The Columbia Center of Artificial Intelligence Technology (CAIT) recently announced the inaugural Annual Research Showcase — a virtual event that will be held on Thursday, June 17. The event will showcase recent research advances in the fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning including topics such as natural language processing for extremely abstractive summarization; fairness and incentives in machine learning; inventory management; and other topics.
Credit: Diane Bondareff/Columbia University
CAIT is a strategic collaboration between Amazon and Columbia Engineering to push the frontiers of research in artificial intelligence. Amazon and Columbia Engineering announced the creation of CAIT in September 2020.
“The inaugural research showcase provides a venue for CAIT researchers to present the progress they are making on their funded projects, representing innovative areas of investigation leading to groundbreaking new technologies in artificial intelligence,” said Shih-fu Chang, director of CAIT, incoming interim dean and Richard Dicker professor at Columbia Engineering. Chang is also an Amazon Scholar.
The collaboration between Amazon and Columbia Engineering has quickly gained momentum since launch. In February 2021, CAIT announced the recipients of the inaugural faculty research awards, as well as two PhD fellowships. The Annual Research Showcase will also feature short talks from the first recipients of the CAIT Amazon Fellowships.
“I’m personally very excited for the research showcase,” Chang said. “We are looking forward to highlighting not only the depth of our AI expertise but also the breadth of the applications from personalized decision making, inventory control, to multimodal data analysis for improved machine perception models.”
CAIT is the latest manifestation of the deep ties between Amazon and Columbia University. In addition to Amazon providing $5 million over the next five years to support research, education, and outreach programs, earlier this year, Amazon provided Columbia University $2.5 million to fund its clinical trial of a possible plasma therapy for the treatment of COVID-19. Amazon also provided funding and support for the inaugural Columbia-Amazon Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) program with a focus on students from HBCUs and MSIs.
