The Artificial Intelligence Research (AIR) initiative at BU is a cross-disciplinary research initiative focused on machine intelligence. It brings together researchers whose work aims to create intelligent systems that reliably make decisions, reason about data, and communicate with humans. The primary research focus is on new computational models aimed at general artificial intelligence, i.e. agents that exhibit the skills and learning capacity close to human ability. The initiative crosses the boundaries of computer vision, natural language processing, machine learning, robotics, and human-computer interaction research and promotes AI education at Boston University.
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AIR meetings occur weekly at the Hariri Institute for Computing. Research talks include Ph.D. student presentations on ongoing or published work, local guests from the greater Boston area, and distinguished speakers from other universities and industry partners. Please refer to the AIR calendar for upcoming dates and talk information.
Research
AI research is conducted by the initiative’s core and affiliated faculty, postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduate students whom they support. Specialized focus on different areas of AI is managed and conducted by affiliated research labs associated with AIR. As the initiative’s contributors reach various milestones in their work, links to publications, presentations, and media coverage will be available here as well as any new labs.
Affiliated Research Labs
Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Media (AIEM) The Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Media (AIEM) research group is to conduct research and foster education in areas related to artificial intelligence and emerging media. We explore and create techniques from machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision to interpret emerging media.
Image and Video Computing (IVC) The Image and Video Computing group is part of the BU Department of Computer Science and is an affiliated lab of the Artificial Intelligence Research (AIR) Initiative at the Hariri Institute for Computing. The IVC conducts research in many aspects of computer vision, machine learning, and human-computer interaction.
Speakers at AIR events have included many different individuals with different backgrounds and levels of academic and professional accomplishments. Seminar topics include computer vision, natural language processing, machine learning, robotics, and human-computer interaction. To receive emails of upcoming AIR Seminars, join the google group, air_seminar_public, by jumping to this link with your BU google account and click ‘Ask to join group’.
Open AIR
Open AIR is an industry open house hosted by AIR and the Hariri Institute for Computing that aims to bring together AI researchers at BU with industry groups interested in AI research. The main goals of Open AIR are to showcase AI research at Boston University, increase interaction between the AIR community and industry labs, and potentially lead to future collaborations and/or internship opportunities.
Distinguished Speaker Series
The distinguished speaker series appeal to a broad audience internal to BU and external to industry partners and affiliates. The researchers for this series are nationally re-known for their work and can be from the BU community, external academic institutions or external industry partners.
Past Distinguished Speakers
2024
Jan 24, 2024: Mihaela van der Scharr, Professor of Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Medicine – University of Cambridge
Feb 28, 2024: Ravi Ramamoorthi, Professor of Computer Science – University of California, San Diego
Apr 3, 2024: Svetlana Lazebnik, Professor of Computer Science – University of Illinois
Apr 10, 2024: Deva Ramanan, Professor of Robotics – Carnegie Mellon University
2023
Dec 13, 2023: Sharon Xiaolei Huang, Professor & Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies the College of Information Sciences & Technology – Penn State
2022
Feb 4, 2022: Claire Monteloni, Associate Professor of Computer Science – University of Colorado
Feb 7, 2022: Aisha Walcott-Bryant, Senior Technical Staff Member & Research Manager – IBM Research Africa
Feb 14, 2022: My Phan, PhD Student in Computer Science – Unviersity of Massachussets Amherst
Feb 28, 2022: Afra Feyza Akyürek, PhD Student in Computer Science – Boston University
2021
Feb 8, 2021: Yin Li, Assistant Professor of Biostatistics & Computer Science – University of Wisconsin
Feb 22, 2021: Timnit Gebru, Computer Scientist & Co-Founder of Black in AI
Mar 15, 2021: Ekin Akyürek, PhD Student in Computer Science – MIT
Mar 29, 2021: Tao Du, PhD Student in Computer Science – MIT
Apr 5, 2021: Ahmed Taha, PhD Student in Computer Science – University of Maryland
Apr 12, 2021: Kristen Grauman, Professor of Computer Science – University of Texas
Oct 21, 2021: Jimuyang Zhang, PhD Student – Boston University
Nov 2, 2021: Samory Kpotufe, Associate Professor of Statistics – Columbia University
Dec 3, 2021: Rogerio Feris, Principal Scientist at IBM
Dec 7, 2021: Csaba Szepesvari, Professor of Computer Science – University of Alberta
2020
Sept 9, 2020: David Bau, PhD Student at MIT, former Engineer at Google
Sept 21, 2020: Juergen Gall, Professor – University of Bonn
Oct 19, 2020: Serge Belongie, Professor of Computer Science – Cornell University
2019
Feb 4, 2019:Samy Bengio, Research Scientist – Google Brain, Program Chair – Neural Information Processing System (NIPS)
Apr 8, 2019: Karrie Karahalios, Professor of Computer Science, Co-director of the Center for People and Infrastructures – University of Illinois, Senior Research Scientist at Adobe Research
Apr 22, 2019:Yoram Singer, Professor of Computer Science – Princeton University, Head of Principles of Effective Machine Learning (POEM) for Google Brain
Dec 12, 2019: Maria-Florina Balcan, Professor of Computer Science – Carnegie Mellon University
Speaker Series
The speaker series appeal to a focused audience of the internal BU community. Speakers are typically from BU or other local academic institutions.
Weekly Meetings
The AIR weekly meetings are smaller by nature and appeal to the BU Community including faculty and students (Ph.D or Masters). Speakers for these meetings are usually hosted by members of the AIR leadership team in an open discussion format.
