UW Students Attend Top AI Conference

University of Wyoming Assistant Professor Lars Kotthoff and a group of computer science students attended one of the top artificial intelligence (AI) events in the world in January.

Kotthoff and seven students from the College of Engineering and Applied Science (CEAS) took part in the annual Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence conference. The event attracts thousands of AI researchers from both academia and industry. The trip provided UW students with an overview of state-of-the-art developments and future directions for AI, and an opportunity to network. The trip was sponsored by the CEAS and Department of Computer Science.

"From hearing about improving the robustness of neural networks from a lead engineer at Google, to the many new topics being pursued in multi-agent systems, I was able to become further educated about subjects pertaining to my research, while also dipping my toes into new subjects that I had not known much about before," UW student Rafer Cooley says.

Austin Okray, a computer science student, says talking to academics and understanding how they succeeded at graduate school and Ph.D. programs was "incredibly helpful," adding he made valuable connections with industry professionals for internships and job hunting.

UW computer science student Damir Pulatov adds one of the conference's special features, the "AI Roadmap," was useful to him as a future graduate student.