Martha Kim is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University. She holds a PhD in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Washington and a bachelors in Computer Science from Harvard University. Martha's research interests are in computer architecture, parallel programming, compilers, and low-power computing. Her current research focuses on hardware and software techniques to improve the usability of hardware accelerators, data-centric accelerator design, and application-level power management. This work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, DARPA, the Center for Future Architectures Research (C-FAR), and Intel Corporation.

The University of Washington will be hosting the first of four White House Office of Science and Technology Policy workshops on artificial intelligence. The session in Seattle on Tuesday, involving the UW School of Law and the UW Tech Policy Lab, will focus on legal and policy issues around artificial intelligence. Speakers include UW professors, White House staff and the chief executive officer of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Oren Etzioni, who is also a UW computer science and engineering professor, will provide an overview on the current state of artificial intelligence, followed by two panel discussions. The first will examine issues around making decisions in the private or public sector using artificial intelligence.

The killing of Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Akhtar Mansour in a U.S. drone strike was greeted Sunday by Kabul's political leadership as a game-changer in efforts to end the long insurgent war plaguing Afghanistan. In a rare show of unity, President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah both welcomed the news of Mansour's death as the removal of a man who unleashed violence against innocent civilians in Afghanistan and was widely regarded as an obstacle to peace within the militant group. Mansour, believed to be in his 50s, was killed when a U.S. drone fired on his vehicle in the southwestern Pakistan province of Baluchistan, although there were conflicting accounts whether the airstrike occurred Friday or Saturday. He had emerged as the successor to Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar, whose 2013 death was only revealed last summer. Mansour "engaged in deception, concealment of facts, drug-smuggling and terrorism while intimidating, maiming and killing innocent Afghans," Ghani said in a statement on his official Twitter account.

The manufacturing hub for the electronics industry, Kunshan, in Jiangsu province, is seeking a drastic reduction in labour costs as it undergoes a makeover after an industrial explosion killed 146 people in 2014. The county, one-seventh the size of neighbouring Shanghai and the mainland's first county to achieve US 4,000 per capita income, was adjudged the best county for its economic performance by Forbes for seven years in a row. However, the blaze, blamed on poor safety standards and haphazard industrialisation, dented Kunshan's pride. More than a year on, the county, which attracts much of its investment from Taiwan, is trying to reinvent its growth strategy. It is accelerating growth by replacing humans with robots and encouraging start-ups.

As more and more civilian drones are being flown freely, the threat to commercial airspace is increasing. Over the past two years, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has received countless reports of incidents related to these objects in the skies. As a result, the FAA is expanding its research into ways to detect these unmanned aircraft, in hopes that it will be able to provide more security for airports. In fact, the FAA borrowed an FBI drone detection system and field-tested it at the John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) last week. The FAA's press release details 40 trial runs involving the deployment of five different rotor and fixed-wing drones.

Worldwide spending on cybersecurity likely topped 75 billion last year, researchers at Gartner estimated, with companies more wary than ever of the risks posed by data breaches and other digital attacks. And along with rising costs, the sheer volume of digital security data has also increased dramatically: IBM estimated in a recent study that the average organization sees more than 200,000 pieces of security event data per day and that more than 10,000 security-related research papers are published every year. "Security researchers are getting hit with a firehose," says Caleb Barlow, vice president of IBM Security. "Once they get done with today, they've got another deluge of data coming tomorrow." To help companies handle that flood of data, IBM says it's training its Watson artificial intelligence platform--previously known for using its natural language processing power to beat humans on Jeopardy--to parse cybersecurity information, from automated network-level threat reports to blog posts from security professionals. "It's just gonna think just like a forensics investigator," says Barlow.

Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour has been killed, Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security confirmed Sunday afternoon after several hours of uncertainty. The Afghan intelligence agency said Mansour, who was officially named the group's leader last year, was killed in an "airstrike" in a remote area in Balochistan in southwestern Pakistan Saturday. Prior to that, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani also confirmed that Mansour had been targeted in a drone strike by the United States. "Mullah Akhtar Mansour refused to answer repeated calls by the people and Government of Afghanistan to end the war and violence in the country. While sheltering himself in hideouts outside Afghanistan, he was also involved in deception, concealment of facts, maiming and killing innocent Afghans, terrorism, intimidation, drug smuggling as well as obstruction of development and progress in Afghanistan as he obstinately insisted on continuing the war," the Afghan president's office said in a statement Sunday.

Afghan authorities confirmed Sunday that the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammed Akhtar Mansour, was killed in a U.S. drone strike. The National Directorate of Security said in a statement that Mansour was killed at 3:45 p.m. local time Saturday. The Associated Press, citing a statement from the spy agency, said the attack took place in Baluchistan province, in southwestern Pakistan. "The attack happened on the main road while he was in his vehicle," the statement said. Mullah Abdul Rauf, a senior Taliban commander, told the Associated Press earlier Sunday that Mansour was indeed killed in the drone strike.

The Afghan government and a senior Taliban commander confirmed Sunday that the extremist group's leader, Mullah Mohammed Akhtar Mansour, has been killed in a U.S. drone strike. Mullah Abdul Rauf, who recently reconciled with Mansour after initially rebelling against his ascension to the leadership, told The Associated Press that Mansour died in the strike late Friday "in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area." Afghanistan's intelligence agency announced that Mansour had been killed in an air attack Saturday afternoon. In a statement, the National Directorate of Security, as the secret service is known, said the attack took place in Baluchistan province, in southwestern Pakistan. It is believed to have been the first drone strike on Baluchistan, which could explain why Mansour was traveling in an unarmored car without a convoy, decoys or bodyguards.

This photo taken by a freelance photographer Abdul Salam Khan using his smart phone on Sunday, May 22, 2016, purports to show the destroyed vehicle in which Mullah Mohammad Akhtar Mansour was traveling in the Ahmad Wal area in Baluchistan province of Pakistan, near Afghanistan's border. A senior commander of the Afghan Taliban confirmed on Sunday that the extremist group's leader, Mullah Mohammad Akhtar Mansour, has been killed in a U.S. drone strike.