Andrew Fagg, Ph.D., associate director of the Data Institute for Societal Challenges and a presidential professor and associate professor of computer science and bioengineering in the Gallogly College of Engineering, is developing a series of tutorials for OU faculty, researchers and students based on his decades of experience with machine learning and artificial intelligence.
“Machine learning tools have been in development for a very long time. But over the last decade we’ve had a confluence of computing power, software tools and an ability to gather large amounts of data,” Fagg said. “This is what has led to the revolution we’re seeing today in machine learning.”
Part of the mission of the Data Institute for Societal Challenges is facilitating data-oriented research across the University of Oklahoma campuses. This tutorial series will help researchers across the OU Norman campus and OU Health Sciences campus learn how to use machine learning and artificial intelligence tools and how to interpret the results to further their own research agendas.
“A key challenge is figuring out how to communicate effectively with researchers in completely different domains. These researchers have their own traditions for how they look at data, how they talk about it and how they interpret analysis results,” Fagg said. “I am interested in working with experts in several domains to create collaborative tutorials that we can present together.”
There wasn’t much interest in artificial intelligence and machine learning when Fagg and others arrived at the University of Oklahoma in the early 2000s. Nevertheless, they continued to push that classes be offered so that students could be properly trained. That has all changed over the last decade.
“Now we can’t offer enough classes because there’s a tremendous amount of interest in this domain,” Fagg said. “What’s really cool is how quickly these AI tools are getting integrated into so many real-world applications today. It’s all very exciting.”
Learn more about Andrew Fagg’s work at https://www.symbiotic-computing.org/fagg_html and follow the Data Institute for Societal Challenges on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/DISCatOU.
