Carla P. Gomes
Cornell University, USA
AI for Scientific Discovery and a Sustainable Future
ABSTRACT
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a rapidly advancing field. Novel machine learning methods combined with reasoning and search techniques have led us to reach new milestones: from computer vision, machine translation, and Go world-champion level play, to self-driving cars. These ever-expanding AI capabilities open exciting avenues for advances in new domains. I will discuss our AI research for advancing scientific discovery for a sustainable future. In particular, I will talk about our research in a new interdisciplinary field, Computational Sustainability, which aims to develop computational models and methods to help balance the environmental, economic, and societal needs for a sustainable future. I will provide examples of computational sustainability problems, ranging from biodiversity conservation to multi-criteria strategic planning of hydropower dams in the Amazon basin and materials discovery for renewable energy materials. I will also highlight our work on AI to accelerate the discovery of new solar fuels materials. In this work, we propose an approach called Deep Reasoning Networks (DRNets), which requires only modest amounts of (unlabeled) data, in sharp contrast to standard deep learning approaches. DRNets reach super-human performance for crystal-structure phase mapping, a core, long-standing challenge in materials science, enabling the discovery of solar-fuels materials. DRNets provide a general framework for integrating deep learning and reasoning for tackling challenging problems. Finally, I will highlight cross-cutting computational themes and challenges for AI.
BIO
Carla Gomes is the Ronald C. and Antonia V. Nielsen Professor of Computing and Information Science and the director of the Institute for Computational Sustainability at Cornell University. Gomes received a Ph.D. in computer science in artificial intelligence from the University of Edinburgh. Her research area is Artificial Intelligence with a focus on large-scale constraint reasoning, optimization, and machine learning. Recently, Gomes has become deeply immersed in research on scientific discovery for a sustainable future and, more generally, in research in the new field of Computational Sustainability. Computational Sustainability aims to develop computational methods to help solve some of the key environmental, economic, and societal challenges to help put us on a path toward a sustainable future. Gomes was the lead PI of two NSF Expeditions in Computing awards. Gomes has (co-)authored over 200 publications, which have appeared in venues spanning Nature, Science, and a variety of conferences and journals in AI and Computer Science, including five best paper awards. Gomes was named the “most influential Cornell professor” by a Merrill Presidential Scholar (2020). Gomes was also the recipient of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Feigenbaum Prize (2021) for “high-impact contributions to the field of artificial intelligence, through innovations in constraint reasoning, optimization, the integration of reasoning and learning, and through founding the field of Computational Sustainability, with impactful applications in ecology, species conservation, environmental sustainability, and materials discovery for energy” and of the 2022 ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award, for contributions bridging computer science and other disciplines. Gomes is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Raj Rajkumar
Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Rising to the Challenge of Autonomous Vehicles
ABSTRACT
Autonomous vehicles (AVs) have garnered immense interest and investments for more than a decade and a half. Nevertheless, large-scale AV deployments do not seem viable in the near future. In this talk, the speaker will address questions like “What went wrong?”, “Is AI the answer?”, “Can (and how do) we course-correct?” and “Which future contributions will matter?”. Finally, challenges that must be addressed by the research and engineering communities will be discussed.
BIO
Raj Rajkumar is the George Westinghouse Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. At Carnegie Mellon, he directs the Metro21 Smart Cities Institute, Mobility21 – the USDOT National University Transportation Center on Mobility, and the Real-Time and Multimedia Systems Laboratory. Raj has served as the Program Chair and General Chair of six international ACM/IEEE conferences on connected vehicles, real-time systems, wireless sensor networks, cyber-physical systems and multimedia computing/networking. He has authored one book, edited another book, holds multiple US patents, and has more than 200 publications in peer-reviewed forums. Nine of these publications have received Best Paper Awards. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, an IEEE Fellow, a co-recipient of the IEEE Simon Ramo Medal, and an ACM Distinguished Engineer. He has been given an Outstanding Technical Achievement and Leadership Award by the IEEE Technical Committee on Real-Time Systems. He has given several keynotes and distinguished lectures at several international conferences and universities, and has provided testimony thrice at US House Sub-Committee hearings. Prof Rajkumar’s work has influenced many commercial operating systems. He was also the founder and CEO of Ottomatika Inc., a company that delivered the software intelligence for self-driving vehicles. Ottomatika was acquired by Delph (becoming Aptiv and then Motional) within 18 months of its founding. His research interests include all aspects of cyber-physical systems with a particular emphasis on connected and autonomous vehicles.