Matt Hintsa / en How 老司机直播's computer science dept. scrambled to give students from Ukraine a 'normal summer' /news/how-u-t-s-computer-science-dept-scrambled-give-students-ukraine-normal-summer <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">How 老司机直播's computer science dept. scrambled to give students from Ukraine a 'normal summer' </span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/Ukraine-student-group_crop.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=aBxOEI-w 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/Ukraine-student-group_crop.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=oPE0wX1R 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/Ukraine-student-group_crop.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=iaL4iprD 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/Ukraine-student-group_crop.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=aBxOEI-w" alt="&quot;&quot;"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Christopher.Sorensen</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2022-10-24T14:09:14-04:00" title="Monday, October 24, 2022 - 14:09" class="datetime">Mon, 10/24/2022 - 14:09</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">Their studies interrupted by war, more than two dozen students from universities in Ukraine conducted research with faculty members in the department of computer science this past summer (photo by Luke Wheeler)</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/matt-hintsa" hreflang="en">Matt Hintsa</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/global-lens" hreflang="en">Global Lens</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/computer-science" hreflang="en">Computer Science</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/faculty-arts-science" hreflang="en">Faculty of Arts &amp; Science</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/global" hreflang="en">Global</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/ukraine" hreflang="en">Ukraine</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/vector-institute" hreflang="en">Vector Institute</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p><strong>Yuliia Kholodetska</strong>鈥檚 computer science studies at Lviv Polytechnic National University were interrupted on Feb. 24, 2022, but this time it had nothing to do with&nbsp;global pandemic 鈥 Russia had invaded Ukraine, throwing daily life into disarray. Similarly, <strong>Roman Burakov</strong>, a computer science&nbsp;student at National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (KMA), was awoken in Croatia by an early morning call from a friend in Kyiv who reported that missiles were striking across the country.</p> <p>鈥淚t was quite a shock,鈥 Burakov&nbsp;recalls. 鈥淚t鈥檚 really impossible to imagine that you鈥檙e here, it鈥檚 good. But somewhere in Ukraine, your relatives are under attack.鈥</p> <div class="image-with-caption left"> <p><img class="migrated-asset" src="/sites/default/files/Yuliia-Kholodetska_crop.jpg" alt><em>Yuliia Kholodetska</em></p> </div> <p>Thousands of kilometres away, faculty members, researchers, students and staff across the University of Toronto鈥檚 three campuses immediately began working on ways to help. In the computer science department in the Faculty of Arts &amp; Science, faculty members, post-doctoral researchers&nbsp;and graduate students stepped into action by strategizing about ways they could play a role in helping students like&nbsp;Kholodetska and Burakov whose studies were interrupted by the invasion.</p> <p>Professor&nbsp;<strong>Michael Brudno</strong>&nbsp;envisioned a program built on the structure of the department of computer science鈥檚 long-running <a href="https://web.cs.toronto.edu/undergraduate/ugsrp">Undergraduate Summer Research Program</a>&nbsp;鈥 the&nbsp;program鈥檚 application and matching systems could be repurposed relatively easily&nbsp;and faculty members were eager to contribute by supervising students and contributing their own research funds.</p> <p>A collaborative effort was soon underway. The computer science department and Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence&nbsp;agreed to provide additional financial backing. The&nbsp;Centre for International Experience&nbsp;advised on immigration-related considerations.&nbsp;Innis College&nbsp;co-ordinated housing. And graduate students and post-doctoral fellows in the department of computer science interviewed more than 80 student applicants over the course of two weeks, selected from over 200 applications.</p> <p>鈥淚n three months, we were able to pull this off,鈥 says Brudno. 鈥淚t was really a huge amount of work for lots of people across the university to actually make it happen.鈥</p> <div class="image-with-caption right"> <p><span id="cke_bm_339S" style="display: none;"><span id="cke_bm_344S" style="display: none;">&nbsp;</span>&nbsp;</span><img class="migrated-asset" src="/sites/default/files/Roman-Burakov_crop.jpg" alt><em>Roman Burakov</em></p> </div> <p>Students admitted to the program began to arrive in May, with&nbsp;21 undergraduate and five graduate students participating in the program. The computer science effort was one of several initiatives at the university focused on supporting students from Ukraine. 老司机直播 Mississauga also ran a summer program,&nbsp;<a href="/news/u-t-welcome-students-and-faculty-ukraine-amid-ongoing-war">the Faculty of Arts &amp; Science led an exchange initiative with&nbsp;(KMA) that was&nbsp;supported of a $3.2-million donation by the Temerty Foundation</a>&nbsp;and 老司机直播 supported many of the displaced students with <a href="https://future.utoronto.ca/scholarships/scholars-and-students-at-risk-award-program/">Scholars at Risk awards</a>.</p> <p>As for Burakov, he joined a wearable robotics group headed by&nbsp;<strong>Alex Mihailidis</strong>, professor in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine鈥檚 department of occupational science and occupational therapy and the Institute for Biomedical Engineering, who is&nbsp;cross-appointed to the department of computer science. In that group, Burakov worked closely with post-doctoral researcher&nbsp;<strong>Brokoslaw Laschowski</strong>, a Ukrainian-Canadian scientist who was also involved in the effort to develop the summer program.</p> <p>"Imagine you have someone who lost their leg and needs a prosthesis. Our goal is to make prostheses simulate a healthy leg,鈥 Burakov says.</p> <p>Kholodetska, meantime, joined the lab of Professor&nbsp;<strong>Marsha Chechik</strong>, former chair of the department of computer science and acting dean of the Faculty of Information, to work&nbsp;on a software engineering project related to bonded satisfiability checking.</p> <p>In addition to conducting research with a faculty member, students in the program also received instruction in professional English speaking and writing and participated in a range of social events. That included a&nbsp;camping trip to Algonquin Provincial Park, where students got an introduction to canoeing and exploring the Canadian wilderness.</p> <p>鈥淥ne of the bigger goals was to give the students a normal summer 鈥 or at least as normal as possible, given the situation,鈥 said Brudno.</p> <p>Kholodetska concurred.</p> <p>鈥淲e can feel how it is to be a student 鈥 to go to university, to attend lecture&nbsp;鈥 because COVID and war have destroyed this ability for us,鈥 she says.</p> <p>Despite having landed in a safer place to continue their studies, Burakov and Kholodetska say the safety of their families and friends still looms large.</p> <div class="image-with-caption left"> <p><img alt src="/sites/default/files/Michael-Brudno.jpg" style="width: 200px; height: 221px;"><em>Michael Brudno</em></p> </div> <p>Kholodetska receives a push alert on her phone every time an air raid siren is activated where her loved ones reside. She and Burakov both message their families daily.</p> <p>鈥淎t one point, I hadn鈥檛 heard from my mom for three weeks straight,鈥 Burakov says, citing telecommunications outages in Ukraine.</p> <p>Looking toward the future, Brudno says there鈥檚 interest in using the model of this year鈥檚 program to serve the needs of students in other parts of the world who experience similar interruptions to their studies.</p> <p>鈥淲hile our program was spurred by the acute crisis in Ukraine, we are re-working the program to be accessible to students displaced by conflict anywhere in the world,鈥 he says. 鈥淭his is not just a moral imperative, but also benefits our community 鈥 we get introduced to talented students and researchers, and we can build strong new collaborations with top universities around the world.鈥</p> <p>Most of the students who came through the summer program are staying in Toronto, including both Kholodetska and Burakov. Ten students have been admitted into the department鈥檚 graduate program, and many others are continuing as exchange students, taking classes at 老司机直播 and continuing their research.</p> <p>鈥淭he program turned out very productive both for my partner and me,鈥 says Burakov. 鈥淒espite the short time frame, my colleague Alex (also from the program) and I achieved great results from our research, which resulted in the paper submission to the most prestigious robotics conference:&nbsp;ICRA 2023.鈥</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Mon, 24 Oct 2022 18:09:14 +0000 Christopher.Sorensen 177707 at 老司机直播 computer science grads reflect on their studies 鈥 and the profs who inspired them /news/u-t-computer-science-grads-reflect-their-studies-and-profs-who-inspired-them <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">老司机直播 computer science grads reflect on their studies 鈥 and the profs who inspired them</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/2023-04/compsci-composite.jpeg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=8BxS2NOK 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/2023-04/compsci-composite.jpeg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=lftToHhw 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/2023-04/compsci-composite.jpeg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=-4YKuRur 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/2023-04/compsci-composite.jpeg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=8BxS2NOK" alt="Aniket Kali, Tina Li, Murad Akhundov and Danya Lette"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>geoff.vendeville</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2021-06-24T12:25:11-04:00" title="Thursday, June 24, 2021 - 12:25" class="datetime">Thu, 06/24/2021 - 12:25</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item"><p>Aniket Kali, Tina Li, Murad Akhundov and Danya Lette &nbsp;shared their thoughts on their studies in computer science at 老司机直播 before their graduation this week (photos courtesy of the students)&nbsp;</p> </div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/matt-hintsa" hreflang="en">Matt Hintsa</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/our-community" hreflang="en">Our Community</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/computer-science" hreflang="en">Computer Science</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>The University of Toronto鈥檚 department of computer science, in the Faculty of Arts &amp; Science, <a href="http://web.cs.toronto.edu/news">recently asked several of its new graduates</a> to reflect on their time at the university as they on a new chapter in their lives.</p> <p>Some discussed their faculty mentors while others described the courses that changed the way they think about computer science and the world.</p> <p>Here鈥檚 what four of the department鈥檚 newest grads had to say:</p> <hr> <h2>&nbsp;</h2> <a href="https://web.cs.toronto.edu/news-events/news/graduation-spotlight-aniket-kali"> <div class="align-left"> <div class="field field--name-field-media-image field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="lazy" src="/sites/default/files/2023-04/Aniket%20Kali-crop.jpeg" width="200" height="300" alt="Aniket Kali"> </div> </div> </a> <p><a href="https://web.cs.toronto.edu/news-events/news/graduation-spotlight-aniket-kali">Aniket Kali</a></p> <p><em>Computer science specialist</em></p> <p><em>University College</em></p> <p>Kali thought he wouldn't study anything math-related after high school, but Associate&nbsp;Professor, Teaching Stream,&nbsp;<strong>Dan Heap</strong>'s introductory computer science class helped change his mind.&nbsp;</p> <p>鈥淚've been quite fortunate to get to know a handful of professors who have been deeply supportive both in and out of academics. I was also lucky to build friendships of great depth, and meet people who seriously influenced the way I think about myself and society. It's hard to point to any one person or event that single-handledly shaped my education, though 鈥&nbsp;much more the sum.鈥</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <h2>&nbsp;</h2> <a href="https://web.cs.toronto.edu/news-events/news/graduation-spotlight-tina-li"> <div class="align-left"> <div class="field field--name-field-media-image field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="lazy" src="/sites/default/files/2023-04/Tina%20Li-crop.jpeg" width="200" height="300" alt="Tina Li"> </div> </div> </a> <p><a href="https://web.cs.toronto.edu/news-events/news/graduation-spotlight-tina-li">Tina Li</a></p> <p><em>Computer science specialist and statistics major</em></p> <p><em>Victoria College</em></p> <p>Li chose to major in computer science because she wanted to&nbsp;鈥渃reate helpful tools myself and make a positive, real-world impact.鈥</p> <p>鈥淸Assistant] Professor <strong>Ishtiaque Ahmed</strong> helped me find my research interests, supervised my research and directed me to a clearer academic path. I met Professor Ishtiaque through a research scholarship application at the end of my second year. Since then, I have worked with Professor Ishtiaque and his PhD student at the <a href="https://www.dgp.toronto.edu/">DGP Lab</a>. Under his mentorship, I realized my passion for using technology to tackle social challenges, gained the complete research experience&nbsp;and decided to pursue graduate studies in the area of human-centered technologies.鈥</p> <h2>&nbsp;</h2> <a href="https://web.cs.toronto.edu/news-events/news/graduation-spotlight-danya-lette"> <div class="align-left"> <div class="field field--name-field-media-image field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="lazy" src="/sites/default/files/2023-04/Danya%20Lette-crop.jpeg" width="200" height="300" alt="Danya Lette"> </div> </div> </a> <p><a href="https://web.cs.toronto.edu/news-events/news/graduation-spotlight-danya-lette">Danya Lette</a></p> <p><em>Computer science specialist</em></p> <p><em>Victoria College</em></p> <p>Lette, who has a previous degree in philosophy, initially didn't consider herself a&nbsp;鈥渃omputer person.鈥 But as she learned more programming, she became more and more interested in computer science.&nbsp;鈥淐uriosity is a powerful motivator,鈥 she says.</p> <p>鈥淚 am very grateful for all the computer science faculty members who were able to convince me that you can learn how to learn, you can learn how to study, you can learn how to take tests, you can learn how to communicate effectively 鈥&nbsp;soft skills are skills, not ingrained personality traits. These lessons carried me through my degree and gave me the confidence to take on a lot of really rewarding challenges.鈥</p> <h2>&nbsp;</h2> <a href="https://web.cs.toronto.edu/news-events/news/graduation-spotlight-murad-akhundov"> <div class="align-left"> <div class="field field--name-field-media-image field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="lazy" src="/sites/default/files/2023-04/Murad%20Akhundov-crop.jpeg" width="200" height="300" alt="Murad Akhundov"> </div> </div> </a> <p><a href="https://web.cs.toronto.edu/news-events/news/graduation-spotlight-murad-akhundov">Murad Akhundov</a></p> <p><em>Computer science specialist</em></p> <p><em>University College</em></p> <p>With Toronto being a major tech centre, Akhundov thought it was logical to study computer science at 老司机直播. After interning at Okta Toronto last summer, he recently got a job with the digital security company&nbsp;as a software engineer.</p> <p>鈥淚 found the first couple of theoretical computer science courses were very important. I already knew how to code before coming to university, but the theoretical side of [computer science]&nbsp;was entirely new to me. The courses really taught me how to think differently, and how to communicate my reasoning in a very logical, precise and clear way. I think it is great that you get to take these courses very early on at 老司机直播 鈥&nbsp;this is not the case at all schools, unfortunately.鈥</p> <h3><a href="https://web.cs.toronto.edu/news">Read a</a><a href="http://web.cs.toronto.edu/news">ll of the computer science graduate profiles</a></h3> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Thu, 24 Jun 2021 16:25:11 +0000 geoff.vendeville 301358 at Prize-winning 老司机直播 student team uses AI to beat banana blight /news/prize-winning-u-t-student-team-uses-ai-beat-banana-blight <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Prize-winning 老司机直播 student team uses AI to beat banana blight</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/black-sigatoka-by-CIAT.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=vvmtV4GP 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/black-sigatoka-by-CIAT.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=V8yGUeOA 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/black-sigatoka-by-CIAT.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=80PFJ6yl 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/black-sigatoka-by-CIAT.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=vvmtV4GP" alt="&quot;&quot;"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Christopher.Sorensen</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2021-02-17T12:16:34-05:00" title="Wednesday, February 17, 2021 - 12:16" class="datetime">Wed, 02/17/2021 - 12:16</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">A team of 老司机直播 undergraduate students earned top prize in a student-organized global AI competition for their plan to use AI to forecast infections of black Sigatoka, a fungal disease that blackens bananas from the inside out (photo by Neil Palmer)</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/matt-hintsa" hreflang="en">Matt Hintsa</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/global-lens" hreflang="en">Global Lens</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/temerty-faculty-medicine" hreflang="en">Temerty Faculty of Medicine</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/artificial-intelligence" hreflang="en">Artificial Intelligence</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/climate-change" hreflang="en">Climate Change</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/computer-science" hreflang="en">Computer Science</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/faculty-arts-science" hreflang="en">Faculty of Arts &amp; Science</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/global" hreflang="en">Global</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/research-innovation" hreflang="en">Research &amp; Innovation</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/undergraduate-students" hreflang="en">Undergraduate Students</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Fuelled by a changing climate, plant pathogens encounter increasingly favourable conditions to spread and wreak havoc on global crop yields. But could artificial intelligence help predict the spread of disease, buying farmers valuable time to take preventative measures?</p> <p>As part of an effort that took top honours and a $20,000 prize in the recent ProjectX global undergraduate research competition, a team of University of Toronto students proposed the use of a new machine learning architecture to forecast infections of black Sigatoka, a fungal disease that blackens bananas from the inside out.</p> <p>ProjectX, <a href="/news/u-t-students-host-global-ai-competition-address-climate-change">the brainchild of the 老司机直播 Artificial Intelligence student group</a>, challenged teams of undergraduate students from universities around the world to use machine learning to address the impacts of climate change. The competition, which concluded in December, was divided into three categories: infectious disease; weather and natural disaster prediction; and emissions and energy efficiency.</p> <p>ProjectX organizers maintained a strict firewall between themselves and 老司机直播 student competitors to ensure fairness in the competition.</p> <p>The team from 老司机直播 that emerged victorious in the infectious disease category included computer science students <strong>Yuchen Wang</strong>, <strong>Matthieu Chan Chee</strong>, <strong>Ziyad Edher</strong>, <strong>Minh Duc Hoang</strong>&nbsp;and <strong>Shion Fujimori</strong>; as well as <strong>Sornnujah Kathirgamanathan</strong>, a molecular genetics and microbiology student in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine.</p> <p>Operating remotely from Toronto, Vancouver, Japan, and Vietnam, the team members focused&nbsp;on devising a neural network to forecast the infection risk of black Sigatoka.The fungal disease can have devastating consequences for farmers, decreasing yields and driving up costs. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reported that, between 2007 and 2009, St. Vincent and the Grenadines faced a 90 per cent&nbsp;decline in banana crop production due to the disease.</p> <p><img class="migrated-asset" src="/sites/default/files/ProjectX-winning-team.jpg" alt></p> <p><em>Left to righ (top row):&nbsp;Ziyad Edher, Yuchen Wang, Sornnujah Kathirgamanathan, (bottom row) Matthieu Chan Chee, Minh Duc Hoang and&nbsp;Shion Fujimori.</em></p> <p>While mathematical models of infectious diseases already exist, it is difficult to incorporate climate effects into those models.</p> <p>鈥淏y extending previous work on Neural Ordinary Differential Equations (Neural ODEs), we devised a new machine learning architecture incorporating weather patterns to predict black Sigatoka infections one month into the future,鈥 says Chan Chee.</p> <p>Neural ODEs are a family of deep neural network models invented in 2018 by 老司机直播 researchers&nbsp;鈥 including computer science PhD student <strong>Jesse Bettencourt</strong>, the team鈥檚 mentor in the competition.</p> <p>鈥淥ur mentor Jesse, being among the inventors of Neural ODEs in 2018, provided amazing support and insight throughout the project,鈥 says Chan Chee.</p> <p>ProjectX teams also had a network of climate and machine learning experts that they could reach out to throughout the competition.</p> <p>Reflecting on their experiences, members of the 老司机直播 team shared their advice for students who may want to get involved with competitions like ProjectX in the future.</p> <p>鈥淚 had never heard of machine learning before coming to Canada,鈥 says Chan Chee, who is originally from Mauritius. 鈥淩egardless of your background, don鈥檛 be afraid to try new things and go for it.鈥</p> <p>Wang, for her part, encouraged female peers to step up.</p> <p>鈥淲omen in computer science&nbsp;鈥 go take a leadership role and get involved in technology development,鈥 she says. 鈥淒on鈥檛 be afraid to shine your light. You are more powerful than you鈥檇 imagine.鈥</p> <p>Kathirgamanathan similarly advises fellow students not to underestimate their abilities.</p> <p>鈥淚n a typical year, there is absolutely no way I would have found myself in a competition like ProjectX simply because I have close to zero experience with AI,鈥&nbsp;Kathirgamanathan says.&nbsp;鈥淗owever, I was surprised at the contributions I could make with my limited programming experience.鈥</p> <p>Chan Chee says the team was&nbsp;鈥渆cstatic鈥 to see the results of its work contribute to the machine learning community.</p> <p>鈥淎s six undergraduate students, this success encouraged us to continue advancing the technology for humanity in the future.鈥&nbsp;</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Wed, 17 Feb 2021 17:16:34 +0000 Christopher.Sorensen 168421 at To err is not just human: 老司机直播 researchers develop AI that plays chess like a person /news/err-not-just-human-u-t-researchers-develop-ai-plays-chess-person <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">To err is not just human: 老司机直播 researchers develop AI that plays chess like a person</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/GettyImages-171249150.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=1cKdl4R_ 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/GettyImages-171249150.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=9PCFchA3 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/GettyImages-171249150.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=8fiwVJGT 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/GettyImages-171249150.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=1cKdl4R_" alt="Close up of a chess board"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>geoff.vendeville</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2021-01-27T10:49:16-05:00" title="Wednesday, January 27, 2021 - 10:49" class="datetime">Wed, 01/27/2021 - 10:49</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">(Photo by Tuchkovo/Getty Images)</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/matt-hintsa" hreflang="en">Matt Hintsa</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/breaking-research" hreflang="en">Breaking Research</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/artificial-intelligence" hreflang="en">Artificial Intelligence</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/computer-science" hreflang="en">Computer Science</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/faculty-arts-science" hreflang="en">Faculty of Arts &amp; Science</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>For more than a decade, advances in artificial intelligence have made computers capable of consistently defeating humans in chess. But despite their clever moves, they've made relatively lousy teachers 鈥 until now.</p> <p>By trading raw power for a more human-like playing style, a new neural network chess engine developed by University of Toronto researchers and collaborators is poised to make for a more effective learning tool and teaching aid.</p> <p>The Maia Chess engine can accurately predict the way humans of different skill levels play chess and can even point out the mistakes a player should work on to improve their game.&nbsp;<br> With this new chess engine, the researchers open the door to better human-AI interaction in chess and other domains<br> <br> <strong><img class="migrated-asset" src="/sites/default/files/Ashton-Anderson.jpg" alt>Ashton Anderson</strong>, assistant professor in the department of computer science, and PhD student <strong>Reid McIlroy-Young</strong> collaborated on the project with Jon Kleinberg, a professor of computer science and information science at Cornell University, and Siddhartha Sen, principal researcher at Microsoft Research.</p> <p>The new chess engine emerged from their paper,&nbsp;<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.01855">鈥淎ligning Superhuman AI With Human Behavior: Chess as a Model System,鈥</a> presented last year at the Association for Computing Machinery SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining.</p> <p>Faced with a problem to solve, self-trained AIs can take a very different route to a solution than a human might. On top of that, a human can also have a hard time learning how the AI completed its task. To bridge the gap in understanding, the researchers attempted to model the individual steps humans take to solve a task, rather than focus on overall human performance.</p> <p>For Maia, the researchers asked themselves: Instead of designing an AI that focused on the task of playing chess well, what if we designed one that would play chess well in a human-like manner?</p> <p>鈥淚f we algorithmically captured human style, human ability, and crucially, human errors, maybe we would have a chess AI that was much easier to learn from and play with,鈥 Anderson explains, adding that this approach could be expanded to other domains of AI research.</p> <p>AI first demonstrated its superiority over human chess players in 1997 with IBM's Deep Blue <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2011/may/12/deep-blue-beats-kasparov-1997">beating then-world champion Garry Kasparov.</a> Now, desktop computers can run chess engines even stronger than Deep Blue.</p> <p>The 老司机直播 researchers&nbsp;trained nine versions of Maia, corresponding to nine different chess skill levels. At each level, the deep learning framework was trained on 12 million online human games.</p> <p>By training on games played by humans instead of training itself to win every time, Maia can more closely match human play, move by move, the researchers say.</p> <p>Other attempts to develop chess engines that match human play have been somewhat effective, but Maia鈥檚 performance sets the bar higher, they added.</p> <p>Versions of two popular chess engines, Stockfish and Leela Chess Zero, match human moves less accurately and without always faithfully mimicking human play at specific skill levels. Maia is built on the open-source AlphaZero/Leela Chess framework and is trained on real human games, rather than games played against itself. It achieves higher accuracy than other engines, correctly predicting human moves more than half the time.&nbsp;</p> <p>In addition to predicting smart moves, Maia is also adept at predicting human mistakes, even egregious ones or 鈥渂lunders.鈥&nbsp;This can be especially helpful for players looking to improve.</p> <p>鈥淐urrent chess AIs don鈥檛 have any conception of what mistakes people typically make at a particular ability level. They will tell you all the mistakes you made 鈥&nbsp;all the situations in which you failed to play with machine-like precision 鈥&nbsp;but they can鈥檛 separate out what you should work on,鈥 Anderson says. 鈥淢aia can identify the repeated mistakes you make that are typical of your level, and that you could work on to improve. No other chess AI has that ability.鈥</p> <p>The researchers are currently developing a personalized version of Maia that can play like a particular person.</p> <p>鈥淭his will make our training tools even more powerful: you could have your own personalized AI that plays like you do, and it could point out the mistakes you make that it predicts you will make 鈥 in other words, mistakes you make so often that it correctly guesses you will do it again,鈥 Anderson explains.</p> <p>Looking ahead, the team plans to conduct a 鈥渃hess Turing test鈥 to see if human players can tell the difference between a human opponent and Maia.</p> <p>Ultimately, the researchers hope Maia demonstrates the value in considering the human element when designing AI systems.</p> <p>鈥淲e want to show that AI systems can be easier to work with and learn from if they are built with human interaction, collaboration, and improvement in mind,鈥 Anderson says.</p> <p>Chess players can face off against three versions of Maia on the free online chess server Lichess: <a href="https://lichess.org/@/maia1">Maia 1100</a>, <a href="https://lichess.org/@/maia5">Maia 1500</a>, and <a href="https://lichess.org/@/maia9">Maia 1900</a>.</p> <p>Ashton Anderson was supported in part by an NSERC grant, a Microsoft Research Award, and a CFI grant. Jon Kleinberg was supported in part by a Simons Investigator Award, a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship, a MURI grant, and a MacArthur Foundation grant.</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Wed, 27 Jan 2021 15:49:16 +0000 geoff.vendeville 168184 at Four 老司机直播 computer science researchers named CIFAR AI Chairs /news/four-u-t-computer-science-researchers-named-cifar-ai-chairs <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Four 老司机直播 computer science researchers named CIFAR AI Chairs</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/UofT86459_u-of-t-engineering_50091714792_o.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=RrwUTudP 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/UofT86459_u-of-t-engineering_50091714792_o.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=fFAG0N46 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/UofT86459_u-of-t-engineering_50091714792_o.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=jRR4sob_ 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/UofT86459_u-of-t-engineering_50091714792_o.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=RrwUTudP" alt="&quot;&quot;"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Christopher.Sorensen</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2021-01-20T12:46:00-05:00" title="Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - 12:46" class="datetime">Wed, 01/20/2021 - 12:46</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">(photo by Daria Perevezentsev)</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/matt-hintsa" hreflang="en">Matt Hintsa</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/our-community" hreflang="en">Our Community</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/temerty-faculty-medicine" hreflang="en">Temerty Faculty of Medicine</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/artificial-intelligence" hreflang="en">Artificial Intelligence</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/cifar" hreflang="en">CIFAR</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/computer-science" hreflang="en">Computer Science</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/faculty-applied-science-engineering" hreflang="en">Faculty of Applied Science &amp; Engineering</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/statistical-sciences" hreflang="en">Statistical Sciences</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/university-health-network" hreflang="en">University Health Network</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/vector-institute" hreflang="en">Vector Institute</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Four University of Toronto computer scientists have been named CIFAR AI Chairs in recognition of their innovative artificial intelligence research in areas that benefit society.</p> <p><strong>Michael Brudno</strong>, <strong>David Duvenaud</strong>, <strong>Rahul G. Krishnan</strong>, and <strong>Richard Zemel</strong> of the department of computer science in the Faculty of Arts &amp; Science&nbsp;conduct research with a wide impact, from streamlining workflows in clinical care settings to automating the design of chemicals.</p> <p>Each is also a member of the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence, <a href="/news/toronto-s-vector-institute-officially-launched">launched in 2017 through a partnership between 老司机直播, federal and provincial governments and industry</a>.</p> <p>CIFAR AI Chairs are provided with five years of dedicated funding to support their research. The program is a cornerstone of the CIFAR Pan-Canadian AI Strategy to recruit the world鈥檚 leading AI researchers to Canada and retain existing talent.</p> <p>鈥溊纤净辈 is recognized as a home to pioneering AI research, both within Canada and globally. The announcement of four computer science faculty as new CIFAR AI Chairs reinforces this strength, and will propel societally important research to new heights,鈥 says <strong>Marsha Chechik</strong>, professor and chair of the department of computer science.</p> <p>The four computer scientists are the latest additions to a group of 老司机直播 researchers who have been named CIFAR AI Chairs since <a href="/news/eight-u-t-researchers-named-ai-chairs-canadian-institute-advanced-research">the inaugural cohort was announced in 2018</a>.</p> <p>鈥淲ith today鈥檚 announcement, we have now attracted more than 100 of the world鈥檚 top AI researchers to Canada. That鈥檚 an important milestone for the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy as it continues to strengthen Canada鈥檚 leadership in responsible AI, reflecting our values of human rights, inclusion and diversity,鈥 says Fran莽ois-Philippe Champagne, Canada鈥檚 minister of innovation, science and industry.</p> <p>In all, CIFAR named 29 new AI Chairs across Canada. The researchers are based at one of three AI centres across the country: Amii in Edmonton, Mila in Montreal&nbsp;and the Vector Institute in Toronto.</p> <hr> <h3>老司机直播鈥檚 new CIFAR AI Chairs at a glance:</h3> <p><strong><img class="migrated-asset" src="/sites/default/files/Brudno-2x3.jpg" alt>Michael Brudno</strong> is a professor in the department of computer science in the Faculty of Arts &amp; Science. He is also the chief data scientist at University Health Network and the scientific director for HPC4Health, a private computing cloud for Ontario hospitals. His research focuses on improving the ways that computational methods are used to analyze medical data, with the goal of streamlining clinical workflows and enabling faster and better treatments.</p> <p><strong><img class="migrated-asset" src="/sites/default/files/Duvenaud_2x3.jpg" alt>David Duvenaud </strong>is an assistant professor in the departments of computer science and statistical sciences in the Faculty of Arts &amp; Science. Before joining 老司机直播, he did post-doctoral research at Harvard University and received his PhD from the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on constructing deep probabilistic models to help predict, explain&nbsp;and design things.</p> <p><strong><img class="migrated-asset" src="/sites/default/files/Krishnan_2x3.jpg" alt>Rahul G. Krishnan</strong> will be an assistant professor in the department&nbsp;of computer science in the Faculty of Arts &amp; Science and the department of laboratory medicine and pathobiology in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine in fall 2021. His research focuses on building novel machine learning algorithms to automate clinically meaningful problems, and to advance our understanding of human health. He recently completed his PhD at MIT and is currently spending a year as a senior researcher at Microsoft Research in&nbsp;New England.</p> <p><strong><img class="migrated-asset" src="/sites/default/files/Zemel_2x3.jpg" alt>Richard Zemel </strong>is a professor in the department of computer science in the Faculty of Arts &amp; Science. He also serves as research director at the Vector Institute. His research contributions include foundational work on systems that learn useful representations of data without any supervision; methods for learning to rank and recommend items; and machine learning systems for automatic captioning and answering questions about images.</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Wed, 20 Jan 2021 17:46:00 +0000 Christopher.Sorensen 168111 at 老司机直播 students host global AI competition to address climate change /news/u-t-students-host-global-ai-competition-address-climate-change <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">老司机直播 students host global AI competition to address climate change </span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/GSFC_20171208_Archive_e000590_crop.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=rWH-ZEMV 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/GSFC_20171208_Archive_e000590_crop.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=1oqBxvae 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/GSFC_20171208_Archive_e000590_crop.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=smskS9ab 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/GSFC_20171208_Archive_e000590_crop.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=rWH-ZEMV" alt="Hurricane Joachin seen from space"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Christopher.Sorensen</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2020-11-02T09:24:02-05:00" title="Monday, November 2, 2020 - 09:24" class="datetime">Mon, 11/02/2020 - 09:24</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">Organizers of ProjectX say they want to apply machine learning to areas students may&nbsp;not otherwise encounter while pursuing a career in AI&nbsp;鈥 all while getting more students involved in climate change solutions (photo by NASA Goddard)</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/matt-hintsa" hreflang="en">Matt Hintsa</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/global-lens" hreflang="en">Global Lens</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/climate-change" hreflang="en">Climate Change</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/computer-science" hreflang="en">Computer Science</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/faculty-arts-science" hreflang="en">Faculty of Arts &amp; Science</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/global" hreflang="en">Global</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/graduate-students" hreflang="en">Graduate Students</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/sustainability" hreflang="en">Sustainability</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/undergraduate-students" hreflang="en">Undergraduate Students</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Students from the University of Toronto are the driving force behind a global undergraduate research competition that challenges teams to apply machine learning solutions to the impacts of climate change.</p> <p><a href="https://www.projectx2020.com/">Dubbed ProjectX</a>, the remote competition is organized by the <a href="https://www.uoft.ai/">老司机直播 Artificial Intelligence student group (UofT AI)</a> and is currently underway during the fall term. Upon final judging, winning teams will share a $70,000 prize pool.</p> <p><strong><img class="migrated-asset" src="/sites/default/files/ezgif-6-56c1796ce323.jpg" alt="Shardul Bansal">Shardul Bansal</strong> and <strong>Elias Williams</strong>, co-presidents of the student group, lead a dedicated group of approximately 30 student organizers.</p> <p>Bansal, a fourth-year student studying computer science in the Faculty of Arts &amp; Science, says student organizers had been interested in hosting a competition that improved upon the structure of a typical hackathon.</p> <p>鈥淲e love the opportunity to collaborate with other students, but we felt that the hackathon model didn't give students enough time to come up with meaningful, impact-driven ideas,鈥 says Bansal.</p> <p>Williams, a fourth-year student studying computer science and biochemistry, adds that he wanted the competition to do more than help a company improve its bottom line.</p> <p>鈥淎s someone who studies artificial intelligence, that鈥檚 a depressing thought&nbsp;because we talk about how it has the potential to become the most powerful tool that humans have made, yet we are using it to expedient ends,鈥 he says.</p> <p>Reflecting on the choice to focus this year鈥檚 inaugural ProjectX on climate change, Williams says the intent was to apply machine learning to areas that students may&nbsp;not otherwise encounter while pursuing a career in AI&nbsp;鈥 all while getting more students involved in climate change solutions.</p> <p>鈥淚 think [climate change] is the most urgent problem that we have right now,鈥 Williams says. 鈥淚 think that pursuing technological solutions is the way that we鈥檙e going to get out of the hole that we鈥檙e in.鈥</p> <p>After observing that students across North America were eager to improve their machine learning knowledge, the ProjectX organizers pitched the idea of the competition to similar student groups at other universities.</p> <p>鈥淲e received positive reactions all around,鈥 recalls Bansal. 鈥淲e started picking up some steam and had some universities reach out, asking to participate. As organizers, we were happy to accommodate as many bright minds as we could to try to solve this open-ended problem.鈥</p> <p>Participating teams hail from top universities across Canada and the United States, but also from countries as far away as&nbsp;Chile, Brazil, Germany&nbsp;and Poland.&nbsp;Each was asked to indicate their preference of three focus areas under the umbrella of climate change: infectious disease; weather and natural disaster prediction; or emissions and energy efficiency.</p> <p>Once assigned a focus area, teams spoke with experts to find out more information about the&nbsp;problem they intended to address. The teams are now preparing research papers that will ultimately be judged by experts in each of the focus areas. Winners will be announced in mid-December.</p> <p>The competition was developed with guidance from UofT AI鈥檚 faculty adviser <strong>Roger Grosse</strong>, an assistant professor in the department of computer science and faculty member at the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence.</p> <p>The ProjectX organizers say a broad network of support helped make the competition a reality.</p> <p><strong><img class="migrated-asset" src="/sites/default/files/ezgif-6-3cb943c03165.jpg" alt="Lana El Sanyoura"></strong>鈥淪omething that's been very rewarding is the reaction of the academic community and the industry community to ProjectX,鈥 says&nbsp;<strong>Lana El Sanyoura</strong>, a first-year master鈥檚 student in computer science <a href="/news/invited-justin-trudeau-u-t-s-lana-el-sanyoura-addresses-fellow-graduates-across-country">who graduated from 老司机直播鈥檚 undergraduate computer science program earlier this year</a>&nbsp;and serves as a member of the research team on ProjectX鈥檚 organizing committee.</p> <p>She adds that partners have contributed everything from a custom-built collaboration platform to data sets and computing&nbsp;power.</p> <p>鈥淭here鈥檚 a large network of people who use machine learning tools to tackle climate change-related issues,鈥 agrees&nbsp;Williams, noting&nbsp;that approximately 50 researchers have contributed their time and expertise to the competition.</p> <p>ProjectX is supported by a range of partners, including Google, IBM&nbsp;and 老司机直播鈥檚 <a href="https://www.torontosri.ca/">Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society</a>.</p> <p>El Sanyoura says she is excited by the prospect of expanding research opportunities for undergraduates&nbsp;while also opening doors for future careers through the networking and mentorship that happen throughout the competition.</p> <p>Williams says he views ProjectX as a way to demonstrate the strength of 老司机直播鈥檚 undergraduate computer science program to peers across North America&nbsp;in hopes of spurring more collaboration in the future.</p> <p>鈥淔undamentally, I think ProjectX is about educating people to start thinking in the way we need to think in order to solve the problems that we need to solve,鈥 he says.</p> <p>UofT AI plans to host <a href="https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/the-uoft-ai-conference-tickets-122782448609">a global, virtual AI conference for undergraduates&nbsp;on Jan. 15 and 16</a> that focuses on applying machine learning to the world鈥檚 most pressing issues.&nbsp;</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Mon, 02 Nov 2020 14:24:02 +0000 Christopher.Sorensen 166269 at