Lecture by Michael I. Jordan available on IST Austria’s YouTube channel

Professor Michael I. Jordan from the University of California, Berkeley, is considered the most influential computer scientist in the world. His pioneering research on artificial intelligence has earned him labels such as the “Machine-Learning Maestro” and the “Michael Jordan of computer science”.  On November 8, he visited the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) in Klosterneuburg and gave a talk entitled “Computational Thinking, Inferential Thinking and Data Science”. The event was fully booked with about 240 attendees, filling IST Austria’s Raiffeisen lecture hall to the last seat. For all those who did not get the chance to attend in person, a recording of the lecture has now been made available on IST Austria’s YouTube channel.

With ever larger datasets becoming available for analysis, many new possibilities arise, for example in finding cures for diseases or in providing individualized medicine or better services for customers. Finding the balance between making the most of the data and protecting the privacy of the people behind the data is one of the topics addressed in Michael I. Jordan’s IST lecture, as well as how users might be able to use their own data privacy as currency. Others include how we can link the different perspectives of computer science and statistics, as well as the challenges of optimization with enormous datasets. The full lecture can be viewed on IST Austria’s YouTube channel.

On December 7, the next IST Lecture will be given by Peter Donnelly from Oxford University.