Mavericks and Mavens in Artificial Intelligence: An MAKI List

We are right in the middle of our summer of 'Using AI for Good' Expert Forums, with Aiimi and Data Reply UK so we asked some MKAI fans and friends to tell us about the Mavericks and Mavens currently working in AI. Each of them nominated the person they think is making the most unique impact around the world.

The next MKAI event is 'Using AI for Good- Part 2' on Thursday 23rd July at 5pm BST. Register to attend here

Here's whom they choose. Congratulations to the brilliant individuals on this list, your nominee and MKAI thank you for your contributions to the field of artificial intelligence.

1) Heena Purohit, Lead Product Manager Watson IoT at IBM

Heena is on LinkedIn and Twitter. Heena was nominated by Ellen Ward.

Ellen says: "Heena is a Lead Product Manager at IBM Watson IoT where she leads the development of AI and IoT based offerings for industrial and manufacturing customers. She also leads AI for Her, empowering women to get into AI, regardless of background or educational level. Prior to IBM, Heena was a technology consultant at Accenture where she helped Fortune 500 companies transform their business processes. She has a dual major MBA from the University of Notre Dame and was awarded the University’s Recent Alumni Service Award for her work in supporting women in STEM and workplace diversity."

2) Nikhil Malhotra, Global Head of Innovation at TechMahindra

Nikhil is on Linkedin and Twitter. Nikhil was nominated by Jasial Surana.

Jaisal says: "I am very impressed with the AI and robotics platforms and applications he has led for the Maker’s lab in TechMahindra be it protein-peptide comparison for Covid-19 for mathematical modelling for therapeutic drug research. The delivery of Stori-Cool, a conversational AI-based platform for animated videos and automated scene creation with multilingual support, with the possibility of diverse outputs of simple exe fie, AR/VR enabled output, mobile app, video, image. AI-based automated applications for the Automobile industry, healthcare and his work on Sanskrit translation is a vision I can relate as Indian languages and NLP needs support for dialects."

3) Kevin Warwick, Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Coventry University

Kevin is on Linkedin. Kevin was nominated by Tim Teece.

Tim says: "When I left high school and went looking for universities I came across this chap at reading university, he really enthused me about AI and robotics and he does really fit into the Mavericks category"

4) Michelle Proksell, Experience Researcher

Michelle is on LinkedIn and Twitter. Michelle was nominated by Paul Levy.

Paul says: "Michelle is doing some fascinating work exploring AI, chatbots and theatre and the arts."

5) Karina Vold, Postdoctoral Research Associate at Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence

Karina is on LinkedIn and Twitter. Karina was nominated by Peter Scott.

Peter says: "Karina is a postdoc philosopher at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence in the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, Cambridge, England, shortly to take up a professorship at the University of Toronto. She spoke about the ethics of brain-computer interfaces at 2019's CogX, and has authored papers on topics ranging from extending our minds with AI to existential risk. She was featured in the list "100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics to Follow in 2019 and beyond". She's been interviewed on the BBC and CBC, and was instrumental in the 2019 Animal=AI Olympics, an event to see how AIs stack up cognitively against the animal kingdom."

6) Irene Phoebe Kiwia, Founder at Frontline Media Management

Irena is on LinkedIn and Twitter. Irena was nominated by John Kamara.

John says: "Irena is a powerful woman in Business and built Twaa, a women empowerment platform using AI and driving the inclusion of girls in AI"

7) Daniel Hulme, CEO at Satalia

Daniel is on LinkedIn and Twitter. Daniel was nominated by Gerry Copitch.

Gerry says: "I feel I must nominate Dr. Daniel Hulme. We share philosophical backgrounds which might explain why I agree with his distinction between Machine Learning and AI, his views on human intelligence and the ways in which AI can transform the human experience. Aside from his academic achievements and global renown as a maven, he is The CEO of Satalia, which applies his ideas in “The real world”. Satalia has adopted many unique, revolutionary practices and is a vision of future enterprise."

8) Fei Fei Li, Co-Director at Stanford Human-Centered AI Institute

Fei Fei is on LinkedIn and Twitter. Fei Fei was nominated by Karen Beraldo and Char Richmond

Karen says: "Fei Fei Li stands for democratizing AI, and I believe people are what matters the most, so helping the humanity through technology and AI is what should guide all, or at least the majority of experts, in this field. There is one sentence on AI4All website that was very important to make my choice: "Our vision for AI is a world where diverse perspectives, voices, and experiences unlock AI’s potential to benefit humanity." Fei Fei Li stands for what she believes, has the desire to improve human life and is engaged with several important projects and research. Her concern of bringing equal opportunities and benefits for everyone through AI technology reflects on her enthusiastic work. As humans we all depend on each other, we have to be concerned about minimizing bias in data so the future through technology and AI will be built in a fairer way and with equal opportunities for everyone. Work with this quality and visibility can change the world and turn it into a better place."

Char says: "With experience in both academia and business, Li founded AI4All, a non-profit organisation, dedicated to increasing diversity and inclusion in the field of AI. Li approaches AI with a humanistic mindset, which she refers to as “human centred AI” and stating that “there’s nothing artificial about AI” and emphasising the importance of issues such as society and ethics."

9) Violet Snell, Head of AI at Jenoptik Traffic Solutions UK

Violet is on LinkedIn. Violet was nominated by Will Kellet.

Will Says: "Violet is currently building a Deep Learning team to tackle real-world challenges surrounding visual detection, action recognition within vehicle classification and ANPR for traffic safety. Violet is a teacher at Code First Girls – an award-winning not for profit founded to get more women into tech. Violet boasts a Master’s from Oxford University in Engineering and Computing Science which she started aged 16, and a PhD from the University of Surrey in Computer Vision."

10) Allie K. Miller, US Head of AI Business Development, Startups and Venture Capital at Amazon

Allie is on LinkedIn and Twitter. Allie was nominated by Arif Khan.

Arif Says: "The world of AI can often be confusing, impersonal, faceless, intimidating and male-dominated. Allie K. Miller changes all that. Despite being an award-winning senior professional, with deep expertise, Allie does more to support and encourage those on the ground than anyone I know in the AI space. She has made AI accessible through huge numbers of posts online; she has taken the time to share management and productivity tips; she has written funny articles that make AI relatable and interesting to a wide range of readership. From “7 Steps to Design, Build and Scale an AI Product” and “When is ML not a good idea?” to “A video that always makes me laugh: a robot twerking” Allie has all bases covered for those wanting to learn more about AI! It is no surprise she was named in the Top 20 of both AI Speakers and AI Influencers in the world."

11) Geraint Wiggins, Professor of Computational Creativity

Geraint has an academic page. Geraint was nominated by Alistair Willis.

Alistair says: "I'd like to nominate Professor Geraint Wiggins as an Artificial Intelligence maverick and maven. Professor Wiggins was one of the principal founders of the area of computational creativity in AI, particularly focussing on AI in music. Professor Wiggins holds PhDs from the University of Edinburgh: the first in Natural Language Processing and a second in Musical Composition, and he has spent a career investigating the relationships between computational reasoning and creativity. Professor Wiggins has been at the forefront of research in computational creativity since the early 1990s, when AI focussed mainly on symbolic and logical approaches and computational creativity was a highly niche area. He currently holds chairs in computational creativity at Queen Mary, University of London, and the AI Lab, Brussels."

12) Jeremy Howard, Founder and researcher at fast.ai

Jeremy is on LinkedIn and Twitter. Jeremy was nominated by Peet Deny.

Peet says: "The world of Artificial Intelligence is vast and spans everything from research into what constitutes consciousness to the morality of autonomous weapons to how to discover novel pharmaceutical compounds. But just as aerospatial research led to breakthroughs in areas as mundane as non-stick frying pans, so AI research has produced a wealth of practical tools that can be used right now by ordinary companies to solve real problems. Nobody has done more to put these tools into the hands of those companies than Jeremy Howard.

After becoming the highest-ranked engineer in competitive machine learning two years running on the Kaggle platform, Howard went on to become president and chief scientist of this platform which gives aspiring data scientists a foothold in the world of machine learning, and a way to showcase their abilities. He then went on to create Fast.ai - a library and free online course which takes developers from zero understanding of machine learning into being Deep Learning practitioners in around seventy hours. His course differs from other MOOCs in that it starts with being able to use the tools to solve problems first, which jumps over the mathematical barrier that most other courses pose. This approach of focusing on the practical has not allowed companies to start using machine learning relatively cheaply and quickly but has also produced some world-famous researchers of its own (e.g. Jason Antic from Deoldify)"

13) Joy Buolamwini, Timnit Gebru and Deborah Raji

Joy, Timnit and Inioluwa were nominated by Merve Hickok.

Merve says: "I nominate Joy, Timnit and Inioluwa for their research on facial recognition systems using machine learning algorithms pointing to discrimination based on race and gender, and their following advocacy work that eventually paved the way for major vendors taking action on their FRT products." 

14) Melissa Sassi, Chief Penguin, IBM Hyper Protect Accelerator and CEO & Founder, MentorNations

Melissa is on LinkedIn and Twitter. Melissa was nominated by Swathi Young.

Swathi says: "Melissa is the type of women in STEM leader that we all aspire to be and provides immense value not only to her current role at IBM but also with her non-profit work."

This list was compiled by Richard Foster-Fletcher, Founder of MKAI - Milton Keynes Artificial Intelligence

The next MKAI event is 'Using AI for Good- Part 2' on Thursday 23rd July at 5pm BST.

Register to attend here

Each month we host a virtual AI Expert Forum which is inclusive and welcoming for everyone with an interest in growing their AI knowledge, skills and network. It is not just for technical people, our main stage presentations by leading keynote speakers share valuable trends and insights at a level that is readily accessible for all. The mission of MKAI is to progress, promote and connect AI work and put Milton Keynes on the global map for Artificial Intelligence innovation and excellence. 

The four pillars of MKAI are: 

1.) Connecting and developing AI practitioners and Leaders: through the live events and online community

2.) Creating valuable AI insights: by bringing the best and most up to date AI thought leaders to Milton Keynes 

3.) Supporting businesses: to adopt, scale and benefit from ethical AI 

4.) Encouraging inclusiveness and gender diversity in AI 

We look forward to seeing you at the next MKAI Expert Forum. Please send us a message if you would like to get involved in sponsoring, supporting or speaking at [email protected].

MKAI's Summer Series of AI for Good forums is made possible by our partners Aiimi and Data Reply UK.

Aiimi:

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They support companies in designing and implementing human-centered data products to turn embryonic ideas into enterprise solutions with Big Data Engineering, Data Science and Intelligent Process Automation.

You can find out more and get in touch at www.reply.com/data-reply