CMU, Pitt To Host Obama, White House Frontiers Conference

President Barack Obama visited the National Robotics Engineering Center in 2011.

President Barack Obama will host the White House Frontiers Conference, a national event co-hosted by Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh on Thursday, Oct. 13. Daylong sessions at both universities will focus on building U.S. capacity in science, technology and innovation.

Members of the campus community should expect traffic and parking restrictions and limited access to some buildings. All of the sessions will be livestreamed.

The event will explore the future of innovation in the United States and around the world through discussions about new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, challenges and goals.

The speakers include more than half a dozen CMU faculty members, administrators and alumni. Among them are:

• Rayid Ghani, a CMU alumnus, director of the Center for Data Science and Public Policy, and senior fellow at the Computation Institute and the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, will participate in the “Data-Driven Criminal Justice Reform Deep Dive Panel.”
  
  
• Andrew Moore, the dean of Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science, will participate in a panel discussion called “Challenges of AI.”
  
  
• Costa Samaras, an assistant professor in Carnegie Mellon’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is participating in the Panel on Educating for Climate-Smart Design.
  
  
• Steven F. Smith, director of the Intelligent Coordination and Logistics Laboratory and a research professor of robotics, will participate in “Ignite Talks: AI for Good.”
  
  
• Astro Teller, captain of Moonshots, is a computer science alumnus and the keynote of the global track. The track will discuss breakthrough technologies and climate information, tools and services.
  
  
• Red Whittaker, CMU’s Fredkin Professor of Robotics, will participate in the “Audience Interactive Q&A: Not Just to Visit, But to Stay.”
  
  
• Jeannette M. Wing, a consulting professor of computer science at CMU and corporate vice president of Microsoft Research, will participate in the industry panel “Best Practices in AI.”

For more information, visit the White House Frontiers Conference website.