Jiawei Han, a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was recently named a Michael Aiken Chair, one of the University's highest awards. The endowed chair is the latest honor in Han's distinguished and pioneering career, with notable accomplishments including creating core data mining algorithms and co-authoring the textbook that is considered by many to have defined the field. Professor Han is also a busy and successful teacher with a love for "train[ing] the younger generation, whether at UIUC or all over the world on Coursera." Professor Han had three PhD students graduate in May, with one becoming a professor at Georgia Tech, one joining Google, and one joining Facebook. Students taking his classes as part of the Online Master of Computer Science in Data Science degree have an opportunity to learn from him through videos and can ask him questions directly during live office hours.

As the United Arab Emirates' minister of artificial intelligence (AI), Omar Al Olama may have one of the most exciting and impactful portfolios in the …

At more than seven decades old, the United Nations has often been criticized for being too slow to respond to crises. But behind the scenes, a high-tech team is harnessing the power of big data and artificial intelligence to predict, monitor and respond to emergencies. CGTN's U.N. correspondent Liling Tan has an inside look at how U.N. Global Pulse is keeping the organization up to speed in the 21st century. Three blocks from the United Nations headquarters in New York, a veritable geek squad of data scientists, analysts and engineers are using big data and artificial intelligence for global good. Or, as U.N. Global Pulse's Director Robert Kirkpatrick puts it, "Our job is to help superheroes find out where people are in trouble, so they can rescue them."

Earlier this summer, the Economist announced a competition for young people. They asked contestants to answer this question: "What fundamental economic and political change, if any, is needed for an effective response to climate change?" More than 2,400 people responded, from over 110 countries. And the Economist slipped one essay into the stack of submissions that their judges would review: an essay written by an artificial intelligence. The AI in question was GPT-2, a language-generating system developed by San Francisco AI lab OpenAI and announced this spring.

Some of the world's largest technology companies -- Amazon, Google (GOOGL), and Facebook (FB) -- are ramping up efforts to use artificial intelligence to identify the structure of proteins involved in diseases, a key task in the discovery of new drugs. Historically such work has been driven by academic labs and pharmaceutical companies -- and the bulk of it still is. But biochemistry researchers say the tech giants are becoming increasingly active in the field, as artificial intelligence promises to help solve fundamental mysteries of human biology. Unlock this article by subscribing to STAT Plus and enjoy your first 30 days free! STAT Plus is STAT's premium subscription service for in-depth biotech, pharma, policy, and life science coverage and analysis.

Using mathematics in a novel way in neuroscience, the Blue Brain Project shows that the brain operates on many dimensions, not just the three dimensions that we are accustomed to. For most people, it is a stretch of the imagination to understand the world in four dimensions but a new study has discovered structures in the brain with up to eleven dimensions – ground-breaking work that is beginning to reveal the brain's deepest architectural secrets. Using algebraic topology in a way that it has never been used before in neuroscience, a team from the Blue Brain Project has uncovered a universe of multi-dimensional geometrical structures and spaces within the networks of the brain. The research, published today in Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, shows that these structures arise when a group of neurons forms a clique: each neuron connects to every other neuron in the group in a very specific way that generates a precise geometric object. The more neurons there are in a clique, the higher the dimension of the geometric object.

Music is the most soothing thing available today in numerous forms, very few people are blessed with good vocal ability and technology has made it possible to reach their amazing voice to us. The Indian Music Industry (IMI) is a trust that represents the recording industry distributors in India. Record companies like Saregama India Ltd. (HMV), Universal Music (India), Tips Industries Limited, Venus, Sony Music Entertainment (India), Crescendo, Virgin Records, Magnasound, Milestone, Times Music and several other prominent national and regional labels are part of the IMI.Very few people know that music is a natural therapy having the capability to improve our mental wellbeing, it is a medical remedy to many patients. It is also very effective in reducing anxiety and stress and helps regulate stress. Research has revealed that the repetitive components of rhythm and melody help our brains form patterns that enhance memory.

Five teams from the Netherlands, South Korea and China have advanced to the final stage of a competition to see who can grow fresh tomatoes in greenhouses remotely using artificial intelligence. The second Autonomous Greenhouse Challenge, which is organised by Dutch academic powerhouse Wageningen University & Research (WUR) and Chinese multinational conglomerate Tencent, began in September with a 24-hour hackathon involving 21 international teams and more than 200 participants from 26 countries. The five winning teams – Netherlands-based AiCU, The Automators and Automatoes, Korea's IUA.CAAS and China's Digilog – will each be given six months' access to a real greenhouse in the Dutch town of Bleiswijk, where from December onwards they will attempt to control and produce a tomato crop from afar by employing AI algorithms to keep inputs like water, nutrients and energy at sustainable levels. September's hackathon, held at WUR, saw an international jury award points to each team based on their composition and competence, their application of AI technology and the net profit they made during a virtual tomato production game. During their pitches, the teams were given access to a climate model and a tomato crop growth model previously developed by researchers at WUR.

Spinal cord injuries alter someone's life forever, and they can happen to anyone. When someone suffers a serious spinal cord injury, they most typically become paralyzed from that point down, or up. The reason behind this devastating paralysis is because the human body isn't able to regenerate severed nerve fibers. The brain loses its signal to alert muscles to move, and paralysis occurs. However, with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) and new technologies, the medical field is working toward helping patients with spinal cord injuries to move again.