Ira Pastor, ideaXme life sciences ambassador, interviews Dr. Jiangying Zhou, Program Manager at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Defense Sciences Office.
Ira Pastor Comments:
On this episode of ideaXme, meet again with the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), but unlike the past few shows where we’ve been spending time with thought leaders from the Biologic Technology Office (BTO), today we’re going to be focused on the Defense Sciences Office (DSO) which identifies and pursues high-risk, high-payoff research initiatives across a broad spectrum of science and engineering disciplines and transforms them into important, new game-changing technologies for U.S. national security. Current DSO themes include frontiers in math, computation and design, limits of sensing and sensors, complex social systems, and anticipating surprise.
Dr. Jiangying Zhou, Program Manager DARPA
Dr. Jiangying Zhou became a DARPA program manager in the Defense Sciences Office in November 2018, having served as a program manager in the Strategic Technology Office (STO) since January 2018. Her areas of research include machine learning, artificial intelligence, data analytics, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) exploitation technologies.
Prior to joining DARPA, Dr. Zhou was a senior engineering manager in the Information Sciences Division at Teledyne Scientific and Imaging, LLC.
Frontiers of Mathematics, Computation, Systems and Design
During her more than ten-year tenure at Teledyne, Dr. Zhou worked on many contract R&D programs from U.S. government funding agencies as well as commercial customers in the areas of sensor exploitation, signal and image processing, and pattern recognition.
Dr. Zhou also served as director of R&D of Summus Inc., a small start-up company specializing in contract engineering projects for U.S. Department of Defense and commercial customers in the areas of video and image compression, pattern recognition, and computer vision.
Dr. Zhou began her career as a scientist at Panasonic Technologies, Inc., Princeton, New Jersey, where she conducted research in the areas of document analysis, handwriting recognition, image analysis, and information retrieval.
Dr. Zhou received a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science, both in computer science, from Fudan University. She received a Doctorate in electrical engineering from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Dr. Zhou is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Society and also a member of the Upsilon Pi Epsilon International Honor Society for the computing and information disciplines.
On this episode we will hear from Dr. Zhou about:
Her background; how she developed her interests in computer science and electrical engineering, and a little bit of her career path through industry and government.
How she is using the theme of Bio-Mimicry (the design and production of materials, structures, and systems that are modelled on biological entities and processes) per the “Nature as Computer” and μBRAIN programs, where she explores innovative basic research concepts aimed at understanding highly integrated sensory and nervous systems in miniature insects and developing prototype computational models that could be mapped onto suitable hardware to emulate their function.
The Time-Aware Machine Intelligence (TAMI) program; an AI system to develop a detailed self-understanding of the time dimensions of its learned knowledge and eventually be able to “think in and about time” when exercising its learned task knowledge in task performance.
The Competency-Aware Machine Learning (CAML) program, enabling learning systems to be aware of their own competency.
The Artificial Intelligence Research Associate (AIRA) program, to elevate AI to the role of an insightful and trusted collaborator in the scientific process.
Her Post-DARPA interests / visions and new ideas for further pushing AI to be a better collaborative partner. Her thoughts on DARPA-like R&D models being translated into the private sector.
Credits: Ira Pastor interview video, text, and audio.
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If you liked this interview, be sure to check out our interview exploring the implications of AI with Mastercard’s AI Garage!
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