With the participation of distinguished international figures, the 5th IMFD Workshop takes place

January 2024.- Over three days and traveling from the mountains to the sea: that is how the 5th Workshop of the Millennium Institute for Foundational Research on Data (IMFD) took place, held from January 10 to 12, first on the Peñalolén campus of Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, in Santiago, and then in the Coraceros Room of the Hotel Pullman in Viña del Mar.

“This is the first large workshop we have held after the IMFD’s renewal process, which required a major effort from all the teams. That is why today we came together with the great challenge of thinking about our research from a long-term perspective, looking for ways to strengthen both the people who make up the IMFD and the research areas we work in,” highlighted Juan Reutter, director of the Millennium Institute for Foundational Research on Data (IMFD).

 

The activities featured the participation of distinguished scientists who are members of IMFD’s international advisory board: Ernesto Calvo, Director of the Interdisciplinary Lab for Computational Social Science (iLCSS) and Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, USA; Jeffrey Vitter, Professor Emeritus of Computer & Information Science at the University of Mississippi, USA, and René Vidal, professor in the Schools of Engineering and Medicine, and director of the Innovation in Data Science and Engineering Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania, USA.

Jeffrey Vitter noted that “holding these meetings in person is invaluable: what is achieved in three days at a conference like this can take months of work when you are not sharing the same space.” He also added that “listening to and understanding the problems that students face is what helps move research forward.” Vitter is an internationally recognized leader in the field of information storage and retrieval theory, and the mathematical design and analysis of computational algorithms. He has been elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, among other distinctions.

 

 

Keynote talks and poster sessions

During the first day, nearly 100 attendees took part in three keynote talks delivered by the international advisory board members, starting with Jeffrey Vitter’s talk on “Optimal space bounds for text indexing.” René Vidal then presented on “Explainable AI by Design via Semantic Information Pursuit,” and the closing talk was given by Ernesto Calvo, titled “Confirmation, Refutation, and Affect in Social Media Amplification.”

In addition, more than 30 scientific posters were presented by students and researchers from the different research lines. The award-winning works at the end of the day were “Delitos vinculados al narcotráfico en la provincia de Santiago: análisis de sus determinantes a partir de su distribución espacial,” by Sebastián Rainao and Camila Rojas; “Sistema de recomendación de candidatos y candidatas para ofertas laborales,” from IMFD’s Innovation and Technology Transfer area, presented by Juan José Alegría, Gabriel Norambuena, and Camila Henríquez; and “Moral Foundations of Chilean Politicals Speeches,” an interdisciplinary research project by Daniel Alcatruz, Juan Reutter, and Sergio Toro, presented by Lucas Valenzuela.

 

Interdisciplinary work sessions

For the second day of the Workshop, some of the researchers and students traveled to Viña del Mar, where –in sessions led by Aidan Hogan, IMFD’s deputy director– working groups were formed with the goal of exploring new research topics and strategies for addressing them.

During these two days, the members of the international advisory board also shared their experiences, both in technology transfer applied to the field of data science, and regarding the challenges of developing interdisciplinary research between computer science and social sciences.

The experts highlighted the importance of the work carried out by IMFD. For Ernesto Calvo, IMFD’s work is a regional leader, since the applications under development that he learned about at the workshop –such as MillenniumDB– are unique in Latin America. He noted that the main challenge the institute faces today is not related to research, but rather to keeping the project funded and running: “Convincing the political world that it is worth investing in making projects like this sustainable over time is an important and necessary challenge,” he emphasized.

Meanwhile, René Vidal said he was very impressed with the IMFD team, since he knows firsthand how difficult it is to lead multidisciplinary teams and achieve collaboration between different areas: “It is very interesting to see people working together, you did it and you should be proud of having achieved it in such a short time. Now it is up to you to think about where you want to be three years from now, for which you must focus on continuing this work and securing funding, because ensuring the continuity of this project is beneficial for the country and for all of Latin America as well.”

IMFD’s workshops aim to bring together the academics, students, and researchers who are part of the institute, in order to share their experiences and challenges, and to promote the interdisciplinary and collaborative research that characterizes the cutting-edge work carried out by this center.