Qatar holds third symposium for machine learning, data analytics fields

Students, global experts and researchers recently gathered for the third annual Machine Learning and Data Analytics Symposium (MLDAS) in Doha.

Organized by the Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) and the Boeing Company, the event served as a platform to discuss happenings in machine learning and data analytics from applications to recent advances.

"When we organized the first MLDAS three years ago, we wanted to drive conversations and innovations in the machine learning and data analytics field," Dragos Margineantu, MLDAS co-chair and technical fellow with Boeing Research & Technology, said. "Since that time, we have seen unprecedented growth and, though we're just one piece of a huge field, I'm proud that we've been involved and helped connect respected researchers with practitioners and students to further advance research in the fields of machine learning and data analytics."

The two-day symposium included talks on how machine learning techniques can be applied to scientific discovery and aircraft health maintenance. Among the featured speakers were Hugh Durrant-Whyte, professor at the University of Sydney; Geoff Webb, who has developed numerous machine learning algorithms that are currently widely deployed and is credited with spearheading many research areas such as interactive data analytics; and Mohammed Zaki, a professor of computer science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute who has published more than 225 works in data mining and bioinformatics.

"The remarkable improvement in the quality of research submissions and the international reputation of the invited speakers clearly indicates that MLDAS has established itself as a premier symposium on Data Science," Sanjay Chawla, MLDAS co-chair and principal scientist in QCRI's Data Analytics Group, said. "This is a huge success for Qatar and the region."