Please join Charlottesville Data Science tomorrow evening for the talk Accuracy Isn’t Everything: Good Models are Lurking Everywhere from Evzenie Coupkova, a mathematics PhD from Purdue. In this talk, instead of focusing on one “best” model, Evzenie will explore the broad landscape of possible models, consider what it means for a machine learning model to be “good” for a given problem, and examine the trade-offs between predictive accuracy and other desirable characteristics, like generalization and interpretability.
We’ll be gathering in person at the UVA School of Data Science. We look forward to seeing you there!
Show Us Your Agent Skills: Charlottesville Data Science Edition
Are you using AI agents in your data science and data engineering workflows? If so, how? What’s working, and what’s not? Consider showing off your agentic AI skills at a future Charlottesville Data Science event!
One of my favorite data science podcasts is Vanishing Gradients by Hugo Bowne-Anderson. This year, Hugo has been running an excellent series called Show Us Your (Agent) Skills, in which long-time Python, ML, AI, and data builders show how they’re actually using AI agents today. I’d love to replicate this idea within the Charlottesville Data Science community.
If you’re using AI agents for data analysis, machine learning development, data engineering, or anything else data-related, and you’re game to show them off for your fellow community members in a friendly environment, we’d love to hear from you. You can simply reply to this email, or submit your idea through the Charlottesville Data Science Call for Proposals.
More upcoming events around Charlottesville
Friday, October 9: The Brain Research Interest Group at the UVA School of Data Science hosts the Brain Imaging Analytics Symposium, a half-day event featuring a keynote from NIMH’s Peter Bandettini and research sessions on the intersection of neuroscience and data science.
Friday, October 9: Professor Alex Gates gives the research talk When Are Pairs Enough? Networks, Groups, and the Organization of Science at the UVA School of Data Science. He’ll look at when a pairwise network can actually capture how groups are composed, and when it can't, using studies of scientific collaboration.
Friday, October 16: Momin Malik, an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Mayo Clinic, speaks at the UVA School of Data Science on Anti-positivist data science, and applications to healthcare AI. The talk connects critical perspectives on quantification with practical questions about why healthcare AI classifiers fail to generalize, drift over time, or don't improve patient outcomes.
Tuesday, October 20: UVA's Digital Technology for Democracy Lab hosts a lunchtime talk at Bond House on Bologna’s Civic Digital Twin: Democratic Practices for Urban Simulation and Action. Speakers from the City of Bologna and Fondazione Bruno Kessler will discuss how the city is building urban simulation and modeling tools with democratic governance built in.
Friday, October 23: The UVA Darden School of Business hosts the inaugural Innovate@Darden event. Innovate@Darden will bring together students and practitioners for a day of dialogue around emerging trends, career pathways, and real-world applications of tech and AI across industries.
Tuesday, November 17: rvatech holds its annual rvatech/Women in Technology Conference at the Science Museum of Virginia in Richmond.
Wednesday–Thursday, November 18–19: UVA's Contemplative Sciences Center hosts AI Anxiety + Human Flourishing, a two-day public symposium on preparing young adults for a future with AI. Speakers include Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, AI ethics researcher David Danks, and UVA President Scott Beardsley.
Tuesday, December 1: The Tom Tom Foundation hosts The Infrastructure of Tomorrow: Data Centers, AI, and Virginia’s Future, a conversation with State Senator Creigh Deeds and Delegate Katrina Callsen about whether Virginia can remain a leader in the digital infrastructure economy — while also protecting affordability, sustainability, and the long-term interests of its communities.
Friday, December 4: The LaCross Institute for Ethical Artificial Intelligence in Business at UVA Darden hosts its fourth annual UVA Conference on Ethical AI in Business at The Forum Hotel. This year’s theme is “The AI Readiness Imperative: Preparing People & Organizations for Responsible AI,” and it brings together leaders from business, technology, and policy to talk about adopting AI responsibly.