On Monday, March 13, 2023, a hybrid onsite-online symposium organized by the Center of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (Center of DS&AI) was held to commemorate the establishment of the center at Ookayama Campus and via Zoom.
The symposium started with the opening remarks of President Kazuya Masu (bottom left photo), during which he talked about the significance of establishing the Center of DS&AI and the need for educating students on the technology of data science and Artificial Intelligence (DS and AI). Afterwards, Director Yoshihiro Miyake of the Center of DS&AI talked about DS and AI education and educational programs at the Center of DS&AI (bottom right photo).
The guests welcomed Mr. Shinichi Kiya of the Technical Education Division of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) and Genshiro Kitagawa, specially appointed professor of University of Tokyo’s Mathematics and Informatics Center and chair of Japan Inter-University Consortium for Mathematics, Data Science and AI Education. Mr. Kiya congratulated the Center of DS&AI (bottom left photo) and expressed his hopes regarding their activities, while Professor Kitagawa talked about activities and educational programs in the consortium (bottom right photo).
As the hub of the Japan Inter-University Consortium for Mathematics, Data Science and AI Education, Tokyo Tech is distributing education curriculum design and development of course materials to other universities.
There were three lectures; 1) Dr. Lisa Yan and Dr. Eric VanDusen of UC Berkeley showed their efforts on university-wide education in DS and AI (bottom left photo), 2) Fellow Kazuo Yano of Hitachi, Ltd. gave a unique lecture on “well-being” supplemented by various data (bottom right photo), 3) Tokyo Tech reported on the current state of DS and AI education and its collaboration with TAIST (a graduate school managed by Tokyo Tech and related institutions in Thailand).
The symposium elicited such lively discussion from the audience that there was not enough time for a Q&A session, as there were many questions after each lecture. Lastly, Executive Vice President Jun-ichi Imura gave his closing remarks at the symposium.
About 350 people registered for the onsite-online webinar, of which 10% were from overseas as we held the symposium with simultaneous interpretation.
The Center of DS&AI aims to cultivate all students as “co-creative experts”, and we will further enhance the University-wide Education Program in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence.