[AI Seminar Series] AI Seminar inaugural talk by Dr. Zhenhui (Jessie) Li, Friday October 11, 12-1pm, MRB Seminar Room

[tsotras]

We are starting the AI Seminar Series, an event sponsored by the 
RAISE at UCR (raise.ucr.edu) Institute. The goal of these seminars is to 
inform the UCR community about current trends in AI research and promote 
collaborations between faculty in this emerging field. The series will 
consist of both UCR and external invited speakers.

The inaugural talk will be next Friday, October 11, 12:00-1:00pm at the 
MRB Seminar Room (1st floor).

**** Pizza and refreshments will be provided ****

To keep track of the number of attendees, please *register* at:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ai-seminar-series-tickets-1040069835877

The talk will be given by Dr. Zhenhui (Jessie) Li, Chief Scientist, 
Yunqi Academy of Engineering

TITLE:
"The Critical Role of Cyber Infrastructure in City Innovation and 
Beyond"

ABSTRACT:
Cities, humanity’s greatest inventions, offer vast opportunities for 
innovation in science and technology. The increasing availability of big 
data paints a promising future for our cities. Over the past decade, my 
work has focused on applying AI to address real-world city challenges. 
Recent collaborations with city practitioners have deepened my 
understanding of these complexities and refined my vision for achieving 
city intelligence.

In this talk, I will present my work on advanced AI techniques for city 
transportation problems, e.g., reinforcement learning for traffic signal 
control. I will then expand on this to discuss the resource-centric 
concept of city intelligence, using real-world practices to showcase its 
practical applications. Finally, I will emphasize the urgent need for 
new cyber infrastructure, vital not only for city innovations but for 
all scientific disciplines driven by big data and intensive computing.


Bio:
Dr. Zhenhui (Jessie) Li currently serves as the chief scientist at the 
Yunqi Academy of Engineering, a non-profit institution situated in 
Hangzhou, China. Prior to this role, she held a tenured associate 
professor position at Pennsylvania State University. She earned her 
doctoral degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at 
Urbana-Champaign. Her research primarily focuses on advancing computing 
technologies to harness data for interdisciplinary studies, including 
those in smart city, environmental science, transportation, and ecology. 
For further information, you can visit her website at 
https://jessielzh.com/.

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Sponsored by the RAISE at UCR Institute, the AI Seminar Series presents 
speakers working on cutting edge Foundational AI or apply AI in their 
research. The goal of these seminars is to inform the UCR community 
about current trends in AI research and promote collaborations between 
faculty in this emerging field.
These seminars are open to interested faculty and graduate students. 
Please forward this email to other colleagues or graduate students in 
your lab that may be interested. After the seminar a discussion will 
follow for questions, open problems, ideas for possible collaborations 
etc.

Sincerely,
Vassilis Tsotras
Professor, CSE Department
co-Director, RAISE at UCR Institute

Amit Roy-Chowdhury
Professor, ECE Department
co-Director, RAISE at UCR Institute