US scientist to mentor IUST students

Awantipora: A Special lecture on ‘Data Science 3.0: Democratisation of Artificial Intelligence’ by a prominent US scientist was organized by the International Centre for Spiritual Studies (ICSS), Islamic University of Science and Technology (IUST), here today.

Principal Scientist with the Watson Health Group of International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), Dr Faisal Farooq delivered an extensive lecture on the evolution and impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

“There were times when only researches could conceptualise AI, now it has penetrated our daily lives. AI is now in the hands of the user and not just the scientist,” he said while giving different examples from the field.

While elaborating on its ‘active and winter phase,’ he added, “Over the past decade Artificial Intelligence has become the mainstream. 1997 was the winter phase and 2000 was the go phase of AI. We have experienced democratisation of AI as it is accessible, real, practical and the best part is that uses it even when a person is not aware of it, he or she is using it”.

Farooq, a Kashmiri by origin authored more than 20 patents, about 50 scientific publications and serves on the review board of various international conference and journals like International Journal of Document Analysis and Recognition, Pattern Recognition, etc also dealt with usage of AI in health sector and importance of data. He said, “The major driving force for success includes computing power and availability of data. The computing power is increasing substantially and there is exponential growth in AI. Even in health, we have personalized the data on human health.”

Dr. Farooq also expressed desire on guiding University’s students on various research projects.

Vice Chancellor, IUST, Mushtaq A. Siddiqi who was the Chief Guest on the occasion talked about his desire to see a serious inclination in students towards Artificial Intelligence that provides solutions in the field of Health, Environment, Computing, social sciences etc and in the field of bio-sciences.

“20-30 years of earlier human genome project have become that of one year due to it. Therefore, it was an attempt from our side to create a seat for AI in IUST that will help in competitive science projects and Dr. Farooq has consented to be our mentor for this.”

Registrar IUST, Prof Farooq A Mir who was present during the lecture said, “AI is a platform for students from diverse steams where they converge together.”

Dean School of Technology, Prof. A.H. Moon who was the Guest of Honour said , “Today was the spring of AI at IUST and we will soon make a group of faculty and students who will undertake projects on AI as our university has enough resources for science and technology projects.”

Earlier Head of ICSS and organiser of the event, Dr Iqbal Quraishi welcomed the expert and gave a brief introduction of Dr Farooq and said, “Farooq is a Kashmir born, world renowned research leader in the area of Artificial Intelligence who wishes to give back to the society and IUST will collaborate with him on various fronts.”

The lecture was followed by Question-Answer Sessions attended by various Deans, HODs, faculty members and students from various departments.