Congratulations to Chair of the UCLA CS Department Adnan Darwiche and CS Prof. Rafail Ostrovsky who were announced as recipients of 2019 J.P. Morgan Faculty Awards.
As part of the award, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co awarded 47 financial grants to university faculty and PhD students ramping up its efforts in artificial intelligence. The award was started in 2018 so the bank could deepen ties with academia following the creation of its AI research division in 2017, according to Manuela Veloso, head of JPMorgan’s AI Research, in an interview.
The two are members of the second ever group of winners for JPMorgan’s AI Research Awards. Winners of the award will study the use of AI and machine learning in areas including investment advice, risk management, digital assistants and trading behavior.
Prof. Darwiche’s winning research is titled “Explaining Decisions of Machine Learning Systems” while Prof. Ostrovsky’s research is titled “SIENA: Securing AI Computing Environment for AWS.” Each award includes unrestricted gift of $150,000.
Currently, JPMorgan spends USD 11.5 Billion a year on technology and pays over 50,000 IT workers. “The world is becoming increasingly digital and there is a lot of data,” Veloso said. “The only way for this data to be truly useful is to have an AI solution to process it.” Areas of research include, cryptography, data, ethics and fairness. The program ultimately aims to advance cutting-edge AI research to solve real-world problems.