Facebook Fellowship for EPFL Students
The Facebook Fellowship Program, initiated in 2013 and awarded in 21 different categories, encourages and supports doctoral students who are engaged in innovative research on computer science, engineering, and allied domains. The winners for 2020 have been announced, and they include the first-ever awardees from EPFL. Panagiotis Sioulas and Merlin Nimier-David, both PhD students at the School of Computer and Communication Sciences, are winners in the categories of Structured Data Stores and Computer Graphics respectively.
Computer Science at EPFL: James Larus Charts the Future
Computer Science is taking rapid strides in realigning itself to advancing technologies. It is beginning to emerge from the cocoon of traditional research to address new challenges posed by avant-garde technologies. In an article published in EPFL Magazine in December 2019, School of Computer and Communication Sciences (IC) Dean James Larus recorded his candid observations on the current status of the discipline at EPFL and the way forward.
EPFL Scientists Call for Ethical Framework to Govern Algorithms
Most discourses on the risks of Artificial Intelligence tend to focus on tech applications that are in the future horizon. The preoccupation with perceived threats such as sentient robots and AI consciousness takes away attention from AI-related issues that are already in the present, affecting simple daily activities such as reading the news, watching YouTube, or using a smartphone app. As School of Computer and Communication Sciences (IC) researchers Lê Nguyên Hoang and El Mahdi El Mhamdi emphasize in their new book, there is an urgent need to restate ethical questions related to algorithms in computational terms.