DLS: Milind Tambe — AI for Social Impact: Results from Deployments for Public Health and Conservation

Tuesday, February 15, 2022 1:30 pm - 2:30 pm EST (GMT -05:00)

Milind Tambe
Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science
Director of the Center for Research in Computation and Society, Harvard University
Director, AI for Social Good, Google Research India

photo of Milind Tambe
With the maturing of AI and multiagent systems research, we have a tremendous opportunity to direct these advances towards addressing complex societal problems. I focus on the domains of public health and conservation, and address one key cross-cutting challenge: how to effectively deploy our limited intervention resources in these problem domains. 

I will present results from work around the globe in using AI for challenges such as HIV prevention, maternal and child care interventions, and as well as for wildlife conservation. Achieving social impact in these domains often requires methodological advances. To that end, I will highlight key research advances in multiagent reasoning and learning, in particular in restless multiarmed bandits, influence maximization in social networks, computational game theory and decision-focused learning. In pushing this research agenda, our ultimate goal is to facilitate local communities and non-profits to directly benefit from advances in AI tools and techniques.


Biography: Milind Tambe is Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science and Director of Center for Research in Computation and Society at Harvard University; concurrently, he is also Director “AI for Social Good” at Google Research India. He is recipient of the IJCAI (International Joint Conference on AI) John McCarthy Award, AAMAS ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Autonomous Agents Research Award, AAAI (Association for Advancement of Artificial Intelligence) Robert S. Engelmore Memorial Lecture Award, and he is a fellow of AAAI and ACM.


Did you miss Milind Tambe’s lecture or would you like to hear it again? If so, just start the video below.

Remote video URL