Location:  Neuroscience Institute – A32

Moderator:

Peter Ramadge
Director, Center for Statistics and Machine Learning, and Gordon Y.S. Wu Professor of Engineering 

Panelists:

Michael Ian Shamos ’68
Distinguished Career Professor, School of Computer Science; Director, Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence and Innovation Program, Language Technologies Institute, Carnegie Mellon University

Robert Bernard ’88
Director, Risk Modeling Services, PwC

Brian Barrett ’03
Vice President of Content, SpeakEasy AI

Ha-Kyung Kwon ’13
Senior Research Scientist, Toyota Research Institute

Jeffrey Diament ’18
Technical Generalist

Moderator

Peter Ramadge
Director, Center for Statistics and Machine Learning; Gordon Y. S. Wu Professor of Engineering; and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Princeton University

Peter Ramadge’s interest in machine learning began in 1979 when he co-authored a paper showing that it is possible to learn how to stabilize and control physical systems automatically. Today, his research engages with foundational aspects of machine learning and applications in robotics, neuroscience and scientific discovery. He teaches a popular senior/graduate course on machine learning that attracts students from fields as diverse as finance to neuroscience. Ramadge is the recipient of several teaching awards, including the Princeton’s 2022 President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching, an IBM faculty development award, and an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) best paper award. He is a fellow of the IEEE and a member of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and joined the Princeton faculty in 1984.

Panelists

Michael Ian Shamos ’68
Michael Shamos majored in physics at Princeton under John Wheeler, but has spent his life in computer science and law. His Ph.D. thesis in 1978 at Yale established the field of computational geometry with David Dobkin, former dean of the faculty at Princeton. He obtained a law degree in 1981 from Duquesne University and is a registered patent attorney. He has been associated with Carnegie Mellon University since 1975 and is now Distinguished Career Professor in the School of Computer Science, directing the Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence and Innovation Program in CMU’s Language Technologies Institute. Recently he has been teaching Law of Computer Technology and Artificial Intelligence and Future Markets.

Robert Bernard ’88
Rob Bernard focuses on physical climate risk modeling. He leads teams that develop analytics, models and quantitative frameworks that estimate the deleterious effects of climate change. He has developed advanced analytics, data science methods, artificial intelligence and predictive models in a variety of industries, from simulating long-term land use and demographic change for small towns to creation of machine learning models for fraud detection to creation of innovative natural language processing techniques for measuring engagement, commitment and understanding in online discussion forums. Bernard has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Princeton, a master’s degree in urban and regional planning and gaming/simulation studies from Michigan, and is currently completing his master’s thesis in predictive analytics at Northwestern.

Brian Barrett ’03
Brian Barrett has spent the majority of his career as a journalist covering the intersection of technology and society. Most recently, he served as Executive Editor of WIRED, where he oversaw all news coverage, with a particular focus on cybersecurity, consumer electronics, and artificial intelligence. Prior to eight years at WIRED, Barrett served as Editor in Chief of the tech blog Gizmodo, and as a reporter for the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest daily newspaper. He’s written for the New Yorker, New York magazine, and lots of publications that don’t have New York in the name. He’s currently the VP of Content at SpeakEasy AI, a startup that’s designing spaces for better conversations online. He and his family live in Birmingham, Alabama.

Ha-Kyung Kwon ’13
Ha-Kyung Kwon is a senior research scientist in the Energy and Materials Division at Toyota Research Institute. Her research is on leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning methods to accelerate the discovery of new polymers for zero-emissions technology. She received a B.S.E. in chemical and biological engineering from Princeton and a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from Northwestern, where she worked with Professors Monica Olvera de la Cruz and Ken Shull on theoretical and experimental investigation of phase behavior of ion-containing polymers.

Jeffrey Diament ’18
Jeffrey Diament studied mechanical and aerospace engineering and computer science at Princeton University. He interned at NASA and SpaceX before joining Instrumems, a nanotechnology startup cofounded by the Princeton professor who advised Diament on his senior thesis, “Developing a Wind-Sensing Drone.” Diament led mechanical engineering and business development efforts at Instrumems until the COVID-19 pandemic pulled him in another direction. At the end of 2020, he joined SummerBio, where he developed software for the robotic, fully automated COVID-19 PCR testing lab. He played a pivotal role in scaling SummerBio to become the highest throughput lab in California, where it processed 20 million tests with an average turnaround time of less than 12 hours. He’s an Artificial Intelligence enthusiast and is currently very eager to contribute to the future development of safe Artificial General Intelligence.