Two UCLA graduate students, Arjun Subramonian and Matthew Wang, are chairs for NeurIPS 2022, a prestigious machine learning conference in late November.
Arjun is the Affinity Workshop co-chair for NeurIPS 2022. In their words, “At NeurIPS, affinity groups promote and support the ideas and voices of marginalized communities and raise awareness of issues that affect their members.” In the organization’s words, “At NeurIPS, affinity groups promote and support the ideas and voices of marginalized communities and raise awareness of issues that affect their members.” As the Affinity Workshop co-chair for NeurIPS 2022, Arjun supports the organizing work done by Black in AI, Queer in AI, LatinX in AI, Women in ML, Global South in AI, Indigenous in AI, and other affinity groups associated with the event. Some events are in-person, and some are remote. Arjun has coordinated affinity group events and push for diversity and inclusion in the machine learning community for the past 4 years. coordinating affinity group events and pushing for diversity and inclusion in the machine learning community; they are a lead organizer for Queer in AI, and previously co-founded QWER Hacks as an undergraduate at UCLA.
Matt is the Education Outreach co-chair for NeurIPS 2022. This is a new initiative for this iteration of the conference. On Nov 28, NeurIPS Outreach will invite approximately 240 high school students to the conference for a special day of programming, with a focus on engaging students with AI and ML and how it impacts their lives. The day consists of a keynote address, hands-on workshops, demos, and more! Matt is directly managing about 90 volunteers. His vision and mechanics for this event is heavily inspired by the outreach events he ran at UCLA CS while he was an undergrad. This includes the work done in ACM Teach LA, a subcommittee of the student ACM chapter, and exploretech.la, which also runs a full day of events for high school students.