Executive Director of Qatar Computing Research Institute Ahmed K Elmagarmid and Artificial Intelligence chief, technologist and senior technical fellow at Boeing, Dragos Margineantu during the Machine Learning and Data Analytics Symposium.
Doha, Qatar: Global experts have gathered in Doha to share insights on the latest advances in artificial intelligence during the Machine Learning and Data Analytics Symposium (MLDAS 2023).
The two-day symposium aims to bridge the divide between cutting-edge academic insights and the practical needs of the industry, fostering collaboration and knowledge exchange in artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics.
This premier event, organized by Hamad Bin Khalifa University’s Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) in collaboration with Boeing, has evolved into one of the most significant technical conferences in the Middle East, said organisers yesterday.
The Executive Director of Qatar Computing Research Institute at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (QCRI), Ahmed K. Elmagarmid, speaking to The Peninsula, reflected on the symposium’s remarkable journey, stating, “When this symposium was started ten years ago, nobody would have predicted that machine learning and data analytics would be the trailblazers, the most important thing. So I believe that MLDAS has become a well-known event in which results about cognitive sciences and predictive analytics come together to help in real applications.”
QCRI and Boeing entered into a partnership in 2012 and it has resulted in groundbreaking research in machine learning and work on computer vision for autonomy.
MLDAS has been an annual event since 2014, and this year, 15 experts provide the latest updates on machine learning, artificial intelligence, and leading research and engineering work to students, scientists, and engineers in Qatar and from other countries.
Elmagarmid emphasised the significance of QCRI’s collaboration with Boeing and said that MLDAS was established as a platform to deliver and educate, showcasing research results emerging from their long-standing partnership.
“The relationship with Boeing is very significant on multiple levels. The collaboration with Boeing provides us with real-world problems on which to do our research. That research is not done in a vacuum that it’s done with a real application in mind,” he said.
Elmagarmid underscored the importance of data and funding, provided generously by Boeing, which has fueled meaningful and applied research. “What’s very important to do meaningful and applied research is to have data and contracts, and working jointly with Boeing gives us that benefit. Boeing has been very generous to provide us with real data and real applications,” he said.
Artificial Intelligence chief technologist and senior technical fellow at Boeing, Dragos Margineantu said that QCRI has always been very important because it’s a top research institution in machine learning, data science, and AI.
“So we started our collaboration with QCRI before the symposium. The symposium was born because the collaboration was doing well. This was exactly when AI methods and neural networks started to become popular. So, at that time, we started to talk about what we do and what we do together and the research challenges in this area because there are a lot of research challenges, and we thought that this symposium would be a good venue,” he said.
“It was also a way to validate our research. You see where speakers here from all over the world, from Australia, from the Middle East, from Europe, from the US, and it was always also a way to advance the research, both for us in Boeing and, I guess, also for QCRI and always a source of great ideas to move forward,” Margineantu added.
