January 14|25 2018
The future of blurred boundaries between humans and machines is a recurrent theme in science fiction. This future is today.
Join us for two weeks of discussions, lectures, workshops, exhibitions, and cultural and recreational events that will inspire our shared vision for a brighter, human-machine future.
Is the future human?
Sensors monitor our state, health and behavior, relaying this data to configure a digital signature that is as much part of us as our biometric traits. Fed at petabyte levels, our digital signatures allow increasingly powerful machine learning algorithms to learn from the continuous data streams we generate and anticipate our needs and behaviors as consumers.
Machine learning algorithms can increasingly mimic the function of our brain and will soon establish a direct interface that allows for the seamless control of robots. Robots are endowed with powerful sensorial capacities in order to interact with other humans, as well as their robotic avatars, through virtual networks that may eventually replace much of our human-to-human interactions.
While this human-machine future offers to bring about unlimited potential, it also creates risks—of losing our privacy and the social traits inherent to our human nature. We live in a world where machines are increasingly embedded in our everyday lives. Machines shape our individual identities, social interactions, and society as a whole. During the 2018 Winter Enrichment Program (WEP), we invite you to immerse yourself in a diverse and stimulating program, touching on the opportunities and risks of a future where the boundaries between machines and humans will become even more diffuse.
Present your best research during this year’s WEP KAUST Poster Competition. *This event is open to graduate students and postdocs. Interested in sharing your research with the grea ... more
Distributed Algorithms in Shared Memory and Networks 3/3
Location: Bldg. 9 Lecture Hall 2325 ≤ 154
The theory of distributed computing provides the intellectual foundations for understanding how complex computing systems like the Internet, clouds, IoT, sensor networks, and more can function correct ... more
The Rise of the Nanomachines
Location: Building 19, Level 3, Conference Hall 3
About this Morning Session Workshop During this workshop five female scientists will present their findings on design, preparation, and testing of nano-sized sensing platforms. The idea ... more
Random Matrix Approach for Machine Learning 3/3
Location: Bldg. 9 Lecture Hall 2322 ≤ 154
The field of big data processing is currently percieved as a crucial tool for many scientific disciplines, including signal processing, finance, biology... Significant progress has been achieved ... more
Field-Work Experiments Using Seismic Sensor Networks 1/2
Location: bldg. 1
This one day offering is divided into two parts. The first part (morning session of 2h) is a dedicated lecture/workshop that covers the basic theory, general background, and the specific experimental ... more
Visualizing the Human Machine Future Exhibition - JAN 25
Location: WEP HUB (University Library)
About this Exhibition This exhibition will focus on visualization from the viewer’s perspective and will showcase photographs and scientific illustrations. It will be dispalyed from& ... more
Knowing How to See Exhibition - JAN 25
Location: Al-Khawarizmi East (Bldg. 1), Entrance Hall
Photography is a Bridge Between Art and Mathematics The starting point of this exhibition is to translate the language and the insights of mathematics into photographic images and vice versa. ... more
VR Lounge is Saudi Arabia’s first virtual reality (VR) gaming hub and lounge. What is VR? Well it’s rather quite simple; it’s a simulated environment in which a user is immersed thro ... more
Interactive Virtual Reality Art Exhibit: Google Tilt Brush - JAN 25
Location: WEP HUB (University Library)
Paint Inside a Virtual World with Google Tilt Brush Virtual reality is at the frontier of novel human machine interfaces. At this interactive exhibit you can paint inside a virtual world. By e ... more
Tilt Brush Instructor Workshop JAN 25
Location: WEP HUB (University Library)
Paint Inside a Virtual World with Google Tilt Brush Virtual reality is at the frontier of novel human machine interfaces. At this interactive exhibit you can paint inside a virtual world. By e ... more
When Random Matrices Meet Machine Learning
Location: Bldg. 9 Lecture Hall 2322 ≤ 154
Today's machine learning is all about "large dimensional (p) and numerous data (n)", in sharp contrast with yesterday's "small p, large n" asymptotics paradigm. In this talk, we will show that moving ... more
Field-Work Experiments Using Seismic Sensor Networks 2/2
Location: bldg. 1
This one day offering is divided into two parts. The first part (morning session of 2h) is a dedicated lecture / workshop that covers the basic theory, general background, and the specific experimenta ... more
Women in STEM
Location: Building 19, Level 3, Conference Hall 1
Panel Discussion During this 1h round-table discussion, five women in science - Niveen Khashab, Emilie Ringe Laura Sagle, Su-Yung Park and Shahad AlSaiari - will share their stories of attainin ... more
Women in STEM / Speed Mentoring
Location: Building 19, Level 3, Conference Hall 1
Women in Science and Speed Mentoring *To earn your credits, you must be a KAUST female graduate student. Young scientists face overwhelming pressures as they prepare for their careers. The number of ... more
Don’t miss our Final Gala as we celebrate the end of the 8th annual Winter Enrichment Program The WEP Chair for 2018, Professor Omar Knio, will kick off the evening by recognizing the efforts o ... more
