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Innovation Challenge winner Aaron Satko ’25 goes in search of the … – Today at Elon

Satko's Campus Conscious system, recycling plastic bottles into 3D printing filament linked to an online rewards app, won this year's Elon Innovation Challenge.

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Aaron Satko 25 is always looking for problems to solve.

When he encounters one automatic doors that dont work just right, cardboard shipping boxes that waste too much space he jots it down in a notebook he carries. Then his mind gets to work, roiling and churning it over, waiting for the spark of invention to ignite.

Learning of this years Elon Innovation Challenge focused on waste reduction his thoughts leapt to the enormous amount of trash created by our consumption of single-use plastic bottles. Globally, we use an estimated 1.2 million plastic bottles per minute with less than 9% of those recycled.

Satko, a computer science major from Lewisville, North Carolina, had heard of plastic bottles being recycled as 3D-printing filament. The real problem he wanted to solve was encouraging Elon students to toss their bottles into recycling bins. Taking inspiration from open-source designs, Satko devised the Campus Conscious PET-cycler system: a prototype that cuts and melts polyethylene terephthalate plastic bottles into into filament, paired with an app that incentivizes recycling by turning those bottles into reward points students can redeem on campus. The process reuses about 90% of the bottle, leaving only the base and screwtop.

PET plastic is one of the best for 3D printing because its strong and has high heat-resistance, Satko said. I didnt invent this process, but I upgraded some of the designs in my prototype, and the app adds a dimension that connects it with students.

The Elon Innovation Challenge is an annual competition sponsored by the Doherty Center for Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship that allows students to identify and work through innovative solutions for a specific problem. This years challenge joined with the Campus Race to Zero Waste initiative, a nationwide competition to inspire college campuses to seek ways to eliminate trash.

Satkos Campus Conscious initiative bested about 25 other entries, which included strategies to reduce waste in dining halls, increase composting, repurpose items and raise awareness of environmental issues.

I hate seeing trash everywhere, and I try to do my share of cleaning up when I see it. Ive always felt that way, and its why I wanted to participate in the challenge this year, Satko said. The Innovation Challenge is one of the best things about my college experience so far. I participated last year and its just a great thing. Im grateful to (Doherty Center Director) Alyssa Martina and the Doherty Center for offering this challenge.

Satkos grand prize included $2,500. Hes already invested some of those winnings into his eBay business refurbishing computers. He buys computers auctioned off by schools and universities and spends his weekends at home repairing and reselling them. The prize money afforded him new computer repair tools, and hes looking forward to putting into use the knowledge he continues to gain in computer science courses.

In the future, Satko hopes to parlay his computer science degree into invention and entrepreneurship.

I want to have a big idea and great invention one day. I think that would be great.

So, hes keeping that notebook handy, ready for inspiration to strike.

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Computer Scientist and Actress Justine Bateman Urges Action on AI Amid WGA Strike – Decrypt

As the WGA writers strike enters its third week, actress and computer scientist Justine Bateman posted a tweet thread detailing how artificial intelligence could disrupt the entertainment industryand what actors can do to protect themselves.

A.I. has to be [addressed] now or never. I believe this is the last time any labor action will be effective in our business, Bateman wrote. If we dont make strong rules now, they simply wont notice if we strike in three years, because at that point they wont need us.

Formed in 1954, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) is one of the largest unions in the entertainment industry, boasting over 15,000 members. With its membership off the job, most major productions have ground to a halt.

Bateman, best known for playing Mallory Keaton in the 1980s sitcom "Family Ties" alongside Michael J. Fox, has a degree in computer science and digital media management from UCLA. Bateman also took aim at the use of computer-generated images trained on actors' likenesses and voices that she said could be tripled and quadrupled booked.

Earlier this month, the popular generative A.I. image platform Midjourney released its latest version 5.1, making it easier to create visually stunning images and deep fakes with minimal effort.

Bateman encouraged actors to demand iron-clad protection against the use of their image and voice to protect their livelihood.

Demand it from [the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists] and do not accept any AMPTP proposal that does not have it, she wrote.

To prove the point, Bateman shared a tweet from Twitter user and A.I. blogger Lorenzo Green showing a video of what an A.I.-generated Lord of the Rings by director Wes Anderson would look like.

Since the launch of OpenAIs ChatGPT in November, the race to bring A.I. into the mainstream has many sounding the alarm about A.I.s potential takeover of the workforce.

The WGA, seeing the potential threat, included a proposal in its negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers that blocked the use of A.I. to write or rewrite literary material, be used as source material, or train A.I. The AMPTP rejected the proposal, according to the WGA.

Training an A.I. program on an older [hit] TV series, and creating an additional season. Family Ties, for example, has 167 episodes. An A.I. program could easily be trained on this, and create an eighth season. We only shot seven, Bateman said.

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UCSC ranked number two on Wall Street Journal list for top public … – University of California, Santa Cruz

New rankings from the Wall Street Journal place UC Santa Cruz as the number two public school for high-paying jobs in engineering, just behind UC Berkeley, and the number nine public school for high-paying jobs in data science and software.

Baskin Engineering graduates leave UC Santa Cruz with the technical and professional skills to thrive in their careers, and these new rankings reflect just that, said Alexander Wolf, dean of the Baskin School of Engineering. Im proud of our diverse alumni who are currently shaping these dynamic industries, and look forward to seeing future generations of students embrace the success that awaits them.

UCSC graduates in engineering fields earn a $110,222 average yearly salary, which is a $20,048 premium over the median graduate in engineering. UCSC graduates in software earn a $119,458 average yearly salary, which is a $16,104 premium over the median graduate, and those in data science fields earn a $109,026 average yearly salary, a $8,703 premium over the median graduate.Students at the UCSC Baskin School of Engineering can study a variety of engineering disciplines across six departments, including highly ranked programs in computer science and engineering, robotics, applied mathematics, and computational media. Among UCSC students, students who majored in engineering report high salaries in their first jobs after college as compared to their peers, putting them on the path to social mobility. The computer science and engineering programs are very popular 2020 rankings from American Society for Engineering Education showed that UCSC awarded the fifth most total bachelor's degrees in computer science in the country.

Many of the Baskin Engineering programs emphasize learning the modern directions of the information technology industry, with a focus on areas such as big data and autonomous vehicles. An emphasis on experiential learning means that students are embedded within an active research environment with a focus on developing new technology for social good.

The rankings also reflect UC Santa Cruzs access and ties to Silicon Valley where Baskin Engineering graduates are in high demand. The UCSC Silicon Valley campus is a multidisciplinary hub for research and teaching relevant to the current tech and engineering industry, with programs in human-computer interaction, natural language processing, and more.

The Wall Street Journal gathered this data from a Burning Glass Institute analysis of experience and pay data from Lightcast, a labor-market data firm, and Glassdoor, a company-ratings website. For each college, an annual salary premium was calculated using the difference between the earnings of the schools graduates in their first 10 years after graduation and the median graduate in the field.

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3 ways teachers can navigate the evolving field of computer science – eSchool News

As recently as a decade or two ago, technology education consisted of typing, learning to draft emails, or doing a little work in a spreadsheet. Learning those skills may have been relegated to a business information class or weekly trips to a computer lab. Today, most students are expected to learn to code, and most states have coding requirementssome starting as early as kindergarten.

Thats a significant change in less than a generation. Computer science is a rapidly advancing field; educators have to make those changes if they are going to prepare their students for the modern world. Trying to teach a subject thats ever-changing might feel a little intimidating to some teachers, especially if they dont have a background in the field. Fortunately, the skills students learn in computer science are evergreen, and many of the changes within the field are manageable for the educators involved.

Here are three keys to preparing to teach this dynamic subject without feeling like the ground is constantly shifting under your feet.

Dont be intimidated by new technology. Its probably a lot like the old technology.

As our knowledge grows, technology advances, practices change, and programming languages fall out of favor in different industries. At any given time, different languages are in use for different purposes. Some industries rely heavily on Python, while others might program in JavaScript. As technology changes and grows, new needs emerge and new programming languages are developed or adopted to meet those needs.

Dr. Whitney Dove is the vice president of product for Ellipsis Education. She can be reached at wdove@ellipsiseducation.com.

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A better way to study ocean currents | MIT News | Massachusetts … – MIT News

To study ocean currents, scientists release GPS-tagged buoys in the ocean and record their velocities to reconstruct the currents that transport them. These buoy data are also used to identify divergences, which are areas where water rises up from below the surface or sinks beneath it.

By accurately predicting currents and pinpointing divergences, scientists can more precisely forecast the weather, approximate how oil will spread after a spill, or measure energy transfer in the ocean. A new model that incorporates machine learning makes more accurate predictions than conventional models do, a new study reports.

A multidisciplinary research team including computer scientists at MIT and oceanographers has found that a standard statistical model typically used on buoy data can struggle to accurately reconstruct currents or identify divergences because it makes unrealistic assumptions about the behavior of water.

The researchers developed a new model that incorporates knowledge from fluid dynamics to better reflect the physics at work in ocean currents. They show that their method, which only requires a small amount of additional computational expense, is more accurate at predicting currents and identifying divergences than the traditional model.

This new model could help oceanographers make more accurate estimates from buoy data, which would enable them to more effectively monitor the transportation of biomass (such as Sargassum seaweed), carbon, plastics, oil, and nutrients in the ocean. This information is also important for understanding and tracking climate change.

Our method captures the physical assumptions more appropriately and more accurately. In this case, we know a lot of the physics already. We are giving the model a little bit of that information so it can focus on learning the things that are important to us, like what are the currents away from the buoys, or what is this divergence and where is it happening? says senior author Tamara Broderick, an associate professor in MITs Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and a member of the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.

Brodericks co-authors include lead author Renato Berlinghieri, an electrical engineering and computer science graduate student; Brian L. Trippe, a postdoc at Columbia University; David R. Burt and Ryan Giordano, MIT postdocs; Kaushik Srinivasan, an assistant researcher in atmospheric and ocean sciences at the University of California at Los Angeles; Tamay zgkmen, professor in the Department of Ocean Sciences at the University of Miami; and Junfei Xia, a graduate student at the University of Miami. The research will be presented at the International Conference on Machine Learning.

Diving into the data

Oceanographers use data on buoy velocity to predict ocean currents and identify divergences where water rises to the surface or sinks deeper.

To estimate currents and find divergences, oceanographers have used a machine-learning technique known as a Gaussian process, which can make predictions even when data are sparse. To work well in this case, the Gaussian process must make assumptions about the data to generate a prediction.

A standard way of applying a Gaussian process to oceans data assumes the latitude and longitude components of the current are unrelated. But this assumption isnt physically accurate. For instance, this existing model implies that a currents divergence and its vorticity (a whirling motion of fluid) operate on the same magnitude and length scales. Ocean scientists know this is not true, Broderick says. The previous model also assumes the frame of reference matters, which means fluid would behave differently in the latitude versus the longitude direction.

We were thinking we could address these problems with a model that incorporates the physics, she says.

They built a new model that uses what is known as a Helmholtz decomposition to accurately represent the principles of fluid dynamics. This method models an ocean current by breaking it down into a vorticity component (which captures the whirling motion) and a divergence component (which captures water rising or sinking).

In this way, they give the model some basic physics knowledge that it uses to make more accurate predictions.

This new model utilizes the same data as the old model. And while their method can be more computationally intensive, the researchers show that the additional cost is relatively small.

Buoyant performance

They evaluated the new model using synthetic and real ocean buoy data. Because the synthetic data were fabricated by the researchers, they could compare the models predictions to ground-truth currents and divergences. But simulation involves assumptions that may not reflect real life, so the researchers also tested their model using data captured by real buoys released in the Gulf of Mexico.

Credit: Consortium of Advanced Research for Transport of Hydrocarbons in the Environment

In each case, their method demonstrated superior performance for both tasks, predicting currents and identifying divergences, when compared to the standard Gaussian process and another machine-learning approach that used a neural network. For example, in one simulation that included a vortex adjacent to an ocean current, the new method correctly predicted no divergence while the previous Gaussian process method and the neural network method both predicted a divergence with very high confidence.

The technique is also good at identifying vortices from a small set of buoys, Broderick adds.

Now that they have demonstrated the effectiveness of using a Helmholtz decomposition, the researchers want to incorporate a time element into their model, since currents can vary over time as well as space. In addition, they want to better capture how noise impacts the data, such as winds that sometimes affect buoy velocity. Separating that noise from the data could make their approach more accurate.

Our hope is to take this noisily observed field of velocities from the buoys, and then say what is the actual divergence and actual vorticity, and predict away from those buoys, and we think that our new technique will be helpful for this, she says.

The authors cleverly integrate known behaviors from fluid dynamics to model ocean currents in a flexible model, says Massimiliano Russo, an associate biostatistician at Brigham and Womens Hospital and instructor at Harvard Medical School, who was not involved with this work. The resulting approach retains the flexibility to model the nonlinearity in the currents but can also characterize phenomena such as vortices and connected currents that would only be noticed if the fluid dynamic structure is integrated into the model. This is an excellent example of where a flexible model can be substantially improved with a well thought and scientifically sound specification.

This research is supported, in part, by the Office of Naval Research, a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award, and the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science at the University of Miami.

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Alum Telfar Clemens Addresses Grads at 2023 Pace University … – Pace News

Senator Elizabeth Warren:Have Courage. Trust Yourself. Give it a Try.Pace celebrates more than 3,700 graduates atUSTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center

Standing before thousands of graduates and their supporters at Pace Universitys Commencement, alumnus Telfar Clemens 08 yesterday spoke of his path from a student finding his way in lower Manhattan to a celebrated fashion designer and founder of the global label Telfar.

But he didnt want to focus on the obvious.

They worked hard, Clemens said of his parents and members of his family who attended Pace. I worked hard. What has been so hard is not the work, but everything in between I didnt make it into the fashion industry. I made it out.

Speaking to roughly 15,000 people including 3,700 graduates at USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, the Pace grad shared his reasons for attending Pace and memories of pursuing a business degree while following his passion for fashion and the subsequent path to building a global brand that is at the forefront of a revolution and has set a new standard.

Clemens, who received an honorary doctorate, was among many highlights throughout the day that included five ceremonies, student speakers, a food village, music, and lots of Commencement festivities. The day was highlighted by the conferral of over 4,000 degrees including 1,735 masters, which is the largest number in over five years, and roughly 300 students receiving dual degrees.

In addition, the Elisabeth Haub School of Law, which recently earned the No. 1 ranking for Environmental Law by U.S. News & World Report, graduated 241 students, its largest class in the past five years.

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren and Harvard Law Professor and legal historian Bruce H. Mann both received honorary degrees during that ceremony. Senator Warren shared stories of her early years out of law school and threaded her speech with a simple yet powerful message.

Be courageous, Warren said. That means trust yourself. Dont sell yourself short. Dont settle for work that you dont believe in. Dont assume that you cant make a difference

Have courage, she continued. Take a risk because our nationour worldneeds you. Have courage for another reason: Becauseand here is the amazing partfor all that you give, for all your risk, for all the scary stuff you take on and even for all the failures, you will receive far more than you give.

Trustee and alumnus Ivan G. Seidenberg 81, retired chairman and CEO of Verizon Communications, addressed graduates of Paces Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems to mark the schools 40th anniversary. Pace also awarded Aldrin Enis, president of One Hundred Black Men of New York, with its Opportunitas in Action Award.

During the main ceremony, Pace President Marvin Krislov called this years class a remarkable group and noted some of the challenges they faced during their time in school such as the pandemic, climate challenges, mental health pressures, and other challenges around the world.

The problems of tomorrow will not be solved by the thinking of the past, President Krislov said. They will be solved by new people, with new ideas, and new ways of doing things. They will be solved by a new generation that is creative and resourceful and adaptive.Your generation was knocked down, and then you stood right back up. You know how to think on your feet, how to adjust on the fly, how to make the best of any situation. You know how to get to a goal like graduation, even through a once-in-a-century disruption.

Students celebrating this exciting achievement were a mix of undergraduate, graduate, law, and doctoral students, spanning a variety of disciplines and future careers, such as nurses and physician assistants, cybersecurity experts, lawyers, accountants, teachers, performers, and much more.

College of Health Professions

Dyson College of Arts and Sciences

Lubin School of Business

Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems

School of Education

Elisabeth Haub School of Law

Since 1906, Pace University has been transforming the lives of its diverse studentsacademically, professionally, and socioeconomically. With campuses in New York City and Westchester County, New York, Pace offers bachelor, master, and doctoral degree programs to 13,600 students in its College of Health Professions, Dyson College of Arts and Sciences, Elisabeth Haub School of Law, Lubin School of Business, School of Education, and Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems.

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Winners Announced in the 13th Annual ‘Create@State’ Research … – Arkansas State University

05/16/2023

Members of the A-State Trumpet Ensemble are (from left) Cody Daughertee,Audrey Alpha, Carlos Mejia, Brody King and Rebecca Wertenberger along withDr.Nairam Simoes, assistant professor of trumpet.

JONESBORO The recent "Create@State: A Symposium of Research, Scholarship & Creativity" featured 180 presentations from Arkansas State University students.

Create@State showcases the faculty-mentored works of high-achieving students from across all the universitys colleges and disciplines. Students made presentations including oral, poster, creative and sales pitches. Undergraduate and graduate-level students were involved, with prominent external stakeholders and alumni serving as volunteer judges.

Stipends included with the various awards were: Deans Award, $250; InfoReady Award, $250; Dr. Emily Devereux Undergraduate Student Research and Creativity Award, $500; Research & Technology Transfer Graduate Student Research and Creativity Award, $500; Chancellors Undergraduate Award, $500; and Chancellors Graduate Award, $500.

Winners include participants from seven colleges including the College of Nursing and Health Professions, College of Sciences and Mathematics, College of Education and Behavioral Science, College of Liberal Arts and Communication, College of Agriculture, College of Engineering and Computer Science, and Neil Griffin College of Business.

College of Nursing and Health Professions:

Deans Award for Graduate Oral Presentation:Doctor of nursing practice major Jessica McAdoo of Germantown, Tenn., SRNA Wellness Policy.

Deans Award for Graduate Poster Presentation:Doctor of occupational therapy majors Marlee Stepp of Coal Hill, Megan Johnson of Pocahontas, Sydney Sims of Dover, and Sydnie Walker of Paragould , Benefits of Early Intervention.Deans Award for Graduate Poster Presentation:Doctor of physical therapy majors Claire Shirley of Oil Trough, Emily Oliver of Marked Tree, Tori Hight from Heber Springs, and Flippin native Paige Lunceford, Intimacy and Autism with Occupational Therapy Practice.Deans Award for Undergraduate Poster Presentation:Radiologic sciences major Kamille Evans of Tillar, Procedural Efficiency in Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacements with the Help of Imaging and Specialized Radiologic Staff.

College of Sciences and Mathematics:Deans Award for Undergraduate Oral Presentation:Mathematics major Johnna Berryhill of Gosnell, Individual Level Social Determinants of Health and Multiple Morbidity Prediction.

Deans Award for Undergraduate Poster Presentation:Biotechnology major Ana Solano Morales of Mexico and biology pre-professional major Andrew Goode of Medina, Tenn., Genome-Scale Strategies to Study Biofilm-Associated Genes in the Tooth Decay Pathogen Streptococcus Mutans.

Deans Award for Graduate Oral Presentation:Doctor of molecular biosciences major Sankalpa Chakrabortys of India, Ineractome Networks of Noncoding RNas Mediate Cardioprotection Following Hormone Dysfunction.

Deans Award for Graduate Poster Presentation:Molecular biosciences major Sepideh Mohammadhosseinpour of Jonesboro, biotechnology and biological sciences major Alexx Weaver of Lonoke, and biology pre-professional major Linh-Chi Ho of Sulpher Rock, Arachidin-1 and Stilbene-Rich Extract from Peanut Induce Cell Death In Human Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Cells and Spheroids.

College of Education and Behavioral Science:

Deans Award for Undergraduate Oral Presentation:Psychology major LaMatria Butler of West Memphis, Exploring the Level of Insomnia Present within college students using the Athens Insomnia Scale (AIS).

Deans Award for Undergraduate Poster Presentation:Psychology major Tianna Matthews of West Memphis, Beginning Stages of Romantic Relationships.

Deans Award for Undergraduate Poster Presentation:Psychology major Quinn Hodges of Mountain Home, Investigations of Individual Characteristics and Daydreaming Types

College of Liberal Arts and Communication:

Deans Award for Undergraduate Oral Presentation:Criminology and political science major Hye Sun Choi, of Seoul, South Korea, The Perception of Police and Military Legitimacy and Likelihood of Unconventional Political Participation in the Middle East and North Africa.

Deans Award for Undergraduate Poster Presentation:Music education major Angel Stacey of Brookland, Music is Functional.

Deans Award for Graduate Poster Presentation:Master in science in environmental science student Jonathan Mullins of Paragould, The Green New Deal: Policy Implications for American Consumers' Perception of Renewable Energy Technology.

Deans Award for Creative Media:Creative performance majors Audrey Alpha of Olive Branch, Miss., Rebecca Wertenberger of Bryant, Brody King of Nashville, Ark., Carlos Mejia of Springdale and Cody Daughertee of Poplar Bluff, Mo., A-State Trumpet Ensemble.

College of Agriculture:

Deans Award for Undergraduate Poster Presentation:Animal science and biological sciences major Brittany Hirsch of Thayer, Mo., How do post-thaw sperm characteristics of caprine semen cryopreserve with milk based extenders compare with egg yolk based extenders.

Deans Award for Graduate Poster Presentation:Master of science in agriculture major Ramanjeet Singh Toor of India, Consumer Likelihood of Purchasing Fortified Foods in India.

College of Engineering and Computer Science:

Deans Award for Undergraduate Oral Presentation:Mechanical engineering major Mason Rhodes of Benton, Design and Analysis of a Multi-Degree of Freedom System Model to Analyze the Lateral Vibrations of a Scale-Model Saturn V Rocket.

Deans Award for Undergraduate Poster Presentation:Electrical engineering major Benjamin Whitfield of Little Rock, Structural Optimization of Functional Groups on SI Surfaces.

Deans Award for Graduate Oral Presentation:Computer science major Alyson Nichols of Jonesboro, Empath the Poet: Creating Cost-Efficient Artificial Intelligence Poetry.

Deans Award for Graduate Poster Presentation:Civil engineering major Abu Sayed Mohammad Akid of Rajshahi, Bangladesh, Effect of Waste Automobile Tire Rubber on the Fresh and Mechanical Properties of Concrete.

Deans Award for Graduate Poster Presentation:Computer science major Connor Patrom of Beebe, An Exploratory Analysis on AI Generated Text Classification.

Neil Griffin College of Business:Deans Award for Undergraduate Oral Presentation:Accounting major Alyssa Pettit of Egypt, Accounting Information Used by Millennials and Gen Zers: Evidence from YouTube, TikTok and Instagram.

Deans Award for Undergraduate Poster Presentation:Marketing and sales major Sydney Stauffer of Belleville, Ill., Checkout Charity Behavior Among College Students: Investigating Relationships with Attitude, Interest, Opinion, Intervention, and Demographic Variables.

Deans Award for Graduate Oral Presentation:Computer information technology major Blake Hegwood of Hot Springs, An Analysis of Personal Liquidity.

Deans Award for Graduate Poster Presentation:Master of science in environmental science major Rachel Washam of Jonesboro, Investor Attention of ESG on Cryptocurrency Returns.

Dr. Emily Devereux Undergraduate Student Research and Creativity Award:Radiologic Sciences major Madison Carroll of Marked Tree and Audrey Winn of Jonesboro, How Drug-Eluting Balloons Offer Improved Long-Term Quality of Life for Patients with Peripheral Artery Disease.

InfoReady Endowed Award for Graduate Student Research:Doctor of occupational therapy majors Jennifer Tran of Jonesboro, Kyra Wright of Osceola, and major Nicole Jones of Southaven, Miss., Mitigation Strategies to Reduce E-Cigarette Usage Amongst Adolescent Populations.

Provosts Create@State Award:Biotechnology major Nathan May of Newport, Racial and Other Disparities in Substance Abuse Treatment Completion Success Among Pregnant Women.

Chancellors Create@State Award:Biology pre-professional major Mikayla Westman-Forbes of Jonesboro, Identification of Arthropod Diversity in NEA Using Pooled Minion Sequencing.

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Moshe Vardi elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society … – Rice University

Moshe Vardi, one of the worlds leading computer scientists and a University Professor at Rice, has been elected a Foreign Member of the United Kingdoms Royal Society.

Known formally as the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, it was founded in 1660 and is the oldest continuously existing scientific academy in the world. Previously elected fellows include Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, Charles Darwin, Alan Turing, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.

In its announcement, the Royal Society recognized Vardi for his seminal contributions to the development of logic as a unifying foundational framework and a tool for modeling computational systems. His work has had fundamental and lasting impact on automatic verification, epistemic analysis of multi-agent systems, database theory, and descriptive-complexity theory.

At Rice, Vardi is the Karen Ostrum George Distinguished Service Professor in Computational Engineering. His research interests focus on applications of logic to computer science, including database theory, finite model theory, knowledge in multi-agent systems, and computer-aided verification and reasoning.

Vardi earned his Ph.D. in computer science from Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1981. After two tenures as a research scientist for IBM Research and continued work at Stanford University, Vardi joined the Rice faculty in 1993.

He has authored or co-authored more than 700 technical papers. He is senior editor of Communications of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), after serving as its editor-in-chief for a decade. He holds honorary doctorates from eight European universities.

Among his many honors are membership in the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the European Academy of Sciences and the Academia Europaea. Vardi is a fellow of the ACM, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Mathematical Society.

New Fellows and Foreign Members are formally admitted to the Royal Society during the Admissions Day ceremony in July. This year, 59 Fellows, 19 Foreign Members and two Honorary Fellows have been elected.

Kyriacos Nicolaou, Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor of Chemistry at Rice, was named a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 2013; Ramamoorthy Ramesh, vice president for research, professor of materials science and nanoengineering (MSNE), and professor of physics and astronomy, in 2020; Peter Wolynes, Bullard-Welch Foundation Professor of Chemistry, professor of biosciences, of MSNE, and of physics and astronomy, in 2007.

--Patrick Kurp, Engineering Communications

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Lincoln Land Community College students honored at awards … – Jacksonville Journal-Courier

Lincoln Land Community College recognized students with academic, leadership and special awards during a May 3 ceremony.

Arenzville Daniel Wingert, Excellence in Jazz Band.

Franklin Holly Richardson, Health Professions Department honor graduate.

Jacksonville Adam Christian, Natural and Agricultural Sciences Department honor graduate; Hannah R.Deeder, Health Professions Department honor graduate; MirandaK. Elliott, Mathematics and Computer Science Department honor graduate; DrewEzard, Outstanding Student Athlete, Social Sciences and Business Department honor graduate; JacksonK. Ford, Social Sciences and Business Department honor graduate; JoeyGallo, Phi Theta Kappa president;Dee Goings, Phi Theta Kappa public relations officer; Jacob D.Hembrough, Mathematics and Computer Science Department honor graduate; KendallP. Jumper, Social Sciences and Business Department honor graduate; Ryan Maul, Outstanding Student Athlete; Alyssa Miller, Outstanding Student Athlete; WilliamRohlk, Outstanding Student Athlete; Evan Wyatt, Chemistry Club president, Natural and Agricultural Sciences Department honor graduate.

Palmyra Devin Branstner, Workforce Institute honor graduate.

South Jacksonville Carley Provo, Ron Coffman Memorial Scholarship, Social Sciences and Business Department honor graduate.

Virden Farren Ackerman, Chemistry Club Leadership; Caitlin Little, Phi Theta Kappa vice president of fellowship, Arts and Communication Department honor graduate.

Virginia NathanDanner, Workforce Institute honor graduate.

Waverly Jaime Lyons, PATH Program Award.

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Joining the battle against health care bias | MIT News … – MIT News

Medical researchers are awash in a tsunami of clinical data. But we need major changes in how we gather, share, and apply this data to bring its benefits to all, says Leo Anthony Celi, principal research scientist at the MIT Laboratory for Computational Physiology (LCP).

One key change is to make clinical data of all kinds openly available, with the proper privacy safeguards, says Celi, a practicing intensive care unit (ICU) physician at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in Boston. Another key is to fully exploit these open data with multidisciplinary collaborations among clinicians, academic investigators, and industry. A third key is to focus on the varying needs of populations across every country, and to empower the experts there to drive advances in treatment, says Celi, who is also an associate professor at Harvard Medical School.

In all of this work, researchers must actively seek to overcome the perennial problem of bias in understanding and applying medical knowledge. This deeply damaging problem is only heightened with the massive onslaught of machine learning and other artificial intelligence technologies. Computers will pick up all our unconscious, implicit biases when we make decisions, Celi warns.

Sharing medical data

Founded by the LCP, the MIT Critical Data consortium builds communities across disciplines to leverage the data that are routinely collected in the process of ICU care to understand health and disease better. We connect people and align incentives, Celi says. In order to advance, hospitals need to work with universities, who need to work with industry partners, who need access to clinicians and data.

The consortium's flagship project is the MIMIC (medical information marked for intensive care) ICU database built at BIDMC. With about 35,000 users around the world, the MIMIC cohort is the most widely analyzed in critical care medicine.

International collaborations such as MIMIC highlight one of the biggest obstacles in health care: most clinical research is performed in rich countries, typically with most clinical trial participants being white males. The findings of these trials are translated into treatment recommendations for every patient around the world, says Celi. We think that this is a major contributor to the sub-optimal outcomes that we see in the treatment of all sorts of diseases in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America.

To fix this problem, groups who are disproportionately burdened by disease should be setting the research agenda, Celi says.

That's the rule in the datathons (health hackathons) that MIT Critical Data has organized in more than two dozen countries, which apply the latest data science techniques to real-world health data. At the datathons, MIT students and faculty both learn from local experts and share their own skill sets. Many of these several-day events are sponsored by the MIT Industrial Liaison Program, the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives program, or the MIT Sloan Latin America Office.

Datathons are typically held in that country's national language or dialect, rather than English, with representation from academia, industry, government, and other stakeholders. Doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and social workers join up with computer science, engineering, and humanities students to brainstorm and analyze potential solutions. They need each other's expertise to fully leverage and discover and validate the knowledge that is encrypted in the data, and that will be translated into the way they deliver care, says Celi.

Everywhere we go, there is incredible talent that is completely capable of designing solutions to their health-care problems, he emphasizes. The datathons aim to further empower the professionals and students in the host countries to drive medical research, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

Fighting built-in bias

Applying machine learning and other advanced data science techniques to medical data reveals that bias exists in the data in unimaginable ways in every type of health product, Celi says. Often this bias is rooted in the clinical trials required to approve medical devices and therapies.

One dramatic example comes from pulse oximeters, which provide readouts on oxygen levels in a patient's blood. It turns out that these devices overestimate oxygen levels for people of color. We have been under-treating individuals of color because the nurses and the doctors have been falsely assured that their patients have adequate oxygenation, he says. We think that we have harmed, if not killed, a lot of individuals in the past, especially during Covid, as a result of a technology that was not designed with inclusive test subjects.

Such dangers only increase as the universe of medical data expands. The data that we have available now for research is maybe two or three levels of magnitude more than what we had even 10 years ago, Celi says. MIMIC, for example, now includes terabytes of X-ray, echocardiogram, and electrocardiogram data, all linked with related health records. Such enormous sets of data allow investigators to detect health patterns that were previously invisible.

But there is a caveat, Celi says. It is trivial for computers to learn sensitive attributes that are not very obvious to human experts. In a study released last year, for instance, he and his colleagues showed that algorithms can tell if a chest X-ray image belongs to a white patient or person of color, even without looking at any other clinical data.

More concerningly, groups including ours have demonstrated that computers can learn easily if you're rich or poor, just from your imaging alone, Celi says. We were able to train a computer to predict if you are on Medicaid, or if you have private insurance, if you feed them with chest X-rays without any abnormality. So again, computers are catching features that are not visible to the human eye. And these features may lead algorithms to advise against therapies for people who are Black or poor, he says.

Opening up industry opportunities

Every stakeholder stands to benefit when pharmaceutical firms and other health-care corporations better understand societal needs and can target their treatments appropriately, Celi says.

We need to bring to the table the vendors of electronic health records and the medical device manufacturers, as well as the pharmaceutical companies, he explains. They need to be more aware of the disparities in the way that they perform their research. They need to have more investigators representing underrepresented groups of people, to provide that lens to come up with better designs of health products.

Corporations could benefit by sharing results from their clinical trials, and could immediately see these potential benefits by participating in datathons, Celi says. They could really witness the magic that happens when that data is curated and analyzed by students and clinicians with different backgrounds from different countries. So we're calling out our partners in the pharmaceutical industry to organize these events with us!

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