Beirut AI Community Recap: August & September 2021

Another August, means another Beirut AI Bootcamp, and more exciting gatherings!

Beirut AI Bootcamp Recap

Despite all challenges, and all circumstances, here we are again, celebrating the end of a three week successful Bootcamp with more than 80 participants from all over Lebanon!

For three weeks, from August 16 till September 5, our Beirut AI Bootcamp took place! Participants got to dig deep into:

• Data Science & Machine Learning
• Deep Learning
• Computer Vision
• Natural Language Processing
• Time Series Analysis

Participants benefited from:

• Self-Paced Sessions where they had access to the course material on the online learning platform with interactive hands-on experience on the aforementioned AI areas.
• Interactive Sessions: with regular instructor-led office hours sessions with experienced instructors. In these sessions, they were able to clarify misconceptions and interact with the instructors to ask questions regarding the course material. The attendees also met and connected with the different Bootcamp participants, and AI enthusiasts,through weekly casual and exciting gatherings
• Final Project Support: as the attendees formed teams from 2 to 4 members to ideate and build their own AI models and finally present their project in the last weekend in front of the jury. They also benefited from one-on-one guided mentoring sessions on their project idea!

We had the chance to meet more than 80 motivated and passionate participants who came up with brilliant ideas in their final projects. Many came from different backgrounds but with a similar goal: becoming AI heroes!

It was an opportunity to be part of a community that aims to learn and grow despite the challenges.

Our AI enthusiasts also had the chance to attend very useful and informative additional workshops:

• On August 27, our Bootcamp attendees got introduced to the Importance of Open Source Software by Bassem Dghaidi, a Solution Architect at GitHub who provided a practical guide on how to contribute to the Open Source community.
• On September 3, Rana Bou Saada From Pro-Toast Club gave a workshop entitled “Ace your Online Pitches and Presentations” that provided the teams with all the needed tips and tricks for virtual presentations and prepared them for the Bootcamp’s Final Project Pitches.

As the Bootcamp came to its last day, brilliant minds came together to build AI Projects. 19 teams were formed but 3 caught the judges’ attention and had them select them as winners!

First place: The Three AI Musketeers

Team members: Rita Mroueh, Ali Ghaddar and Sara Karam

Idea: Detect drivers’ drowsiness by identifying if a person’s eyes are closed during driving for a few seconds and alert them using Deep Learning/Computer Vision/CNN

Second Place: 404

Team Members: Sara Ghabboura, Zeinab Zeitoun, Lina Hourieh and Imad Mostapha

Idea: Build a model based on real data to predict whether the students will dropout from the university based on several factors (gpa, status of payment, high school grades, number of warnings, disability…)

Third Place: Beirut Heroes

Team Members: Ahmad Dorra, Mahmoud Jomaa, Lynn Alloush, Jad Amine

Idea: Classifying Arabic tweets based on the author’s political affiliation using Natural Language Processing.

Members Workshop

As part of the Beirut AI Membership Program, and as we aim to provide our members with various knowledge in the field of AI, we host exclusive workshops and gatherings monthly.

A very interesting workshop was given to our members by Fares Ismail, on August 28, about Leveraging Data Lakes for improved Analytics and Data Science. Graduated from AUB with a bachelors in Computer and Communication Engineering, Fares Ismail has been very interested in Data Science and Data Engineering for a while now. Shortly after graduating, he moved to France to work as a data engineer, where he has been working on Data Lakes both for Open Source projects and for clients across multiple sectors. Fares is a member of this community full of AI enthusiasts working on advancing their technical skills everyday, and benefiting those around them with their already acquired skills at the same time.

These gatherings are exclusive for Beirut AI members. Join our community by applying for the Beirut AI Membership and get to join all our members’ workshops

Tuesdays with Beirut AI

Quoting our community member Michael: “Can we also have Thursdays with Beirut AI?”

Our members can’t get enough of our community! On the first Tuesday of every month, members of Beirut AI gather together to share stories about their AI journeys, ask questions, build their network, and most importantly, have fun!

These gatherings give us hope, as they show the resilience and ambition of the Lebanese that keep them improving their skills and building their future, no matter the circumstances. And no wonder Beirut AI will keep pushing forward to provide nothing but the best for such an enthusiastic community!

Community Workshop: Intro to AI with All Girls Code

Jana Kabrit, Beirut AI’s University Instructors Co-Lead, presented on the 14th and 15th of August an “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” Workshop to the audience of All Girls Code, as part of their Techsplore program, a program that hosts young girls from all backgrounds, free of charge, to introduce them to the applications of coding and programming in different fields.

Jana introduced these young girls to Artificial Intelligence theoretically, and then worked with them to help them build their first AI model on their own.

That’s how our August & September went, let us know in the comments if you’ve joined any of the above programs during this month!

If you like what we do, and are willing to contribute to the development of Beirut AI programs, head over to our donations page and see how you can help!

And remember to reach out to us at info@beirutai.org for any assistance.