Introducing the College Outreach Program at NeurIPS 2023
by Jihun Hamm, Edward Choi
Summary: NeurIPS is hosting a college outreach program in New Orleans on Monday, Dec. 11th. Our vision is to empower students to engage with AI and learn how it can impact their lives.
Hello! We’re Jihun and Ed, the outreach co-chairs for NeurIPS 2023. We’d like to introduce our plan for the college outreach program at this year’s conference!
Last year, we piloted a high school outreach program, attracting widespread interest with over 240 students from 12 high schools in New Orleans attending NeurIPS. The scale of engagement and impact from this program reaffirms how important it is to give junior researchers an opportunity to participate in machine learning and artificial intelligence.
This year, to ensure that we are giving opportunities to students at various stages of education, we are focusing our outreach opportunities on college students, who will be given unrestricted access to the full NeurIPS program, allowing them to choose sessions based upon their own preferences and pacing.
We are working with local colleges in Louisiana and NOLA in particular, with a focus on HBCU students and with a goal of contributing back to the local community. With the partnership of these local institutions, we’re organizing an outreach event on Dec. 11th to introduce students to NeurIPS and the world of AI. Students participating in our outreach program will get to participate in a special outreach session with a keynote and lunch, receive recommendations for sessions, and be given full access to the entire conference!
Our Vision
NeurIPS plans to invite students from local colleges to visit the conference. Since we understand navigating a giant conference for the first time can be overwhelming, our aim is to provide special sessions and some schedule recommendations for students, while still giving them flexibility and freedom to dictate what main conference sessions they prefer. Students will benefit from:
- An outreach session with a keynote and lunch to get introduced to NeurIPS
- Invitations to affinity workshops and the dinner reception to socialize with the community
- Access to tutorials and the main conference program to engage with AI experts from around the world
Throughout our planning process, we will be partnering with members of the New Orleans community. We recognize that we don’t have all the answers. Our job as co-chairs is to create a program that benefits students first – and that involves bringing educators, community leaders, and students to the table.
What’s Happening Next
As co-chairs, we’re currently working on two responsibilities
- Gathering feedback from the New Orleans community and iterating on event specifics
- Working with our logistics partners on food and transportation.
Expect another update from us with more specifics soon.
We’re excited to run this iteration of NeurIPS outreach. If you have any suggestions, questions, or feedback, please let us know!
Jihun Hamm, Edward Choi
Outreach Chairs, NeurIPS 2023
Email: outreach-chairs@neurips.cc
Appendix: more about us!
Jihun here! I’m an associate professor at Tulane University located in the heart of New Orleans, one of the most unique cultural and historical cities in the US. My main research interests are robust ML, optimization and medical applications of ML. I have taught ML and Deep Learning classes in and outside of computer science. I am glad to have the opportunity to invite Louisiana college students to the outreach program in my hometown NOLA.
Ed here! I’m an assistant professor at KAIST, South Korea. My main research area is AI for healthcare, specifically interested in machines that can understand medical data. I have been teaching an AI programming course for several years, where I had the pleasure to engage with the newcomers of the AI and help them acquire the programming skill to build their own AI models. I’m excited to serve as an outreach chair this year to interact with students of Louisiana!
This year’s outreach program would not have been possible without helpful input from Matt Wang and Jessica Forde, who were last year’s outreach chairs!