IAȘI AI 2020 — Year in review
2020 was a year like no other, a rollercoaster with ups and downs. Covid-19 had a huge impact on our lives and changed the way we work and how we interact.
For IAȘI AI — the artificial intelligence community of Iași, following the activities from 2019, 2020 started strong and, with all the challenges this year brought, there are some great things we can point out.
If you’re reading about IAȘI AI for the first time, learn that IAȘI AI is a community of artificial intelligence enthusiasts, started from the desire to increase the awareness of #AI and its applications among technologists, but also creating a favourable context for promoting ideas and initiatives.
If you’re interested in the activity of IAȘI AI, check our website or drop us a message on Facebook.
Community meets Rudradeb Mitra, Founder of Omdena AI
In February, we were pleased to have Rudradeb Mitra, Founder of Omdena AI attending one of our community meetups where he talked about collaboration and how, through artificial intelligence, you can contribute in solving real world problems like detecting wildfires or fighting hunger. 👏
Going exclusively online
In March, like in other cities from all around the world, due to Covid-19 pandemic, the government instituted a national lockdown which forbidden organizing of events, of any kind.
Although we’ve missed the social interaction and engagement of our community members, moving our meetups exclusively online allowed us to reach more AI enthusiasts through our YouTube channel and remove any barrier that, in the past, could prevent a speaker from a different location to attend one of our events.
To sum-up, we’ve learned how to decrypt a machine learning model (Oriana Oniciuc), about reinforcement learning algorithms, the architecture behind Alphastar AI (Alex Movila), sentiment analysis for the Romanian language (Andrei Pruteanu), variational autoencoders (Petru Rebeja) or how healthcare benefits from artificial intelligence where Andrei delivered a presentation within AI — Applications and implications for the benefit of personalized medicine online conference. If any of these topics are in your interests, you should join the community and attend our upcoming events.
Talking with startups that apply AI
While we mainly focus on learning and experimenting, seeing how startups or businesses in general apply artificial intelligence in their products helps better understand possible challenges when we may be in a similar situation.
For August meetup, Lucian Darabus and Tudor Benea showcased EmailTree.ai, a romanian startup using machine learning and NLP techniques to reinvent customer experience, increasing email productivity and automating email composition. For 2021, we’re planning to meet more startup founders and learn how they apply artificial intelligence in their products.
AI in Medicine
One of the greatest initiatives we got involved in 2020 has been the AI in Medicine course, bringing artificial intelligence concepts closer to students from “Grigore T. Popa” University of Medicine and Pharmacy Iași. Initiated by Alexandru Burlacu, Head of Department of Interventional Cardiology at the Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases Iași, he brought together and involved people from both academic and business mediums. Between November 2020 — January 2021, students that attended AI in Medicine course have learned how AI can help with drug discovery or how it can be applied in several medical fields like pneumology or cardiology.
AI in Education
Continuing our December panel series, after opportunities in AI (2018) and research in AI (2019), this year we’ve tackled another interesting topic and that is education.
Together with our guests: Viorica Patraucean (DeepMind/EEML), Adrian Iftene (Computer Science Faculty, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University Iași), Mirela Țibu & Adina Romanescu (“Grigore Moisil” Theoretical High School of Informatics) and Diana Lefter (Agileroo), we’ve talked about AI in education, initiatives and what should be the first steps a teenager or student interested in AI should take in order to build a career.
Taking time to celebrate
It’s great to have industry partners close to the community, willing to get involved and support our activities.
In June, Feel IT Services decided to be part of our story and become one of our community partners, while in October, we’ve celebrated one year of collaboration with Ness Digital Engineering. We are thankful for their suport and involvement.
Below, a short celebration video with some of the activities between end of 2019 — first quarter of 2020, before going exclusively online.
Looking back, 2020 was a great lesson for all of us. We appreciate the loyalty of our community members, their presence and the learnings shared with other enthusiasts through the community YouTube channel, Facebook or Slack.
Stay healthy and see you in 2021!
