The June 2021 edition of ASEI Newsletter was sent to all those who are on our mailing list till April end. Here is the web version. Happy reading and catching up on all that happened in the last month and what lies ahead with your society!
ASEI is a volunteer run professional organization and we welcome your involvement. We request feedback and especially welcome any articles, blogs or ideas you would like to contribute. Please be in touch with anyone from the content/editorial team.
Health Alert – U.S. Mission to India
Location: India
Event: We advise U.S. persons interested in returning to the United States that Air India has announced additional commercially operated evacuation flights departing from India to international destinations, including the United States, to evacuate stranded Indian citizens. U.S. persons are eligible to travel on these flights. We understand from an update Air India posted recently on social media that the flights to the United States will depart on June 5 and 6. Tickets for the flights will be available for purchase on the Air India website the morning of Saturday, May 30. Interested travelers should contact Air India directly regarding these flights, not the U.S. Embassy or consulates.
There are no further U.S. government charter flights scheduled or planned to evacuate U.S. persons from India at this time. We urge U.S. persons wishing to return to the United States to strongly consider available commercial flight options.
Actions to Take:
Assistance:
U.S. Embassy New Delhi
Shanti Path, Chanakyapuri 110021
telephone: +91-11-2419-8000
U.S. Consulate General Mumbai (Bombay)
C-49, G-Block, Bandra Kurla Complex, Bandra East, Mumbai 400051
telephone: +91-22-2672-4000
U.S. Consulate General Chennai (Madras)
220 Anna Salai, Gemini Circle, 600006
telephone: +91-44-2857-4000
U.S. Consulate General Kolkata (Calcutta)
5/1 Ho Chi Minh Sarani, 700071
telephone: +91-33-3984-2400.
U.S. Consulate General Hyderabad
Paigah Palace, 1-8-323, Chiran Fort Lane, Begumpet, Secunderabad 500003
telephone: +91-40-4033-8300.
State Department – Consular Affairs
888-407-4747 or 202-501-4444
India Travel Advisory and Country Page
Enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program to receive security updates
Nidhi is a sophomore from the Silicon Valley who joined ASEI as a student member after being awarded the ASEI Silicon valley Emerging Technology Award at the 2020 Synopsys Championship. Our Silicon valley chapter has been sponsoring and encouraging promising students in this manner since inception in 2015. Through ASEI, she has been able to see what technological opportunities there are for Indian girls such as herself.
She is very passionate about helping others and does so by using her skills with programming and hardware to create products that help those in need. Some of her projects include the Money Reader for the Visually Impaired and a device called Start2Run aimed at helping athletes, specifically runners, manage their workouts without overstressing themselves.
She has won first place in Synopsys Science fair twice, and was the recipient of the ASEI Silicon Valley Emerging Technology Award twice as well in 2020 and 2021. Additionally, she won the second prize in ASEI Silicon Valley Budding Engineers Talent Showcase (BETS) in August last year and received top prize at the Youth Technology Exposition (YTE 2020) organized as part of ASEI’s 33rd National Convention in December 2020. Additionally, She has recently won the NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing as a Bay Area Winner.
In addition to creating projects, she is an avid math competitor, who has won awards in nationally recognized contests, and has recently qualified for the 2021 USA Junior Math Olympiad. In her free time, she likes to read, play the piano, and work on robotics.
We are very proud of Nidhi’s accomplishments and volunteer spirit and on behalf of entire ASEI, wish her the very best as she advances her STEM journey in high school and beyond.
This article is based on conversations Aditya Guthey, an ASEI Silicon Valley chapter member and a career coach has had with Sania Jain for ASEI Youth Corner. A short excerpt is here ASEI has a partnership with MoonshotJr – a Silicon Valley based startup that accelerates youths’ path from STEM education to entrepreneurship. Click to avail special offers for ASEI community.
Exploration is an innate desire of human beings. For centuries, humans have looked to space and the stars for answers. The fascination is more than philosophical—it’s coupled with the need to solve problems here on Earth. In the past 100 years, humans have landed on the Moon, built an International Space Station, and successfully landed multiple Rovers on Mars.
Today, there are seemingly countless benefits and applications of space technology. Satellites, for instance, are becoming critical for everything from internet connectivity and precision agriculture, to border security and archaeological study.
Where the original space race was a nationalistic competition between Cold War rivals, the new space race is collaborative and commercialized.
Today, international cooperation allows for the deployment of satellites, as well as space-based science. Before SpaceX, NASA and the other space agencies that operate the International Space Station had been reliant on Russian Soyuz rockets for hundreds of missions.
With the success of its famed reusable rockets, SpaceX is on track to reduce launch costs by as much as US$6 million per flight—which is likely to support the proliferation of satellites in the coming years.
Right now, there are nearly 6,000 satellites circling our tiny planet. About 60% of those are defunct satellites—space junk—and roughly 40% are operational. Over the coming decade, it’s estimated by Euroconsult that 990 satellites will be launched every year. This means that by 2028, there could be 15,000 satellites in orbit. With improved technology and commercial partnerships, all signs point to a crowded orbit.
What are Space Debris:
Space debris includes any nonfunctional human-made object in space, including rocket parts that have been abandoned in orbit after having completed their mission, defunct satellites, fragments from unintentional and intentional orbital collisions and items released during operations. These sources have multiplied to create a large amount of space debris orbiting Earth. According to NASA, there are over 30,000 objects larger than a softball in orbit, traveling at speeds up to 18,000 miles per hour.
This debris is spread across all three of the main regions of space around Earth: low-Earth orbit (LEO), medium-Earth orbit (MEO) and geosynchronous equatorial orbit (GEO). As its name suggests, LEO is the closest to us, extending up to 2,000 km from the Earth’s surface.
It is the most crowded region of the three and, in addition to hosting the International Space Station, it is the region where SpaceX, OneWeb and other well-funded companies are currently sending tens of thousands of new satellites as part of their constellations. Perhaps not surprisingly, LEO is the region with the most debris. As a result, it tends to be the focus of much of the discussion around the issue.
Issues caused by space debris
The existence of space debris is concerning for many reasons, with physical collisions being the most obvious. The possible risk caused by space debris is magnified by the incredible speed at which debris typically travels. According to NASA, there are over 30,000 objects larger than a softball in orbit, traveling at speeds up to 18,000 miles per hour. At that speed, any one of these objects is capable of completely destroying a spacecraft.
Space junk poses other challenges as well. Astronomers lament that light pollution from objects in orbit hampers observation of the night sky. The reliance of observatories — often involving equipment costing hundreds of millions of dollars — on long exposures makes debris particularly problematic.
Solution
In view of the constant increase in space-traffic, we need to develop and provide technologies to make debris prevention measures fail-safe. In parallel, regulators need to monitor the status of space systems as well as global adherence to debris mitigation under their jurisdiction more closely.
NASA and other commercial players in the space are working on various technological improvements that will help in solving the issues related to space debris. NASA created a material that can heal itself in less than a second from hurtling space debris.
One group that is often overlooked, but that has the potential to strongly affect the future path toward the sustainable use of space, is comprised of end users of space-based services. This encompasses anyone from telecommunications customers to users of imaging data to transportation companies relying on satellites to track their ships and planes. If end users demand sustainability like other sectors, it would likely force launch providers and satellite operators to act.
Finally, there is a new stakeholder that is trying to solve the challenge of space debris. Startups such as Astroscale and D-Orbit are making progress toward commercializing the removal, or at least mitigation, of space debris. Another example is LeoLabs, a ground-based space mapping provider, whose phased-array radars are capable of tracking debris as small as 2 cm.
References:
https://spacenews.com/u-s-satellite-destroyed-in-space-collision/
https://www.space.com/3415-china-anti-satellite-test-worrisome-debris-cloud-circles-earth.html
https://www.space.com/india-anti-satellite-test-significance.html
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/10/visualizing-easrth-satellites-sapce-spacex/
http://www.esa.int/Safety_Security/Space_Debris/The_current_state_of_space_debris
*****This Article was Contributed by Santosh Ankola, Member ASEI Silicon Valley *******
The May 2021 edition of ASEI Newsletter was sent to all those who are on our mailing list till April end. Here is the web version. Happy reading and catching up on all that happened in the last month and what lies ahead with your society!
ASEI is a volunteer run professional organization and we welcome your involvement. We request feedback and especially welcome any articles, blogs or ideas you would like to contribute. Please be in touch with anyone from the content/editorial team.
In case you are not receiving our emails, please check your spam/junk or promotions folder and change the settings in your mailbox to deliver ASEI emails in your in-box. If you still did not find our newsletter please send an email to [email protected] for us to investigate.
On April 24th, the American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin (ASEI) convened an AI Summit with a number of researchers, authors, speakers and experts covering Artificial Intelligence from multiple perspectives: Augmented Intelligence with Data, AI/ML Solutions for social benefit and Artificial Intelligence Applications for the enterprise & AI Ethics
Opening the summit, Divya Ashok, who serves as VP of Innovation and Strategy at Salesforce, introduced the AI Summit Chair Piyush Malik who has been working in the Data & AI domain for over 25 years, currently as the Senior Vice President at SpringML, a Google partner startup in Silicon Valley. Piyush gave a bird’s eye view of the AI landscape, the real life and enterprise application opportunities as well as set the stage for the plenary segment where the theme was AI for Society. He recognized the contributions of AI pioneer technologists and Turing awardees over the past 7 decades including Prof Raj Reddy, the first Asian and the only Indian origin person to have won the Nobel prize of computing (i.e. Turing Award for AI) in 1994 long before the current euphoria over AI was
Vilas Dhar, President and Trustee of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation (PJMF), gave a message of support from PJMF to ASEI as we work towards our shared vision for AI – powered yet human-centric ethical endeavor for the benefit of society as we explore the future of meaningful work through youth empowerment. PJMF is a 21st century philanthropy advancing artificial intelligence (AI) and data solutions to create a thriving, equitable, and sustainable future for all. Vilas, a biomedical engineer by initial training is an entrepreneur, technologist, and human rights advocate with a lifelong commitment to creating more robust, human-centered social institutions. His message of support for AI for social benefit and data philanthropy fostered through interactions with ASEI leadership was complemented by the next speaker Dr Sundar Sundareshwaran, AI Fellow at the World Economic Forum (WEF) where PJMF is a supporter.
At WEF, Dr Sundar is co-creating a governance framework with a multi-stakeholder community for the use of Chatbots in healthcare amongst other initiatives which he talked about in detail having an impact in the COVID era. Sundar represents Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings Corporation in his role at WEF’s Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. He is a seasoned technologist with research, development, P&L and executive leadership experience. With a Master’s degree in Natural Language Understanding and a PhD in Computer Vision, Sundar has made numerous research contributions in robotics, neural networks, human computer interaction, virtual/augmented reality and autonomous vehicles. His plenary talk at the AI summit gave a broader view of the Policy impact AI is having at the World stage and he welcomed the opportunity for ASEI members to join hands in making the world a better place through fair use of AI rather than fearing from it. On behalf of ASEI, Piyush portrayed the excitement of being able to work with evangelists, policymakers, data and AI professionals and social changemakers at the WEF and PJMF.
In the next section of the summit three authors spoke about their respective work and the impact each of them are having in the field of AI. Anyone who has tried to learn GCP or machine learning with Google technologies would have seen Dr Valiappa (Lak) Lakshmanan in action via his Coursera lessons and courses. Lak as he is popularly known, serves as the Director for Data Analytics and AI Solutions at Google Cloud. Previously as a Director at the Climate Corporation, he led a team of data scientists building probabilistic estimates of past, current and future weather. Currently with his team he builds software solutions for business problems using Google Cloud’s data analytics and machine learning products but he is very passionate about AI for Social good on which he spoke at length. Real world proof points and examples in the field of flood control, agriculture, healthcare etc were shared with the summit audience which resulted in a lot of interactive chats and Q&A.
ASEI Michigan chapter president Muthu Sivanantham introduced and facilitated discussion with the next two speakers. Dr Raj Ramesh, a TEDx speaker who happens to have a doctorate in AI was the next author to speak. He has broad experience with digital transformation and helps organizations bring together complementary strengths of machines and humans to effect grand change. His talk featuring interesting doodles and interactive audience participation surveys was patterned on his recent book, “AI & You” and he advised how to co-exist with machines by sharing how to think, thrive, and transform in an AI driven future.
“AI will present a lot of opportunities in the future. Sure, some jobs will be replaced, but each of us can leverage our knowledge, passion, and experience to position ourselves at the forefront of this cognitive revolution” – Dr Raj Ramesh at the ASEI AI Summit
The next speaker Ashish Bansal with his cool demeanour brought to light an example of how rubber meets the road in AI though Models in Natural Language Processing. NLP is a topic of increasing attention given the recent popularity of Open AI’s GPT3 model and discussions of “AI creating AI”. Ashish has previously worked in AI/ML & Recommendation systems for Twitter and Capital One and currently is a Director at Twitch. His recent book Natural Language Processing with Tensorflow was discussed in brief as well.
Final section of the AI Summit was the “Women in Data & AI” segment facilitated by Vatsala Upadhya and featured a lively and colorful “Ethics in AI” discussion between Dr Sindhu Joseph, CEO of Cognicor with 6 Patents in AI, and Bala Sahejpal, SVP at DataRobot with Piyanka Jain, President and CEO of Aryng moderating.
Issues of bias, reproducibility , transparency and equity and inclusion in data and AI from people of color perspective was discussed as well as importance of governance and building checks and balances in the development and testing of AI systems was deliberated
Bala is an accomplished leader with over 25 years of experience and a proven ability in leading cross functional global teams for building Data and Analytics solutions delivering enterprise success while securing multimillion-dollar savings for diverse business functions. She shared what made her interested in AI infused automation and drove her towards joining DataRobot after stints at Cisco/Appdynamics, Juniper and Netapp.
Piyanka has two Master’s degrees, with her thesis involving applied mathematics and statistics. Before founding Aryng, she was the Head of Business Analytics at PayPal-North America.She happens to be a bestselling author of “Behind every Good Decision” and a regular contributor to Forbes, HBR, InsideHR, TDWI, Experian, Modern Workplace, Predictive Analytics World, etc. Her efforts over the years have driven $1b+ in business impact for her clients. Injecting her 20+ years of Data & Analytics experience during the panel discussion, she said “As AI becomes more prevalent, AI literacy for leaders and AI governance are two ‘must-haves’ to truly capitalize on the power of AI to drive significant business value while staying clear of AI fiasco like Tay”
Recounting the challenges that are faced in the adoption of ethical AI, Dr. Sindhu Joseph, founder, and CEO of CogniCor, which provides a digital assistant platform for financial services, said – “AI is not just scaling solutions, but amplifying the historic biases embedded in our society. Given that the most popular branch of AI namely ML/DL learns its models from historic observations, our inherent biases make their way into the data sets, making a small, select, and often homogeneous group of developers, organizations as guardians of fairness.”
This session underscored the need for diversity in organizations and in startups developing AI algorithms and attention and investment in branches of AI that have the potential to bring about fairness.
The interactive Q&A sessions and chat texts continued to buzz throughout the nearly 4 hour conference with an engaged audience. The most interesting audience questions and some early bird participants won 10 books courtesy the three authors and publishers. Proposing the vote of thanks, Raju Sreewastava, CEO of Big Data Trunk announced the list of winners.
The AI Summit showed the attendees the depth of AI/ML experience and thought leadership amongst Indian diaspora & ASEI members and gave a glimpse of the richness of its collaborations with national and international professional bodies.
As is evident from recent events and newsletters, ASEI has had a fantastic 2021 so far with a large number of activities and new programmes such as MentorConnect, UniversityConnect and YouthPrograms to serve its members’ interests and build the next generation of engineers and technologists.
CNN reports, “India reported 352,991 new cases of coronavirus, bringing the total to more than 17.3 million cases. This is the sixth day running that India, with a 1.3 billion population, has added over a 300,000 new cases a day —the highest number of cases in a single day anywhere in the world. The country’s death toll also continues to break records, with 2,812 deaths reported on Monday, marking the tenth day in a row of rising figures.”
ASEI is deeply anguished at the globally worsening situation with pandemic over the past year but more so as India is now in the eye of the storm with surging cases and shortages of critical medical supplies, oxygen and healthcare facilities. As a group of compassionate technologists we are encouraging all of our members to get involved and help. Here is a list of selected resources that could help someone: This shall be kept updated as the situation evolves
STAY SAFE AND HEALTHY. WE ARE IN THIS TOGETHER!
Informational resources
Crowdsourced information on Covid Relief but mostly good to locate resources in all parts of India .
Delhi has created a microsite for Covid related resources
ART OF LIVING volunteers initiative for _COVID related relief in different cities.
Click on the link below for covid related help and choose the category (Select the head as per your requirement, Then Join the relevant whatsapp group, Exit the group once your problem is resolved.)
Organizations collecting donations to help with covid response
The hospitals in India are overwhelmed by the steep increase in cases, lack of oxygen and ventilators, and shortage of vaccines is making a deadly situation even worse. Please consider supporting these organizations and mutual aid groups
– Khalsa Aid https://www.khalsaaid.org/
– Give India https://lnkd.in/ggwPsy3
– Ongoing Mutual Aid and Fundraisers for COVID-19
– Michigan India Community Services recommends Donate to SEVA International for Oxygen Concentrators
– Donate to Aim for Seva
–Overseas Volunteer for Better India extends its mission by adding Covid relief projects -OVBI
– IIT Alumni have come together for helping through Milaap
-Other portals consolidated for Covide related donations to India here
Have you ever noticed that you were talking, browsing about some specific thing to buy on the mobile phone and all of a sudden you start seeing ads in your search engine, websites you visit, smart tv, mobile apps and so on. That’s happening due to the loose privacy settings and ad technologies building and sharing your profile through cookies, IDFA or similar identifier. This has led to explosive growth of internet age companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon etc. With concerns from consumer advocacy groups and lawmakers around the world, there have been changes proposed in this space and this article will demystify those for you and what you need to know specially if you are an Apple aficionado.
Internet and specifically mobile usage has exploded in the last few years. 4.66 billion or 60% of the world’s population has access to the internet. 5.22 billion or 66.6% of the world’s population has a phone.
Social and Gaming Apps have been one of the biggest contributors of users using the mobile. Users provide their personal data such as age, gender, date of birth to most of the apps that they download and use. Apps also collect the usage metrics, location metrics and other useful metrics in order to make the App and their product better.
However, not all data that is collected is used for improving the product. Apps use a unique identifier called IDFA in Apple iOS and Google Advertising ID in Android devices across the apps. As users open and navigate through various apps, a user profile against this unique ID is built. This user profile is what gets shared through a data broker or Data Management Platform. This helps the Ad platforms to show targeted Ads to a user. In simple terms, your personal data is pieced together, shared, aggregated, and used in real-time auctions, fueling a $227 billion-a-year industry.
Good news is Apple, with it’s new release of iOS 14.5 any day now, will take a major step to protect users’ privacy within the app ecosystem
As a complex and growing set of entities access, track, and monetize personal consumer data, Apple is introducing two new features aimed at providing users with increased transparency, visibility, and choice so that they can make informed choices and exert greater control over their privacy.
App Tracking Transparency will require apps to get the user’s permission before tracking their data across apps or websites owned by other companies. App Tracking Transparency will require apps to get the user’s permission before tracking their data across apps or websites owned by other companies. Any App who shares user data or uses data for advertising will be required to show a popup and get user consent before they can do so. With about 70% users predicted to opt out of data sharing, this will result in loss of at least 50% Ad revenue for Apps that heavily rely on Ads for monetization.
This is just the beginning of data privacy as Chrome, Android and other OS and platforms will enforce stricter rules that help users take control of their data.
References
28 Mobile App Statistics to know
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Article contributed by Santosh Ankola, ASEI SiliconValley
Be amongst the first 20 to join the live audience on 24th April for a chance to win 5 early bird giveaways. Also, submit your questions in advance via twitter @ASEIUSA and engage with us with hashtag #ASEI #AISUMMIT. There are prizes for most interesting questions raised and also most engaged participants will win one of 10 giveaway books .
Prizes Sponsored By : O’reilly Media & Packt
Register here to get a Zoom link
PLENARY: 10am -10:45 AM (all times PT)
Overview
Dr Raj Reddy (First Asian Turing Award Winner ) AI Pioneer & Professor @Carnegie Mellon University & Stanford
Dabbala Rajagopal “Raj” Reddy is an Indian-American computer scientist and a winner of the Turing Award. He is one of the early pioneers of Artificial Intelligence and has served on the faculty of Stanford and Carnegie Mellon for over 50 years.
Dr Venkataraman (Sundar) Sundareswaran AI Fellow @ World Economic Forum
Topic: Artificial Intelligence & WEF: Developing tools for an ethical world
Sundar is an Artificial Intelligence Fellow at the World Economic Forum, where he is co-creating a governance framework with a multi-stakeholder community for the use of Chatbots in healthcare. He represents Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings Corporation in this role at the Forum’s Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Sundar is a seasoned technologist with research, development, P&L and executive leadership experience. With a Master’s degree in Natural Language Understanding and a PhD in Computer Vision, Sundar made numerous research contributions in robotics, neural networks, human computer interaction, virtual/augmented reality and autonomous vehicles, prior to taking leadership roles in advanced technology production facilities. He is passionate about responsible deployment of novel technologies in societally important areas such as healthcare.
Topic: AI/ML Applications for the Enterprise
Piyush Malik Senior Vice President @ SpringML
Piyush is a startup executive, entrepreneur, board advisor and business transformation practitioner in emerging technologies. Currently as Senior VP at SpringML, a Google partner startup, Piyush is in charge of customer success solutions helping enterprise clients accelerate in their journey of AI-First and Cloud-First digital transformation. The technologies include AI/ML, IoT & Data Science. Formerly, he co-founded and led diversified, large, and high-caliber global teams of thousands at IBM and before that at PricewaterhouseCoopers to grow and scale his Fortune 500 client companies’ businesses spanning numerous industries and 4 continents. An alum of IIT Delhi, with a masters in Management of Technology and undergraduate in Telecom and Electronics Engineering, he has lived in the Silicon Valley for 25 years and has been serving on the boards of a number of professional and non-profit organizations including American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin.
Vilas Dhar President @ Patrick J McGovern Foundation
Global AI & Data Philanthrophy
Vilas Dhar is President and Trustee of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, a 21st century philanthropy advancing artificial intelligence (AI) and data solutions to create a thriving, equitable, and sustainable future for all. Vilas is an entrepreneur, technologist, and human rights advocate with a lifelong commitment to creating more robust, human-centered social institutions. A leading voice on equity in a tech-enabled world, Vilas champions a new social compact for the digital age that prioritizes individuals and communities in the development of new products, inspires economic and social opportunity, and empowers the most vulnerable. Vilas serves as a Trustee of the Christensen Fund, Co-Chair of the Global AI Action Alliance at the World Economic Forum, a Senior Fellow of the Berggruen Institute, Advisor to MIT SOLVE, and as a Director of the New England International Donors. Vilas holds a J.D. from NYU School of Law, a Master’s in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and dual Bachelor’s degrees in Biomedical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Illinois.
10:45 am -11:15 am (all times PT)
Session 1 Topic: AI for Social Good
Dr Valiappa Lakshmanan 4X Author, Sr Director & Head AI Solutions @Google
Lak is the Director for Data Analytics and AI Solutions on Google Cloud. His team builds software solutions for business problems using Google Cloud’s data analytics and machine learning products. Previously as a Director at the Climate Corporation, he led a team of data scientists (statisticians, engineers, meteorologists) who build probabilistic estimates of past, current and future weather. Before that, he was a Senior Research Scientist at CIMMS/U. Oklahoma/National Severe Storms Laboratory. His Google Scholar page captures the ways in which that work is used by other scientists.
Books: His O’Reilly books on Machine Learning Design Patterns, BigQuery: The Definitive Guide and Data Science on Google Cloud Platform are available from Amazon. His earlier book on Automating the Analysis of Spatial Grids can be read online and ordered from Springer’s website.
11:15 am -11:45 am (all times PT)
Session 2 Topic: AI & You – How to think, transform, and thrive in an AI future
Dr Raj Ramesh TEDx Speaker & Author
Dr. Raj Ramesh, who has a doctorate in AI, has broad experience with digital transformation. He helps organizations bring together complementary strengths of machines and humans to effect grand change. In his recent book, “AI & You: How to Think, Thrive, and Transform in an Artificial Intelligence Future,” he explores how individuals and companies can best prepare for the new changes AI will bring. Raj is passionate about simplifying the complexity of AI/ML so many more can understand the topic and adapt their professional career. One way he does this is through easy to comprehend whiteboard videos. He has produced over 150 of them that are freely available on YouTube . He’s an engineer, designer, programmer, business owner, mentor, data scientist, evangelist, storyteller, dreamer, teacher, speaker, writer, doodler, video creator, father, husband, dog owner, and probably a few more.
11:45 am -12:15 pm (all times PT)
Session 3 Topic: Rubber Meets the road: Natural Language Processing — Big Models aren’t enough
Ashish Bansal Author and Director @Twitch
Author of Advanced Natural Language Processing with TensorFlow 2 (https://tinyurl.com/4p3bsxwj) Ashish builds content recommendation engines at Twitch and was previously at Twitter. He was a Senior Director of Data Science at Capital One. Prior to Capital One, he co-founded GALE Partners and headed the Machine Learning group. He has over 19 years of experience in the technology industry, along with an MBA from Kellogg School of Management and B Tech from IIT BHU. His life’s ambition is to be a Kung Fu master.
12:15 pm -1:00 pm (all times PT)
Session 4 : Women in Data Panel : AI Ethics and Innovation in the enterprise
Dr.Sindhu Joseph CEO and Founder @ CogniCor Technologies, Inc.
Dr.Sindhu Joseph is the Founder and CEO of CogniCor, the leading AI Digital Assistant platform that delivers revolutionary operational efficiency and productivity for leading financial firms of the world. She holds a Ph.D. in AI, is the inventor of 6 patents, author, and speaker on topics around Enterprise AI, AI in Financial Services and diversity in AI. She is also a mentor to Nex3 AI Startup accelerator and is an advisory council member of Build Common Wealth Inc. She is based in Palo Alto, California, and drives CogniCor’s vision to provide thinking, talking face to every business. CogniCor, created out of her Ph.D., combines traditional inductive AI with advanced deductive AI and reasoning to offer a unique digital assistant platform built for business teams in the Financial services industry.
Bala Sahejpal Senior Vice President @DataRobot
Accomplished leader with the proven ability in leading cross functional global teams for building Data and Analytics solutions delivering enterprise success while securing multimillion-dollar savings for diverse business functions – Sales, Marketing, Product Management, Finance, Customer Service, and Engineering. Excellent understanding of business solutions, technologies and challenges associated with implementation of Data Science models, Big Data, Business Intelligence, Analytics and Master Data solutions in medium to large-scale organizations.
Piyanka Jain President & Founder @Aryng
In more than 15 years as an analytics leader, Aryng Founder Piyanka Jain is a leading expert in Data Literacy, building Data Culture, Machine Learning, Data Science and Analytics. She is an Amazon #1 bestselling author in Data Mining, paid keynoter in conferences, and a regular contributor to Forbes, HBR, InsideHR, TDWI, Experian, Modern Workplace, Predictive Analytics World, etc. She has developed the BADIR framework which enables 10X+ faster insights, 20X+ impact, and has driven $1b+ in business impact for her clients. She has two Master’s degrees, with her thesis involving applied mathematics and statistics. Before founding Aryng, she was the Head of Business Analytics at PayPal-North America.
1:00 pm – 1:15 pm (all times PT)
Prizes and Closing announcements
Career success is as much about content knowledge as about soft skills. A 2014 survey from CareerBuilder found that 77% of employers surveyed believed soft skills were of equal importance as hard skills/technical competencies. During my time as Dean for Science at Emory University, I was fortunate to encounter many young people starting out on their STEM careers. As I kept up with their careers, I have, over time, developed strong notions on what contributes to success in STEM careers. My hypothesis is that it takes both personality characteristics/attributes and knowledge/competencies to really succeed in one’s chosen career. One without the other is like, yin without the yang, the chole without the bhatura, the iddli without the chutney.
What are these personality attributes? And what are these competencies?
At the ASEI EdTech event on April 10, Anita Kishore, Alok Jain, Srini Vemula and I explored these questions around the framework of helping children and youth get from the “Classroom to the C-Suite”.
Curiosity, creativity, resilience, grit, and empathy are some well recognized traits that contribute to success. These attributes allow one to keep learning, keep growing and respond to crises calmly and thoughtfully. Parents can inculcate these attributes by helping their children reflect on their activities and encourage and discuss their children’s reading. As important as asking thought provoking questions is listening to the responses, offering insights and modelling the behaviors parents would like their children to emulate.
For young professionals engaged in career progression, we agreed with Anita’s three tips:
1) Stay curious – engage in continuous learning by reading, talking to others in your area (and outside), sign up for industry-leading newsletters, etc
2) Experiment – Apply your experimental mindset to all parts of your life. It’s ok to make mistakes. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
3) Ask for feedback from peers, mentors, critics, and supporters – and remain true to your own values. Feedback is a gift – you can accept it or disregard it, but it can be used to improve yourself.
We all understand the importance of gaining skills and competencies, and undoubtedly the most important of them all, would be quantitative skills. Everyone needs math in their lives. Ideally we want our kids to be comfortable playing with math like they do with playdough, moving things, making shapes, enjoying, building, and taking it apart again. Math opens the doors to understanding concepts, which can later lead up to mastery in data science and AI. Igebra.ai, founded by Srini Vemula, has successfully built curricula around this goal: mastery of math and to keep elementary school children joyously , joyously engaged with math, and learning coding and basic ai concepts.
While quantitative proficiencies are key to unlocking technical competencies in this technology driven world, an entrepreneurial mindset can open up new paradigms of thinking and new opportunities. Learning how to be entrepreneurial can be tremendously advantageous as the Future of Work will demand innovation, creativity, and out-of-the box thinking from its employees. Creativity and entrepreneurial thinking is sure to be rewarded not only in startups but also by established corporations. Moonshot jr, the brainchild of Alok Jain, has a curriculum that trains children of all ages to think entrepreneurially! If the notion of elementary school age children creating and selling their products on Amazon, makes you marvel, you need to take a look at Moonshot Jr.
As in anything, it is a question of balance. As a parent, we balance a child’s experiences and explorations, so that there is guidance but also empowerment, and room to discover and grow. We also balance the acquisition of soft skills and as well as of technical competencies. Finally, as professionals, young and old, we balance the various demands of growing our careers, being a good team player, being a patient and collaborative colleague, growing our professional networks with staying current in the field, always learning, always innovating, growing our knowledge base. Help is available at each stage of the journey: executive coaching offered by Anita Kishore, quantitative training at Srini Vemula’s igebra.ai, and entrepreneurship training by Alok Jain’s MoonshotJr.
In a nutshell, quantitative skills and entrepreneurial thinking, enhanced by the soft skills noted above, are uniformly helpful and should be in the toolbox for everyone, the artist or the analyst, the poet or physicist, the social worker or the scientist!
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This article was contributed by ASEI SiliconValley Boardmember Dr Preetha Ram who serves as General Partner at Pier 70 Ventures and was formerly Dean for Science at Emory University as well as a successful EdTech entrepreneur having founded and exited OpenStudy prior to jumping into the venture capital world. For anyone signing up to avail products or services from MoonShot Jr or Igebra.ai for their family (kids, grandkids, nephews or nieces etc.) or coaching from Dr Anita, there are ASEI Member / sponsorship discounts available. Click here for more info.
