AAAI-06 Blog

Lunch with a AAAI Fellow

2006-07-20T05:49:00.000-07:00

I had the pleasure of participating the "Lunch with a AAAI Fellow" event yesterday. We were fortunate enough to meet not one but two AAAI Fellows, Dr. Marty Tenenbaum and Dr. Harry G. Barrow. We were taken to a nice seafood restaurant where we had the opportunity to discuss a wide range of topics with the fellows. Both Dr. Tenenbaum and Dr. Barrow were very insightful and a provided a lot of very useful advice about our own research and the research career in general.

I feel very priviledged to have been given this opportunity and I would like to thank Dr. Tenenbaum and Dr. Barrow again for their time and the effort they put into this event.

Favorite talk so far

2006-07-18T11:43:00.000-07:00

Granted the conference pretty much just started, my favorite talk so far was Stephen Muggleton's talk on computational biology. I was especially interested in the idea of the robot scientist and using ILP for systems biology. He said that he hoped his talk would provide inspiration in the field, and I thought it did. I really bought in to what he was saying about how it's an exciting time for AI because we can apply our tools to this very interesting domain of biological/chemical research that has tons of data and tons of real world applicability. Anyone else seen a talk they really liked so far?

Day 1 Notes (Doctoral Consortium)

2006-07-17T13:59:00.000-07:00

On the first day of AAAI I started at 7 AM from Boston University residence hall and the ride on the (T) was smooth. It took me a while to figure out the registration desk's location (which was in the World Trade Center lobby).

The Doctoral Consortium was in a mid-size room isolated to the end of a long corridor on the Mezzanine level. The room was not quite arranged the way Kiri and Terrane had asked for but the round tables arrangement worked out fine in the end. Kiri started the proceedings with the purpose of the DC and other administrative comments and we quickly went into student presentations. All the presenters recieved a lot of feedback not just from their mentors but also from the rest of the audience.

There were some general comments on the presentation and writing style that I noted down (Please feel free to improve/correct these in the comments) :

1. Try to be interactive and look at the audience and not at the slides during your talk.
2. Keep an eye on the session chair for important time limit signals
3. Be concise
4. Mark out important slides and be sure to get to them even if you have to skip some of the other slides for lack of time.
5. Try to give around a minute per slide and try to limit your number of slides to your time limit (this varies with your talking manner)
6. USE FIGURES, CHARTS AND TABLES.
7. Motivate your problem and give a brief but compelling example of why your work is needed to grab the audience's attention.
8. Try to avoid puttng complicated or long mathematical equations on the slides especially when you don't have time to define all the terms in the equation.
9. Make a clear distinction between related work and your contributions.
10. Spell out your contributions at the beginning to make sure that the audience's expectations are not set too high/low.

I'll cover dinner (which was very good btw), panels on day 2 and more comments in my next post.

The 1st day at the Doctoral Consortium

2006-07-17T07:20:00.000-07:00

The first day of the DC turned out to be a great experiance .. there was a lot of energy which you could see in manner participants made their presentations and also the interest ppl took in asking good questions.. I had not expected ppl to be so involved, but the DC seniors were really into it .. esp the mentors. My mentor David was incredible in the feedback he gave to me in such a short period of time and the personal interest he took in the entire experiance. Other ppl also had simialr experiances, with mentors having spent many hours reading the stuff we had written and published. The ppl who got realy positive feedback about their phd topics can go back and feel confident about being able to sell their research to peers and the scientific community in teh future

I'll write about the DC dinner a bit later !

Some of the pictures that I took around MIT

2006-07-16T21:02:00.000-07:00

Building 10

Ashdown (graduate students dorm)

MIT auditorium

Charles River

Another Charles River

The famous dome

East Campus

Green Building

The path near Hayden Libraray

The view from marriott hotel

In front of 77 massachusetts avenue

Stata building

I hope you enjoy the pics!

Hola from Boston

2006-07-15T16:11:00.000-07:00

I arrived Boston on Thursday. Stayed 2 nights at the HI-Boston and today moved to the Seaport hotel. If you are already here & would like to hang out tonight - feel free to post a message! Some tips from my stay here:
1. Not all Subway station have the "new payment system". Actually most of them still use tokens so do not buy a card with much credit.
2. It is very easy to get to Seaport and to HI-Boston with the T. Both are less than 2 minutes from Subway stations.
3. Freedom trail is a must. It takes 3-4 hours if you stop for photos (& ice-cream). You can do it yourself. A map with info is available for $2 at the info center (Park station).
4. Nightlife - the area near the Fenway park (home of Red-Sox) is the spot, with lot's of bars and night clubs. Avalon is a nice club. Yesterday the cover was $15. Drinks are quite expensive ($10 for vodka-redbull).
5. HI-Boston is a very nice hostel ith nice people but the rooms are very small.
6. Seaport is great :)

C ya,
Saher

Boston University Housing

2006-07-15T15:41:00.000-07:00

First and most importantly, if you are staying in student housing at Boston University, do not get off the green line at Boston Univeristy West! Yes, the residence hall is on the west end of campus. No, that's not the right stop. You want the third stop after Boston University West -- Babcock.

The next thing you need to know is that the residence hall is hiding from you. It's that big unmarked building right on the corner of Commonwealth and Babcock. And just to make your life more difficult, the entrance isn't actually on Commonwealth. It's on Babcock.

I truly hope you don't suffer through the agony of lugging your bags all around town searching for this place like I did.

(Okay, so it wasn't that bad. But the walk from U West, where I got off the green, to the residence hall -- it's not fun. Especially if you're carrying your bags with you. Thank goodness I packed light.)

And finally to the most important thing on all of our minds: food. Boston University has this awesome page that will tell you exactly what restaurants are open in the area right now. It includes reviews, menus, addresses, and regular business hours. This is brilliant. Check it out if you have a bad case of late-night munchies or are in desperate need of dinner:

Boston University Restaurants: Who's Open?

And leave a comment if you find a restaurant that's just out of this world, because I'm hungry!

An FYI on taxis from the airport

2006-07-15T10:46:00.000-07:00

Just to let people know, when you take a cab from the Logan airport, they add $6.50 in fees to the fare. I found that out firsthand this morning...
We'll see everyone in Boston!

AAAI-06 for your calendar

2006-07-10T17:33:00.000-07:00

If you have an ICAL compatible calendar, feel free to subscribe to the AAAI-06 Technical Sessions Calendar I put together. Please let me know if anything is out of sync with The Official AAAI-06 Schedule, and I will fix it right away.

Swapping Volunteer Tasks

2006-06-11T14:42:00.000-07:00

Everyone should have received an email notification that the volutneer tasks have been assigned. If you have a time conflict or another reason that doesn't allow you to do your assigned task, you can use the AAAI-06 Student Forum to try and swap tasks with other volunteers. Once both parties have come to an aggreement, the volunteer schedule will be updated.

Seaport Hotel from Logan Airport

2006-05-24T16:21:00.000-07:00

For people staying at the Seaport Hotel, it looks like it's really easy to get there from the airport if you take the Subway. You just get on the Silver line at the airport and stay on it until World Trade Center Station.

Here is the MBTA page about the Silver Line and here are directions to the hotel from their webpage.

Volunteer notifications have been sent out

2006-05-16T11:41:00.000-07:00

If you submitted a volunteer application for the conference, you should have received your notification. If you haven't, wait a day or two and if you still don't hear from AAAI, you may want to contact them. We will be posting the volunteer schedule on the student site once we have access to it. This will allow people access to the schedule from anywhere rather then just their email.

Information about cheap accommodation in Boston

2006-05-09T04:49:00.000-07:00

I tried to summarize the options for accommodation to myself and thought it might be helpful for everybody. As for me, I plan to wait until we get the scholarship notification and then make a decision based on the budget. My main problem with the student housing is its distance from the Seaport hotel: according to the MBTA trip planner to be at 08:45 (July the 21st) in the Hotel we'll have to leave the dorms around 07:40 (assuming 5 minutes walk each side).
If you manage to find more good alternatives please post a reply. Maybe we should try to groop ourselves and get a good price from a nearby cheap Hotel.

Conference:
Address: 200 Seaport Boulevard, Boston, MA
Station: World Trade Center

Berkeley Residence, YWCA
Address: 40 Berkeley Street, Boston, MA
Station: Back Bay (5 minutes walk)
Rates: 1-bed room (shared bathroom) $60
2-bed room (shared bathroom) $45
Avg. rating: 76% (click for reviews)
Breakfast and dinner included

The Prescott International Hotel and Hoste (Edited)
Address: 36 Church Street, Boston, MA
Station: Sullivan Square (5 minutes by bus)
Rates: 1 bed room (shared bathroom) $99
4 bed room (shared bathroom) $30
Avg. rating: 73% (click for reviews)
WiFi in room (but we should confirm by email)

Hi Boston
Address: 12 Hemenway Street, Boston, MA
Station: Hynes Convention Center (5 minutes walk)
Rates: 6 bed room (shared bathroom) $38
Avg. rating: 83% (click for reviews)
Continental breakfast included

Student dorms (offered by AAAI)
Address: the corner of Babcock Street and Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA
Station: Babcock Street
Rates: single (shared bathroom) $54
double (shared bathroom) $47
Internet in room (cable is needed)

MBTA Trip planner

List of papers (without technical session papers)

2006-05-05T15:23:00.000-07:00

I found this link that shows a list of accepted papers for the Member papers, NECTAR papers, Doctoral Consortium, Student Abstracts and IS Demos. The full papers aren't up yet, but this gives a nice preview of some things to check out.

AAAI-06 Student Housing Info and Early Registration

2006-05-05T11:47:00.000-07:00

For anyone who didn't see the email from AAAI about student housing for AAAI-06, I've included the email below:

AAAI-06 is fast approaching, and I wanted to draw your attention to several important items:

AAAI has reserved a block of dorm rooms at Boston University for students. Please note that the cut-off date for reservations is Friday, June 2.
Information
Housing Form

A reminder that the early registration deadline is Friday, May 19. For more information, please see this form. The Seaport Hotel reservation deadline is June 23, and information is available at the hotel information page. For online reservations, use the reservation code: AAAI06. Please note that space is limited and the block will fill fast.

Volunteer deadline coming up quickly!

2006-04-14T15:26:00.000-07:00

Don't forget that you can still sign up as a volunteer and get your registration fee covered as well as some travel expenses. More information can be found at the AAAI-06 Student Information Site or the conference website.

I will be presenting at the Doctoral Consortium and Matt had his full paper accepted for the poster session (rumor has it he may be giving an IS demo as well). We look forward to seeing other grad students there, either as attendees or presenters. Post a comment to provide everyone with information about a talk you may be giving or something you think may be of interest to others.

Welcome

2006-02-14T16:01:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the AAAI-06 Student Blog. Here you will find posts from the prospective of students attending the Twenty-First National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, hosted by AAAI on July 16-20 in Boston, MA. Check back often!!