NeurIPS High School Outreach

The new NeurIPS high-school outreach day—Monday, Nov 28, in New Orleans—will provide local students with an opportunity to engage with how AI impacts their everyday lives and play a role in its creation and use. Students will engage in discussions with industry and academic leaders in AI on a variety of topics.

The event is free for students at participating high schools.  Transportation, breakfast, and lunch are all provided.    

Students with a wide range of STEM experience are welcome to participate—no coding experience is required.

We’re partnering with Junior Achievement of Greater New Orleans and local high schools to bring their classrooms to our event! 

Schedule, Monday, November 28th 

Keynote: Devin Guillory, UC Berkeley and Black in AI

Devin Guillory is a PhD student in computer science at UC Berkeley where he works in the fields of computer vision and machine learning. Prior to Berkeley, he obtained bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford and went on to serve as a Staff Data Scientist and technical lead of Search Ranking and Computational Advertising teams at Etsy. A founding engineer of Blackbird Technologies, Devin joined Etsy by way of acquisition. Throughout his career, he’s worked on a variety of machine learning problems in industrial and academic settings (e.g., computer vision, robotics, natural language processing, information retrieval, computational advertising, etc.) and has grown passionate about exploring areas where the theory and practice of machine learning systems diverge.

His current work focuses on designing AI systems that perform reliably as environments change and AI systems that learn with limited supervision. Devin’s service as a director of Black in AI and publication of Combating Anti-Blackness in the AI Community also illustrate his interest in the critical examination of systems that produce AI technology. Devin strives to participate in a technical community whose values center equity and positive impact.

Devin is from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Workshops

Workshops are a unique and hands-on experience for students to engage with AI technology and how it impacts their lives. Workshops are run by leaders in academia and industry; each focuses on a different application of AI in society, from healthcare to generated art to video games. In small groups, students will learn about these technologies, discuss their positive and negative impacts, and come away with a participatory framework towards AI.  

Mentorship Luncheon

During lunch, students will have an opportunity to have Ask-Me-Anything style discussions with AI experts from the NeurIPS community.  Each mentor will be paired with a small group of students to encourage active discussion.

Demos

To enable interactions with AI models, students will visit a number of demos during the lunch session.  Each demo is accessible to students new to AI and will provide students will hands-on experience.

"What's Next" Discussions

As a closing activity, we will students will partake in small-group discussions about their reflections on the day.  Group leaders from the AI community will serve as moderators, and will share information regarding resources to stay involved in AI.

 

FAQ

Is the outreach event in-person or remote?

The outreach event is fully in-person in New Orleans. All volunteer roles require in-person attendance.

 

Is there a cost for students to attend?

The event is free for students at participating high schools to attend.  This includes transportation to and from the event, breakfast and lunch.

 

Who will be supervising each session?

Each class will be accompanied by their teacher.  Addtionally, each classroom will be matched with group leaders, who will help moderate discussions and chaperone small groups of students throughout the event.   Workshop leaders, mentors, and demo leaders will also lead their respective sessions.

Who can I contact for more information?

Email our outreach chairs (Jessica Forde, Matt Wang) at outreach@neurips.cc.