Animal Matters: Elephants & Engineering Technology for Conservation

Thursday, November 30, 2023 | 12:00-1:00pm ET

Speaker: Karen Panetta, MS, PhD, Dean of Graduate Engineering Education and a Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Tufts University  

THIS IS AN IN-PERSON EVENT, ZOOM REGISTRATION IS ONLY REQUIRED IF YOU WANT TO RECEIVE A LINK TO JOIN REMOTELY.

Location: Curtis Hall Multipurpose Room (474 Boston Avenue, Medford, MA)
Online Viewer Livestream Registration – Nov. 30

This event is co-sponsored by Tufts Center for Animals and Public Policy (CAPP) at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, Tufts Elephant Conservation Alliance, and Tufts University's Environmental Studies Program at the School of Arts & Sciences.

Artificial Intelligence holds much promise to help us explore, explain, and expand our knowledge of the universe. It can be a game changer to advance and expedite applications for autonomous operations to efficiently explore trends in massive data sets. However, there are major challenges we must overcome to fully utilize AI. One challenge is ensuring the results of AI are conducive for human consumption. This includes ensuring that imagery sensor data is optimal for human visual perception, without the need for a human evaluator in the loop. This talk will present Human Visual System (HVS) methods that emulate the way humans evaluate quality. We show how to utilize this concept in computer vision to ensure AI recognition and detection systems produce optimal results for safety, security, and biomedical applications. Quantitative quality metrics based on Human vision and new efficient AI architectures are introduced to address the challenges. Finally, we will also explore real-world applications of these methods will be demonstrated for removing weather anomalies, detecting disease, and showing the impact of these methods to increase detection performance for AI recognition systems.

Dr. Karen Panetta received her B.S. degree in computer engineering from Boston University, Boston and her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Northeastern University, Boston. She is currently the Dean of Graduate Engineering Education and a Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Tufts University. She also holds secondary appointments in Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering. She is the Director of the Panetta Vision and Sensing System Laboratory. Her research interests include developing efficient algorithms for Artificial Intelligence, simulation, modeling, signal, and image processing for ocean engineering, biomedical and security applications. She was a recipient of the 2012 IEEE Ethical Practices Award and the Harriet B. Rigas Award for Outstanding Educator. In 2011, she was awarded the Presidential Award for Engineering and Science Education and Mentoring by U.S. President Obama for her Nerd Girls Program to empower young women in STEM. She is the Vice President of the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the award-winning IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine. She was the IEEE-USA Vice-President of communications and public affairs. From 2007 to 2009, she served as the Chair for the IEEE Women in Engineering, overseeing the world’s largest professional organization supporting women in engineering and science. Karen is the CEO and Co-founder of Tessera Intelligence Inc., Co-founder of Sea Deep Inc. and Co-inventor of the first Digital Twin.

This lecture is part of the Hoch Cunningham Environmental Lecture Series and of CAPP's Animal Matters Seminar Series; to explore and register for other lectures in these series, visit these websites:

https://as.tufts.edu/environmentalstudies/news-events/hoch-cunningham-lecture-series

https://vet.tufts.edu/center-animals-and-public-policy