at AWS, extensively working on projects involving descriptive & predictive analytics, both theoretical and practical knowledge in ML algorithms like linear and non-linear regression, linear and non-linear classification, dimensional reduction, anomaly detection, statistical concepts and techniques like theoretical distributions, parametric and non-parametric inference using AWS services. Also, have experience work for Deloitte Consulting and Masters in Actuarial Science.

Faraz Rahman is a seasoned analytics professional with over ten years of experience in applying analytical, data science, and programming knowledge in core engineering fields such as Manufacturing, Defense, Renewable Energy, Education, Precision Agriculture, and Remote Sensing Technology. Faraz is skilled at identifying business pain points and providing analytics solutions to customers and is passionate about applying data science for social good. Faraz has worked as a data scientist at early-stage startups and developed core Machine Learning-based products.

Abinaya Mahendiran is a seasoned engineer with the right blend of data science and software engineering skills focused on building enterprise ready as well as technology-for-good AI solutions. She has almost a decade of experience working both as an individual contributor and a manager building diverse products and teams. As someone who loves giving back to the community, she actively delivers talks, writes technical blogs, contributes to open source projects and mentors and teaches students and professionals. Her areas of expertise include NLP/NLU/NLG, Deep Learning, Machine Learning, Explainability, Generative AI and MLOps.

Shawn McCarthy, an AI Committee Member and Manulife's VP of Global Architecture, Big Data, and Information Risk, is pursuing a PhD focused on the impact of global events on market sentiment. His research expands upon a previous study (https://www.mdpi.com/1911-8074/16/4/226) and aims to uncover connections between world events, producing countries, and their financial markets. Shawn's work seeks to develop a novel approach for understanding how news analysis and global events influence market sentiment and performance across various sectors. By creating a comprehensive model for market prediction and risk management, he aims to help organizations navigate the complexities of financial markets in an interconnected global economy. As a Graduate Instructor at the University of Colorado, Shawn is driven by his motto, "Inspire Growth," and committed to fostering innovation in others.

Chaitanya Pandey is currently in her final year of undergrad. She specializes in NLP, and her research focuses on how we can model human behavior through different linguistic patterns.

Mürüvvet Bozkurt is a computer science master's degree student at Technical University of Munich (TUM) specializing in machine learning and computer vision. She has worked as an AI Research Intern at Intel Labs and volunteers at the Artificial Intelligence Committee at AnitaB.org.

Sneha Talwalkar is an Information Systems and Security Professional turned Security Researcher at Georgia Institute of Technology.

Priyanshi Gupta is an individual who is passionate about technology and creating impactful solutions to improve people's daily lives. She is an upcoming Master's student at Cornell University, intending to dive deeper into AI technology that connects humans and the intricacies of its systems. During her previous experience as an NLP Research Associate at LCS2, Priyanshi conducted research on incline citation classification, which was accepted at PAKDD. Additionally, she explored the issue of hate speech in Indian electoral politics at LCS2. Moreover, while interning at AIISC, she worked on summarizing sensor data that will contribute to NLP research on climate change and making cities smart. During her undergraduate studies in Computer Science, Priyanshi studied hate speech against content creators on the Moj platform, and her research was successfully published at ICON in ACL proceedings. Priyanshi has gained industry experience in NLP by working on various projects at SYSTRAN, NVIDIA, and NOKIA. Furthermore, during her undergrad, she developed an entrepreneurial mindset while working at GRROOM, an IIT Bombay-based startup focused on building the world's first AI-powered fashion styling platform in its early stages. With a passion for Tech for Social Good, Priyanshi founded and led the Tech team at Enactus BVCOE as part of the Core Team. Priyanshi's ultimate goal is to become a competent technology entrepreneur and use NLP to create sustainable solutions that make the world a better place to live.