UCBPC Computing Industry Panel—February 11
Tomorrow (February 11) at 3:30 PM, UCBPC hosts their Computing Industry Panel in Marriott Library Room 1120. Join us for an engaging discussion with professionals from top tech companies and academia. We hope to see you there!
Distinguished Discussion Series with Don Norman—Thursday, February 27
Join us Thursday, February 27, in the Kennecott Mechanical Engineering Building (MEK) 3550 at 5:30 PM for our Distinguished Discussion Series with Don Norman.
Don Norman was the Founding Director of the Design Lab and Founding Chair of the Department of Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego. He is the co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the American Association of Arts and Science, and the former Vice President of Apple. He has published 21 books translated into 20 languages, including Emotional Design and Design of Everyday Things. His latest book is Design for a Better World: Meaningful, Sustainable, Humanity Centered. The book compelled him to move from writing to actually doing something. His charity, The Don Norman Design Award, rewards early career practitioners who practice what he preaches.
This is a discussion and not a lecture. Don will answer questions raised by the audience in this session. The discussion is open to the public.
If you'd like to meet Don, please add your name to the document here.
2025 Data Science & AI Day Sees Over 200 Attendees, Keynote Speaker from Nvidia
Friday, January 24, in the A. Ray Olpin Student Union Ballroom. 229 students, faculty members, University staff members, and attendees from the general public gathered in the A. Ray Olpin Student Union ballroom on Friday, January 24, for The Utah Center for Data Science’s annual Data Science & AI day.
Keeping Us Posted
The event began with 10 research poster presentations from current students sharing their knowledge with peers and professors alike. Simultaneously, partners with University Career Success hosted a Data Science & AI Career Fair, connecting students with professionals across the Silicon Slopes as they prepare to enter the workforce.
Keynote Speaker: Professor Dieter Fox of Nvidia & U Washington
The public has witnessed huge advances in generative artificial intelligence, including large language models, chatbots, and image and video generation tools. How has this progress impacted robotics?
This is the question that Dieter Fox, Senior Director of Robotics Research at Nvidia and University of Washington Professor, captivated the attendees while addressing during his keynote. Professor Fox identified large scale data as a primary ingredient to recent advances in generative AI. He then proposed several directions for generating large scale data for robot learning, focusing on his work in using large scale, parallelized simulation as the primary tool to enable massive data generation. He also discussed how this could be combined with human demonstrations. His keynote concluded by demonstrating exciting recent advances achieved using these techniques and gave his thoughts on how neural network architectures should evolve to further their use in robotics.
Research Highlights
The afternoon session culminated with research highlights from across the University who have practically applied data science & AI within their work.
Assistant Professor Ziad Al-Halah's (Kahlert School of Computing) section "AI in Computer Vision" regarded spatial features in the audio-visual medium.
Associate Professor Xiaoyue Cathy Liu's (Civil & Environmental Engineering) section "DS of Human Mobility" discussed AI applications for traffic patterns and safety.
Research Assistant Professor Shiqi Yu (Physics and Astronomy) closed out the day's presentations with her "ML for Astronomy" section.