August 9, 2018: Invited Speaker Seminar: Machine Learning in Engineering: Panacea or Deep Trouble?

Dr. Konstantinos N. Plataniotis
University of Toronto

Thursday, August 9, 2018 at 11:30 am
Room EV003.309

Abstract

The recent rise of artificial intelligence (AI) can be attributed to the success of deep neural networks (DNN) in tasks, such as image classification and natural language processing.  The availability of curated, large scale and diverse data sets, access to powerful computing infrastructure, and theoretical advances are the main driving factors behind the resurgence. Machine learning (ML), deep neural nets, smart analytics are all trending tools promising disruptive contributions capable of solving real-world problems. Thus, it is not surprising to see a sustained push from industry, policy makers, and government bodies towards accelerating developments in machine learning. The purpose of this presentation is to provide an environmental scan of the research landscape, introduce, in a tutorial style, aspects of the research machinery, and discuss intuition, utility and expectations.

Biography

Konstantinos N. (Kostas) Plataniotis is a Professor and the Bell Canada Chair in Multimedia with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada. He is the co-founder and inaugural Director-Research for the Identity, Privacy and Security Institute (IPSI), University of Toronto, and he served as the Director of the Knowledge Media Design Institute (KMDI), University of Toronto, from January 2010 to July 2012. His research interests are knowledge and digital media design, multimedia systems, biometrics, image and signal processing, communications systems, and machine learning. Dr. Plataniotis is a Registered Professional Engineer in the Province of Ontario, a Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada. He was the IEEE Signal Processing Society Vice President for Membership (2014–2016) and he has served as the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING LETTERS, as Technical Co-Chair of the IEEE 2013 International Conference in Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, and as General Co-Chair for the 2017 IEEE GlobalSIP Conference. Dr. Plataniotis is the General Co-Chair for the 2018 International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP-18) and the General Co-Chair for the 2021 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP 2021).