LKY CIC Brown Bag Lunchtime Talk: The Whole is Greater than The Sum of Parts: Analyzing User Behaviors Across Multiple Online Social Platforms by Dr Roy Lee Ka Wei

LKY CIC Brown Bag Lunchtime Talk: Fair, Transparent and Collaborative Algorithms in Data-Driven Environments by Dr Yair Zick

Recent years have seen data-driven algorithms deployed in increasingly high-stakes environments. These algorithms often employ a complex infrastructure, making them effectively “black boxes”; this potentially exposes various stakeholders (such as end-users, or the agencies deploying said algorithms) to risks, such as unfair treatment or inadvertent data breaches. In response, government agencies and professional societies have highlighted fairness and transparency as key design paradigms in AI/ML applications. In this talk I will discuss our recent work on the foundations of algorithmic transparency and fairness. From the transparency perspective, I will discuss how we design transparency measures that are guaranteed to satisfy certain natural desiderata; in addition, I will discuss a recent line of work showing how some natural transparency measures may be used by an adversary in order to extract private user information. Regarding fairness, I will discuss how we apply fairness paradigms to algorithms, in particular our work on designing and deploying fair allocation algorithms; our results show that humans respond well to provably fair algorithms, and are willing to collaborate effectively even in strategic domains. Finally, I will discuss how we apply learning-theoretic approaches to fairness via a novel paradigm for adapting game-theoretic solution concepts to data-driven domains. [...]

LKY CIC Brown Bag Lunchtime Talk: Designing Child-Friendly Neighbourhoods by Ms Natalia Krysiak

As our cities rapidly grow and densify, the question of what makes a great neighbourhood for children is one which is often neglected in the urban design realm. With the exclusion of children’s needs from the design of the urban fabric comes a negligence towards the provision of neighbourhood play strategies, safe travel paths and appropriate apartment designs for families. This presentation will address the needs of children and their families within the city context and consider urban strategies known to promote positive health and wellbeing outcomes. [...]

LKY CIC Brown Bag Lunchtime Talk: Ocean and Human Health: Balancing the Risks and Benefits and Implications for South East Asia

In this talk, the findings and insights from two EU Horizon2020 projects - BlueHealth and SOPHIE (Seas Oceans & Public Health In Europe - and a UK Research and Innovation funded Grand Challenges Research Fund project - Blue Communities in South East Asia will be presented. The marine environment provides many opportunities to enrich human welfare, from fishing and aggregates, to transportation and recreation. However it also possess many health and wellbeing risks, many of which are the product of anthropogenic behaviours, such as chemical and microbial pollution and sea-level rise and increased storm events resulting from climate change. The populations of island and coastal cities and states such as Singapore are particularly sensitive to both benefits and risks. This talk will provide an overview of the field and provide detailed evidence of how, if managed correctly, the marine environment can be used to better promote health and wellbeing among coastal populations. Although much of the evidence at the moment comes from Europe the talk will introduce new research currently underway in South East Asia exploring these issues. [...]

LKY CIC Brown Bag Lunchtime Talk: Merging Science and Design: Fashionable Nanotechnology

At scales below 100 nm, manufacturing techniques require of a precise molecular control and the use of very homogenous raw materials, which unfortunately is not the case for natural fibers. In this talk we will discuss some of the chemical and physical strategies developed in our laboratory to overcome these heterogeneity issues and we will explore how our work, at the frontiers of fiber science, intersects with the work of fashion designers. We will use several examples addressing textiles materials for fashion, sports and military applications and we will demonstrate how “old and traditional” natural fibers can be transformed into revolutionary engineering materials with unique functionalities. [...]

LKY CIC Brown Bag Lunchtime Talk: From Asia to Latin America Building Democratic and Inclusive Marketplaces of Smart Cities Innovations

Ride-hailing platforms have caused disruption to the traditional taxi industry and workforce in many cities worldwide. How can we adopt smart cities innovations that are less disruptive, and that can even create a better societal outcome for consumers, workers, companies, and regulators? In this talk, Andy will present case studies based on his startup’s PAIR smart taxi open data platform in China’s megacities Chengdu and Shenzhen. The PAIR platform includes: 1) Smart Hub – offers travellers standardized and efficient taxi service at airports worldwide; 2) Smart Dropoff Code – elevates driver productivity by overcoming language barriers; 3) Smart Route – helps transport regulators fight congestion by replacing car travel with economically sustainable bus routes. Andy will also share insights from his involvement in the taxi modernization project of Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires. These experiences that span China and Argentina suggest that a global network of open data marketplaces can help smart cities innovations compete fairly and scale rapidly across a global common market, and help build an inclusive society for and led by citizens. [...]