AAAI-21 Invited Panels Program

AI Responses to the Covid-19 Pandemic

Video: https://slideslive.com/38952403

Moderators: Yan Liu (University of Southern California), S. Kevin Zhou (Chinese Academy of Sciences, China), Le Lu (PAII Inc. Bethesda Lab, USA), B. Aditya Prakash (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)
Panelists: Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett (NIH), Prof. Ben Goldacre (Oxford University), Prof. Eili Klein (Johns Hopkins University), Prof. Dinggang Shen (Shanghai Tech University & United Imaging Intelligence)

The intent of this panel is to promote knowledge and share the latest technologies that are directly related to fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, whether addressing its medical, social, or economic consequences. The panel consists of world-renown experts on medical imaging, epidemiology, testing, and vaccine, who will share their insights in how technologies are evolved to address the pandemic and how AI can help in this critical task.

Kizzmekia Shanta Corbett

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health (NIAID NIH)

Dr. Kizzmekia “Kizzy” Shanta Corbett is an American viral immunologist at the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health (NIAID NIH) based in Bethesda, Maryland. Appointed to the VRC in 2014, she is currently the scientific lead of the VRC’s Coronavirus Team, with research efforts aimed at propelling novel coronavirus vaccines, including a COVID-19 vaccine. In December 2020, the Institute’s Director, Anthony Fauci, said: “Kizzy is an African American scientist who is right at the forefront of the development of the vaccine.”

Ben Goldacre

Oxford University

Dr. Ben Goldacre is a doctor, academic, writer, and broadcaster. He trained in medicine at Oxford and University College London, in psychiatry at the Maudsley, and in epidemiology at The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). He runs the DATALab at Oxford. His academic and policy work is in informatics, epidemiology, and evidence-based medicine, where he works on various problems, including variation in care, better uses of routinely collected electronic health data (e.g., the COVID-19 OpenSAFELY project), evidence-based social policy, access to clinical trial data, efficient trial design, and retracted papers. Alongside, he also works in public engagement, writing, and broadcasting for a general audience on problems in evidence-based medicine. His books have sold over 600,000 copies, and his TED talks have had over 4 million views.

Eili Klein

Johns Hopkins University

Prof. Eili Klein is an Associate Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. He is also a fellow at the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy in Washington, D.C. Upon finishing his Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from Princeton University, Dr. Klein joined the Johns Hopkins faculty in 2012. His research focuses on the role of behavior in the spread of infectious diseases. Examining how individuals respond to incentives for both healthy and unhealthy behavior and how this then impacts the spread of disease can improve policy responses to epidemic diseases by giving policymakers and healthcare providers clear tools for thinking about how certain actions can influence the spread of disease transmission.

Dinggang Shen

Shanghai Tech University & United Imaging Intelligence

Prof. Dinggang Shen is Professor and Dean of School of Biomedical Engineering, ShanghaiTech University, and also Co-CEO of United Imaging Intelligence (UII). He was Jeffrey Houpt Distinguished Investigator and (Tenured) Full Professor of Radiology at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH). Prof. Shen is Fellow of IEEE, Fellow of The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), Fellow of The International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR), and also Fellow of The Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention (MICCAI) Society. His research interests include medical image analysis, computer vision, and pattern recognition. He has published more than 1100 peer-reviewed papers in international journals and conference proceedings, with H-index 107 and more than 40,000 citations. He serves as an editorial board member for eight international journals. Also, he has served on the Board of Directors MICCAI Society from 2012-2015 and was General Chair for MICCAI 2019.

Neuro-Symbolic AI Panel

Video: https://slideslive.com/38952405

Panelists: Matthew Botvinick (DeepMind and University College London), Leslie Pack Kaelbling (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Marta Kwiatkowska (University of Oxford), Luis Lamb (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil), Guy Van den Broeck (University of California, Los Angeles)

Matthew Botvinick

DeepMind and University College London

Matthew Botvinick is Director of Neuroscience Research and Team Lead in AI research at DeepMind and Honorary Professor at the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit at University College London.

Leslie Pack Kaelbling

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Leslie Pack Kaelbling is a Professor at MIT. She has an undergraduate degree in Philosophy and a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford and was previously on the faculty at Brown University. She was the founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Machine Learning Research. Her goal is to make robots that are as smart as you are. She is a fellow of the AAAI.

Marta Kwiatkowska

University of Oxford

Marta Kwiatkowska is a leading expert working on automated verification and synthesis for probabilistic systems. Her research draws on symbolic, numerical, and statistical methods with application to safety and robustness of AI systems. She is a Fellow of ELLIS, ACM, Royal Society, and a member of Academia Europea.

Luis Lamb

Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

Luis Lamb – Ph.D. in Computer Science, Imperial College London (2000) – Professor and Secretary of Innovation, Science and Technology of the State of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. He has been working on Neurosymbolic AI for two decades and published foundational works with Artur Garcez, including ‘Neural-Symbolic Cognitive Reasoning’ (Springer, 2009).

Guy Van den Broeck

University of California, Los Angeles

Guy Van den Broeck is an Associate Professor at UCLA, where he directs the Statistical and Relational Artificial Intelligence (StarAI) lab. His work has been recognized with best paper awards from key artificial intelligence venues, and he is the recipient of the IJCAI-19 Computers and Thought Award.

Governments 1 Panel: Government AI Strategy Panel

Video: https://slideslive.com/38952498

Panelists: Dragoş Tudorache (Member of European Parliament (Romania), Chair, Special Committee on Artificial Intelligence in a Digital Age), Sana Khareghani (The Office for Artificial Intelligence, UK), Gabriela Ramos (Assistant Director-General for the Social and Human Sciences of UNESCO)

Dragos Tudorache

Member of European Parliament (Romania), Chair, Special Committee on Artificial Intelligence in a Digital Age

Dragos Tudorache is a Member of the European Parliament (Renew Europe) and the Executive President of the PLUS party in Romania. He is the Chair of the AIDA (Artificial Intelligence in the Digital Age) special committee and sits in LIBE, AFET, SEDE, and the European Parliament’s delegation with the United States.

Sana Khareghani

The Office for Artificial Intelligence, UK

Sana Khareghani is currently the Head of the UK Government’s Office for AI – a joint DCMS/BEIS unit. Holding a BSc in Computer Science and MBA from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sana has over 20 years experience in technology and business across the private and public sectors in corporate, software engineering, and management consulting roles.

Gabriela Ramos

Assistant Director-General for the Social and Human Sciences of UNESCO

Gabriela Ramos is the Assistant Director-General for the Social and Human Sciences of UNESCO, where she oversees the contributions of the institution to building inclusive and peaceful societies. Her agenda includes the achievement of social inclusion and gender equality, advancing youth development; promotion of values through sports; anti-racism and antidiscriminatory agenda, and ethics of artificial intelligence. Her appointment at UNESCO allows her to continue supporting an agenda of inclusive growth and respect for human rights and human dignity. Prior to this position, Ms. Ramos served as the Chief of Staff and Sherpa to the G20/G7/APEC in the OECD, contributing to the global agenda as well as leading the OECD’s New Approaches to Economic Challenges, Inclusive Growth Initiative, Gender Strategy and the work on well-being and children. In 2019, she launched the Business for Inclusive Growth (B4IG) platform, bringing together 40 major multinational companies committed to reducing inequalities. Previously, she was Director of the OECD Office in Mexico and Latin America and a member of the Mexican foreign service. In 2013, she was decorated with the Ordre du Merit by the President of France. Her work to promote gender equality earned her the 2017 and 2018 Forbes Excellence awards as well as being included as part of Apolitical’s 100 Most Influential People in Gender Policy in both 2018 and 2019. A Fulbright and Ford McArthur fellow, she is a member of the board of the Paris Peace Forum, UNICEF Advisory Board, Steering Group of the International Gender Champions Paris Hub, Multi-Stakeholder Council to the Global Solutions Initiative, Lancet Commission on Gender-Based Violence and Maltreatment of Young People, and Lancet Commission on COVID-19.

Governments 2 Panel: Government AI Strategy Panel

Video: https://slideslive.com/38952462

Panelists: Lynne Parker (Director, National AI Initiative Office), Elissa Strome (Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR)), Sukyung Park (Office of the President, The Republic of Korea; Data.Network.AI and Digital New Deal)

Lynne Parker

Director, National AI Initiative Office

Dr. Lynne Parker is Director of the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Office in the White House. She has led the development of many U.S. AI policy initiatives in the areas of research, governance, education, and international engagement. She received her PhD from MIT and is a Fellow of AAAS and IEEE.

Elissa Strome

Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR)

Elissa Strome is the Executive Director of the CIFAR Pan-Canadian AI Strategy, working closely with Canada’s three national AI Institutes in Edmonton (Amii), Montreal (Mila), and Toronto (Vector Institute) and researchers across the country to advance Canada’s leadership in AI research and Innovation. She has a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of British Columbia.

Sukyung (Sue) Park

Office of the President, The Republic of Korea; Data.Network.AI and Digital New Deal

Sukyung (Sue) Park is a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at KAIST, Korea. Her research interests are the biomechanics of human motion and its monitoring systems using IMUs and/or machine learning technology. She was appointed as an Adviser to the President for Science and Technology.

Governments 3 Panel: Government AI Strategy Panel

Video: https://slideslive.com/38952463

Panelists: Fuchun Sun (Vice President of the Chinese Association of AI (CAAI), China), Anna Roy (Senior Adviser, National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog)), Isaac Ben-Israel (Israeli Space Agency and Tel Aviv University)

Fuchun Sun

Vice President of the Chinese Association of AI (CAAI), China

Fuchun Sun is a full professor in the Department of Computer Science and Technology at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. His research interests include robot active sensing, cross-modal learning, and skill learning for robot manipulations. In the past ten years, he has published two books and over 300 papers. He received the Andy Chi best paper award by IEEE Instrumentation & Measurement Society in 2017. His team won first place in track 2 of IROS 2016 and 2019 robotic grasping and manipulation competition.

He was elected an IEEE Fellow in 2018 and CAAI Fellow in 2019. He is now the Vice-Chairman of Chinese Association of Artificial Intelligence, EIC of the international journal of Cognitive Computation and Systems, and also serves as AEs in IEEE Trans. On Fuzzy Systems, IEEE Trans. On Systems, Mans, and Cybernetics: Systems and IEEE Transaction on Cognitive and Development Systems.

Anna Roy

Advisor, National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog)

Ms. Roy is from Indian Economic Service and currently leads the Frontier Technologies and data management verticals at NITI Aayog, the government of India’s premier policy think-tank. She led the development of the National Strategy on Artificial Intelligence, approach paper on AIRAWAT at NITI Aayog. Currently, she is drafting an approach paper on Responsible AI. In the government, she has worked at the Ministry of Finance, Civil Aviation and has experience of contributing to sectors such as infrastructure reforms, public-private partnerships, and finance. She is passionate about driving new initiatives and AI-based projects in Health, agriculture, and education sectors in the Indian context. Ms. Roy received her education from Shri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi, India.

Isaac Ben-Israel

Israeli Space Agency and Tel Aviv University

Prof. Isaac Ben-Israel graduated from Tel Aviv University with degrees in mathematics, physics, and philosophy, earning his Ph.D. in 1988. A retired major-general in the Israel Air Force, Prof. Ben-Israel has served as Director of Defence R&D Directorate of the Ministry of Defense. He is a recipient of the Israel Defense Award (twice). He was a member of Knesset from 2007 to 2009. Currently, he is the Chairman of the Israeli Space Agency and Head of the Blavatnik Interdisciplinary Cyber Research Center and the Yuval Ne’eman Workshop for Science, Technology, and Security at Tel Aviv University. In 2010 he was appointed by Israel’s PM to lead a task force that submitted to the Government a plan which made Israel a major player in Cyber Security. In 2018 he was appointed again by the PM to lead the next revolution in Israel: Secured Artificial Intelligence.