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Category: robotics/AI

Dr. Ann Aerts MD, Head of the Novartis Foundation and Member of the US National Academies of Medicine Commission on Healthy Longevity.

Dr. Ann Aerts, M.D. is Head of the Novartis Foundation, an organization committed to transforming the health of low-income populations, by leveraging the power of data, digital technology and artificial intelligence (AI) to re-imagine health and care around the world.

Dr. Aerts holds a Degree in Medicine, a Masters in Public Health from the University of Leuven, Belgium, and a Degree in Tropical Medicine from the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium.

Dr. Aerts is passionate about improving population health through data, digital health and AI, chairs the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development Working Group on Digital and AI in Health and is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Commonwealth Centre for Digital Health.

In 2018, Dr. Aerts served as a member of the US National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine Committee on Improving the Quality of Health Care Globally and sits on the US National Academies of Medicine Commission on Healthy Longevity. Dr. Aerts has authored numerous publications on digital health, innovative approaches and multi-sector partnerships to address global health challenges.

Before leading the Novartis Foundation, Dr. Aerts was Franchise Medical Director Critical Care for Novartis Pharma in Basel and Therapeutic Area Head Cardiovascular and Metabolism for Novartis Pharma Belgium.

Prior to joining Novartis, Dr. Aerts served as Director of the Lung and Tuberculosis Association in Belgium and as Head of the Health Services Department of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva. She has also worked as Health Coordinator for the ICRC in several countries.

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A trio of researchers at Ghent University has combined a convolutional neural network with computational neuroscience to create a model that simulates human cochlear mechanics. In their paper published in Nature Machine Intelligence, Deepak Baby, Arthur Van Den Broucke and Sarah Verhulst describe how they built their model and the ways they believe it can be used.

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“The world of COVID-19 is going to need more and more automation to keep people safe,” Hanson Robotics founder David Hanson said.

Hanson Robotics says more automation is needed during the pandemic. It has now started mass production of its humanoid robot, Sophia.

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Circa 2020

AI can read your emotional response to advertising and your facial expressions in a job interview. But if it can already do all this, what happens next? In part two of a series on emotion AI, Jennifer Strong and the team at MIT Technology Review explore the implications of how it’s used and where it’s heading in the future. This episode was reported and produced by Jennifer Strong, Karen Hao, Tate Ryan-Mosley, and Emma Cillekens. We had help from Benji Rosen. We’re edited by Michael Reilly and Gideon Lichfield.

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Additive manufacturing has proven an ideal solution for certain tasks, but the technology still lacks more traditional methods in a number of categories. One of the biggest is the requirement for post-printing assembly. 3D printers can create extremely complex components, but an outside party (be it human or machine) is required to put them together.

MIT’s CSAIL department this week showcased “LaserFactory,” a new project that attempts to develop robotics, drones and other machines than can be fabricated as part of a “one-stop shop.” The system is comprised of a software kit and hardware platform designed to create structures and assemble circuitry and sensors for the machine.

A more fully realized version of the project will be showcased at an event in May, but the team is pulling back the curtain a bit to show what the concept looks like in practice. Here’s a breakdown from CSAIL’s page:

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Human-Autonomy Interaction, Collaboration and Trust — Dr. Julie Marble, JHU Applied Physics Laboratory (APL)

Dr. Julie Marble is a senior scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL) leading research in human-autonomy interaction, collaboration and trust.

Dr. Marble earned her PhD in Human Factors/Cognitive Psychology from Purdue University. After graduating from Purdue University, she joined the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), one of the national laboratories of the United States Department of Energy involved in nuclear research, first in the Human Factors group and then the Human and Robotic Systems group.

Following INL, she joined Sentient Corporation, where as CEO she led a DARPA Broad Agency Announcement BAA on Neuro-Technology for Intelligence Analysts and led research on to develop an intelligent decision aid to perform just-in-time maintenance on Navy helicopters.

Dr. Marble then worked as a Senior Scientist at the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission leading international and US studies on Human-Reliability Analysis methods in this vital domain and related to this, she is internationally recognized for her work, and is co-author of the SPAR-H method (Standardized Plant Analysis Risk Human Reliability Analysis), the most commonly used method of human reliability analysis in the US. She is also co-developer of the Cultural Affective Model, which integrates cultural impacts into human reliability in order to predict operator behavior.

Dr. Marble then joined the Office of Naval Research as a Program Officer, where she established the Hybrid Human Systems and the Human Factors of Cyber Security programs.

She was appointed to the NATO Collaborative Science Office, Science and Technology Office, Human Factors and Medicine Research Task Group on Human Factors and Cyber Security in 2014, and joined JHUAPL in 2015.

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