On Thursday, April 12, 2018, Rensselaer Trustee and Senior Vice President for Cognitive Solutions and Research at IBM Corporation, John E. Kelly III ’78G, ’80 Ph.D., D.H.L. (Hon.) hosted a Fireside Chat at the IBM Watson Experience Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts with special guests Shirley Ann Jackson, Ph.D., President, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and L. Rafael Reif, Ph.D., President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The topic of discussion was the growing importance of artificial intelligence and the role partnerships between industry and academia are playing in advancing this game-changing field. The capacity crowd included Rensselaer alumni and alumnae, parents, students, corporate and foundation partners, and friends of the Institute.
In addition to the Fireside Chat, attendees had the opportunity to participate in a series of immersive demos highlighting Rensselaer partnerships with IBM, including The Jefferson Project at Lake George, The Cognitive and Immersive Systems Lab (CISL), Health Empowerment by Analytics, Learning, and Semantics (HEALS), and Flying Through a Neuromorphic-enabled Supercomputer. Additional IBM Research demos included a live Cyber Range Experience and Watson Health Immersion Room module on oncology and genomics.