IIIT-Hyderabad hosted learning for science symposium

Hyderabad, November 3, 2019: IIIT Hyderabad conducted “Machine Learning for Science: Symposium and Discussion Meeting” from 29 November – 1 December, 2019. The symposium was organised by Center for Computational Natural Sciences and Bioinformatics (CCNSB) and ML for Science Group of IIIT Hyderabad. The symposium brought together researchers from the areas of machine learning and natural sciences for discussions and brainstorming. It included keynote talks by D. Balasubramanian, LV Prasad Eye Institute, Hyderabad; Pushmeet Kohli, DeepMind; G. Narahari Sastry, CSIR-NEIST and B. Ravindran, IIT Madras. There were invited talks by scientists who are working in the area of ML applied to natural sciences and tutorial-style talks by experts in artificial intelligence and machine learning. An expert panel including Anu Acharya (Mapmygenome), Partha Pratim Ghosh (Bayestree Intelligence), P. J. Narayanan (IIIT Hyderabad), Kamal Karlapalem (IIIT Hyderabad) and other keynote speakers discussed the need for academic research to be socially relevant. Machine Learning methods have several prominent successes in various areas of science research in recent times, leading to an outlook that these methods will become significantly important research tools. The symposium was especially relevant to researchers working/planning to work in the interface of machine learning and physics, chemistry & biology. The participants included academia and industry. Hands-on session on the last day provided an opportunity for participants to apply machine learning to different research problems. Speaking about the symposium Dr. Deva Priyakumar, Head of CCNSB, said “While the speakers appreciated the opportunity to see diverse ML applications in Science, the student participants have appreciated the hands-on tutorials and look forward to participating in future events in this symposium series”.