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BSE and UPF host 40th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence

A man presenting on stage in front of a full auditorium at UAI 2024

Hundreds of data scientists from universities, research institutes, and private firms across the globe participated in the 40th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI 2024) from July 15-19, 2024 at the Ciutadella Campus of Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) in Barcelona. (UPF is one of BSE’s founding universities.)

The Barcelona School of Economics co-organized UAI 2024 with the UPF Departments of Engineering and Medicine and Life Sciences (MELIS). UAI is supported by the Association for Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (AUAI). This edition of the conference was sponsored by Huawei, Google, and D.E. Shaw.

The local organizers of UAI 2024 were UPF Professors Robert Castelo (UPF Functional Genomics Research Group) and Vicenç Gómez (UPF Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Research Group). Both have taught as guest professors in the BSE Master’s Program in Data Science Methodology.

How do we extract meaningful insights from complex data?

UAI is a key meeting point for top-level researchers who specialize in knowledge representation, learning, and reasoning in the presence of uncertainty. These fields contribute to the broader scope of Data Science, enabling the extraction of meaningful insights from complex, uncertain, and structured data.

The 2024 edition of UAI included tutorial sessions, workshops, and poster presentations, as well as three keynote lectures:

  • Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi (Università degli Studi di Milano and Politecnico di Milano)
    “The Power of Cooperation in Networks of Learning Agents”
  • Dominik Janzing (Amazon Research Group)
    “All Causal DAGs Are Wrong but Some Are Useful”
  • Vanessa Didelez (Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology - BIPS)
    “Between Theory and Praxis: Causal Inference and Discovery in Epidemiology”

Where do data scientists work on AI problems?

Among the participants of UAI 2024 were data scientists and researchers from:

  • More than 130 universities in Europe, Asia, and North America
  • Research centers such as the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS), the Max Planck Institutes (Germany) and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (Canada)
  • Large companies such as Apple, Meta AI, Netflix, and NTT
  • Barcelona-based firms such as Criteo

Conference participants post for a group photo on the steps of the National Theater of Catalunya
UAI 2024 participants on the steps of the National Theater of Catalonia, where the conference banquet was held


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