Bistra Dilkina
Los Angeles, California, United States
2K followers
500+ connections
2K followers
500+ connections
About
AI | Optimization | ML | Social Good | Computational Sustainability ----
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2K followers
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Bistra Dilkina reposted thisBistra Dilkina reposted this🌍 This summer, 3rd-year PhD candidate Hannah Murray represented USC CAIS at the Vienna International Summer School on Transnational Crime and Justice in partnership with the Alliance of NGOs on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Through this summer program, Hannah had the opportunity to observe the United Nations Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ) and engage in various side events focused on the potential new UNTOC protocol on crimes against the environment, which would treat environmental offenses, such as wildlife trafficking, as organized transnational crimes. Hannah also presented her research to summer school participants and leaders on leveraging AI to identify hidden wildlife trafficking hotspots and detect illicit wildlife sales on social media. This work builds on her related research with her PhD advisor, Bistra Dilkina, published in Communications Earth & Environment: https://lnkd.in/exJ_Cj5p “If we do not start leveraging AI ethically to combat the same crimes, the criminals will only get further and further ahead. CAIS research shows examples of how AI can be used to shrink this gap.” UNODC, Alliance of NGOs on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, USC Viterbi School of Engineering, USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work
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Bistra Dilkina shared thisExciting postdoc opportunity!!!Bistra Dilkina shared thisWe're looking for a Postdoctoral Researcher in Geospatial Machine Learning and Earth Observation to work on our new Features of the World initiative. This position is part of a partnership between the Microsoft AI for Good Lab and Taylor Geospatial, hosted at Washington University in St. Louis, and advised by me! This is a great opportunity for someone excited about building large-scale geospatial AI systems that use satellite imagery and other Earth observation data to identify, characterize, and monitor meaningful features of the planet over time. The work will be technically ambitious, highly applied, and connected to real-world challenges in sustainability, conservation, agriculture, infrastructure, and climate resilience. If you have, or expect to soon have, a PhD in Computer Science / Machine Learning / Computer Vision / Remote Sensing or related, then we'd love to hear from you. To apply: please contact featuresoftheworld@microsoft.com with your CV and a short description of your relevant experience.
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Bistra Dilkina shared thisExciting news for #AI research at University of Southern California and for our newly minted USC Stevens School of Computing and AI, thanks to a generous gift! Proud and inspired to be part of the amazing set of USC faculty and students working on AI for the betterment of humanity, and to contribute to USC's leadership in this field through the USC Center for AI in Society.Bistra Dilkina shared thisToday USC launched a pathbreaking university-wide initiative that will leverage AI to accelerate our societal impact in fields ranging from the health sciences and security to business and the arts. Thanks to the generosity and vision of Mark and Mary Stevens, whose names will now grace the USC Stevens School of Computing and AI, we will attract even more world-class AI talent to USC. Read more about the $200M gift establishing USC’s leadership in the Age of AI. https://uscne.ws/7e26aa (Photo illustration/Stevens photo by Steve Cohn, Ginsburg Hall rendering by HOK)Mark and Mary Stevens give $200M for AI research across USCMark and Mary Stevens give $200M for AI research across USC
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Bistra Dilkina reposted thisWe are organizing a STOC 2026 Workshop on Machine Learning for Algorithms. Check out the tentative schedule and details here: https://lnkd.in/g64yuNdx If you're a student, postdoc, or researcher with relevant work, you can submit your poster here: https://shorturl.at/cCJCdBistra Dilkina reposted thisExcited to announce the STOC 2026 Workshop on Machine Learning for Algorithms organized in part by MLD Professor Maria-Florina Balcan! Check out the tentative schedule and details here: https://lnkd.in/g64yuNdx If you're a student, postdoc, or researcher with relevant work, you can submit your poster here: https://shorturl.at/cCJCd
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Bistra Dilkina reposted thisBistra Dilkina reposted thisAttention 1st and 2nd-year Ph.D. students, applications for AI-SCORE 2026 are due on April 17 at 5pm EST! The event is happening May 18-22 in Chicago. Please find all the details and application form at our website: https://lnkd.in/eEMhPkSu AI-SCORE is a dedicated school to (i) train Ph.D. students to be dually conversant in both OR and CS methodological traditions, and (ii) pose challenge problems that are positioned to excite researchers across the CS-OR spectrum. We will kickstart with a plenary from David Shmoys (Cornell), and then have the following intensive modules: - Contextual Optimization, led by Vishal Gupta (USC) and Kai Wang (GT). Plenary by Hamsa Bastani (U Penn). - Generative AI for Science/Engineering, led by Ferdinando Fioretto (U Virginia) and Léonard Boussioux (U Washington). Plenary by Carla Gomes (Cornell). Organizers are Lavanya Marla (UIUC), Ferdinando Fioretto (U Virginia), Bistra Dilkina (USC), and Adam Elmachtoub (Columbia). Advisor committee includes David Shmoys (Cornell), Michael Fu (U Maryland), and Sven Koenig (UC Irvine).
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Bistra Dilkina reposted thisBistra Dilkina reposted thisarXiv is recruiting a CEO who will lead the organization as it becomes an independent non-profit. This is an exciting opportunity to improve the infrastructure for open science! The job advert is here: https://lnkd.in/gRRza-jTChief Executive Officer - New York City, New York (US) job with arXiv | 37961678Chief Executive Officer - New York City, New York (US) job with arXiv | 37961678
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Bistra Dilkina reposted thisBistra Dilkina reposted thisOn Saturday, January 24 at 2 PM at #AAAI2026, Ece Kamar (Microsoft Research) will be giving an invited talk titled "Navigating the AI Horizon: Promises, Perils, and the Power of Collaboration." Ece is Distinguished Scientist, Corporate Vice President and the Managing Director of the AI Frontiers Lab at Microsoft Research. Releases from her lab include Phi, AutoGen, MagenticOne, MagenticUI. She has been instrumental in building Responsible AI within Microsoft. CC Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Hadi Hosseini
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Bistra Dilkina reposted thisBistra Dilkina reposted thisThe Patrick Henry Winston Outstanding Educator Award went to Alan Mackworth (UBC) and David Poole (UBC). At #AAAI2026, they'll be giving a talk "The Essence of Intelligence is Appropriate Action (not thinking, reasoning, learning or language) and other things every student of AI should know" on Sunday, January 25 at 8:30 AM Alan is Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia. He's co-authored two books, on computational intelligence and AI. He's been president of AAAI, IJCAI, CAIAC, and is a Fellow of AAAI, CAIAC, AGE-WELL, CIFAR, and the Royal Society of Canada. David is Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia. He's co-authored three books, on computational intelligence, AI, and statistical relational AI. He chaired UAI, won the CAIAC Lifetime Achievement award, and is a fellow of AAAI and CAIAC. CC Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Hadi Hosseini
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Bistra Dilkina reposted thisBistra Dilkina reposted this📸 As part of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) 2026 AI & Wildlife Conservation Bridge Program, PhD student Hannah Murray will present on her work related to sensor placement for wildlife monitoring. Join her at 2:45 p.m. Singapore time on Jan. 20th. Schedule details here: https://lnkd.in/gRtKhvkd Co-authors: Amrita Gupta, Arielle Parsons, Justin Suraci, Bistra Dilkina USC Viterbi School of Engineering, USC School of Advanced Computing, Conservation Science Partners, Microsoft Research
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Bistra Dilkina reacted on thisBistra Dilkina reacted on thisSome inventions change industries. Some change everyday life. These Trojans were able to do both. On the eve of America’s 250th, USC Viterbi School of Engineering highlighted influential Trojans who helped deliver the future for millions of Americans. 🇺🇲✌️ #STEM #Innovation #AlumniSuccess
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Bistra Dilkina reacted on thisBistra Dilkina reacted on thisA new chapter begins. From USC Viterbi School of Engineering graduate student to dean (interim), Gaurav Sukhatme's 35-year Trojan journey has come full circle 🤝 A pioneering roboticist, Sukhatme has spent the past nine years as USC Viterbi's executive vice dean and the past two leading the USC Stevens School of Computing and AI. Watch his first message to the University of Southern California community: 🔗 https://lnkd.in/gmGVNQQc
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Bistra Dilkina reacted on thisNot exactly a quick read, but hopefully worth reading, as my dean's term at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering comes to an end after 21 years (and one month to be exact!)… Thank you to our wonderful Adam Smith for putting this together. My extraordinary gratitude to National Academy of Engineering President Tsu-Jae Liu, to Stephanie Bartholomew, Aava Abedinpour, Linda Rock, and Professor Najm Meshkati for their very kind remarks, and to Salman Avestimehr and Sudha Kumar for the wonderful albums they produced!Bistra Dilkina reacted on thisTwenty-One Years. Twenty-One Questions. As Yannis Yortsos concludes more than two decades as dean of USC Viterbi, he looks back on the people, moments and ideas that shaped an extraordinary chapter in the school's history. In this candid exit interview, Yortsos reflects on the evolution of engineering education, the values that have guided his leadership, and why preparing engineers with both outstanding competence and outstanding character matters more than ever. Along the way, he shares his most unforgettable meetings, the surprising advice he still carries with him, and his musical equivalent of headache medicine 🎶 Read the full interview: 🔗 https://lnkd.in/gb4KE4aE
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Bistra Dilkina reacted on thisI am grateful and honored to share that I have been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. I am deeply thankful for the generosity and support of so many amazing mentors, colleagues, collaborators, friends, and family. I am especially grateful to my students, those who have graduated and those who are currently in my group, for their trust, creativity, and dedication. It is a privilege to work with such talented researchers on problems at the intersection of ML and optimization, constraint-aware generative AI for science, and AI safety. Their energy and ideas make the work meaningful every day! If you are reading this, please do check their awesome work: https://lnkd.in/eTE95Wma I am excited for my next chapter and for the research we will continue building together!Bistra Dilkina reacted on thisCongratulations to the UVA Engineering faculty who have received tenure or promotions this year! I am so proud of these amazing educators and researchers how are dedicated to Engineering for the Greater Good. https://lnkd.in/ed4ByGsyUVA Engineering Announces 2026 Faculty Promotions and TenureUVA Engineering Announces 2026 Faculty Promotions and Tenure
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Bistra Dilkina liked thisBistra Dilkina liked thisIf you are attending the L4DC conference at USC, join us tomorrow morning for a half-day tutorial on Scientific Machine Learning for Modeling, Optimization, and Control. We'll cover the fundamentals of SciML through hands-on coding examples, including learning to model, learning to optimize, and learning to control using differentiable programming libraries PyTorch, JAX, and NeuroMANCER. The tutorial is co-organized with Thomas Beckers and Truong Xuan Nghiem and moderated by Adam Wierman. 📅 Conference schedule: https://lnkd.in/gX_Gy_ST 🕘 Time: 9:00 AM – 12:30 PM 📍 Location: Ginsburg Board Room 💻 Tutorial website (slides, notebooks, and materials): https://lnkd.in/geNAXeBZ We look forward to seeing you there!Scientific Machine Learning for Modeling, Optimization, and ControlScientific Machine Learning for Modeling, Optimization, and Control
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Bistra Dilkina liked thisBistra Dilkina liked thisKeynote by Andrea Lodi at LION20 today - Mixed-Integer Programming: 65+ years of history and the AI challenge #machinelearning for #MILP problems is an area showing impressive progress in #intelligentoptimization Abstract: Mixed-Integer Programming (MIP) technology is used daily to solve (discrete) optimization problems. The MIP roots date back to 1958 with the seminal work by Ralph Gomory on cutting plane generation. In this talk, we will discuss — taking the (biased) viewpoint of the speaker — how MIP evolved in its main algorithmic ingredients, namely preprocessing, branching, cutting planes and primal heuristics, to become a mature research field whose advances rapidly translate into professional, widely available software tools. We will then discuss the next phase of this process, where #ArtificialIntelligence and, specifically, #MachineLearning are already playing a significant role, a role that is likely to increase.
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Bistra Dilkina liked thisBistra Dilkina liked thisInstead of doing geospatial ML experiments, Isaac Corley and I made something "deeply cursed" in the latest geospatial ML blog post -- https://lnkd.in/eAWkfijh Do you ever look at the gdal command line and think "hey, I could probably implement a U-Net with just this?" If not, that's normal and healthy. If so, you'll really appreciate the post (you might also even if not though)! As a cool plus side to what has to be one of the least efficient ways to run inference (i.e. using only gdal CLI commands), you can really easily visualize all of the intermediate activations. We also built a visualizer to show this!
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Dr Luke A. Yates
For me one of the most enjoyable parts of scientific discovery is the stimulating conversations with other scientists to solve problems. Now agentic AI could bootstrap this process. In this latest episode of WebsEdge ‘Agents of Tech’, Stephen Horn, Laila Rizvi, and I had the privilege to talk with Prof. James Zou from Stanford University who has created a virtual lab of AI ‘scientists’ to find novel covid-19 treatments. In our conversation, I was fascinated by AI agents going to ‘school’ to gain deep knowledge in a specific subject, such as immunology, or structural biology, and then ‘converse’ with one another in a multi-disciplinary team to develop new hypotheses and design experiments. These are then tested in real life by scientists - with amazing results. From our discussions what was most eye opening to me is that AI scientists are even getting their own conferences! 📖 Read more about Prof. Zou’s virtual lab in Nature Magazine 🔗 https://lnkd.in/e_dHcWtm 📕 Read more about conferences for AI scientists/agents in a new MIT Technology Review 🔗 https://lnkd.in/e9g8xNsh 🎧 Listen or watch the ‘Agents of Tech’ episode here: https://lnkd.in/eMp_pVUd #AI #research #podcast
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