Ada's travels
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Hi there! I'm Little Ada. My home is Leiden University, where they've named a research group after me ... and a lecture series ...
And as they say here: "Discover the world at Leiden University" (well, actually, what they say is "Bij ons leer je de wereld kennen"). Right down my alley ... and I have a feeling I'll see a lot of the world. And it looks like I'm already on my way to ... (suspense ...)
I'm in Berlin ... how very exciting! Inside this building (the representation of the German state of Baden-Württemberg), hosted by the Aspen Institute, Holger debated whether the impact of AI on human dignity will be net positive.
I got to meet some interesting people - like Olivia Knodt from the Aspen Institute. And I went for dinner and drinks in the hipster neighbourhood of Neukölln. What an intriguing place! Sadly, there was no time for any of the major sightseeing spots ... so I'll have to come back to properly see Berlin.
My first time in the FooBar garden! There is a proper bar at the institute where I live, and once a month the ADA group members go there to have drinks and play games. Today I joined them, although I'm sure my mother would not approve.
We played Codenames, which is quite a challenge when everybody has a different mother tongue and a different background, but great fun. When these particular cards turned up, I just couldn't help myself, I had to pose for a picture! They reckon that they can relate all the words surrounding me to my infamous father, Lord Byron. Can you?
Wow ... I got to go to Paris! Sadly, it was a short trip, and Holger didn't manage to smuggle me into the residence of the Dutch ambassador, where he had some business to attend to. Neither did I see the Eiffel tower or the charred remains of Notre-Dame. Thus, I'll keep Paris on my list of places to visit again. It definitely suits my dangerously romantic inclinations!
Sorry! I'm not very much up-to-date with recording my travels! Please be patient while I try to find my pictures from this adventure :)
Sorry! I'm not very much up-to-date with recording my travels! Please be patient while I try to find my pictures from this adventure :)
Anna Louise and I travelled to Albi, and had to wait for a few hours in Toulouse along the way. Despite, the rain, the astrophysicist in her just had to visit the Observatory, and I came along.
After that, I babysat all her cables for her... Computer Scientists, eh?
This is my first time attending
Anna Louise and I are here with her Belgian colleagues: the
To save money, we are staying in a very tiny chalet on a campsite just outside Albi. Tiny isn't a problem for me, but the humans seem to be struggling a bit. Luckily, the organisers of JFPC have arranged a shuttle bus to transport us to and from the venue!
At the conference, I am making new friends and enjoying the French coffee snacks: mini viennoiserie! I also came along to a reception at Musée Toulouse-Lautrec, with a gorgeous view of the river Tarn! Naturally, we also ate cheese :)
Every year, my group goes for an outing activity. This time, we went biking along a tour that have been designed by Leiden University for its 444 birthday.
We went through dunes and I saw the university campus in the Hague. We had lunch at a nice vegetarian restaurant in wich we were quite litteraly sitting in the kitchens! Back in Leiden I saw the working bench of Einstein and we ended the day with a drink near the canal.
Though we missed a few members, the group spent a nice day out.
I went to Macao for IJCAI. That was an intense week and it is hard to pick the most memorable moments out of it.
I met many wonderfull scientists of all ages and nationalities. I listened to a brilliant talk from Matti Järvisalo, had drinks with Andrea Passerini and Roberto Sebastiani, and nicely chatted with Edith Elkind, Sylvie Thiebaux and Peter Stone.
And as it seems that I couldn't go to Macao without hiting the casino (or so said Holger), I did. I have to confess that I had a bit of fun (don't tell him), even if we expectedly lost money there.
Between, dinners and talks, the terrible heat and moisture outside and the cold air conditioning inside, I was exhausted and looked forward to a small vacation.
After all the stress and chaos of IJCAI, combined with all the kitsch and fake in Macao, it was time to get some rest. Anna Louise took me to Hong Kong of a precious few days of vacation.
On the first day we took the venicular to Victoria Peak to enjoy a view of a foggy city. I'v never felt so tiny.
The next day, we went to Lantau Island to see the Po Lin Monastery and the Tian Tan Buddha. Can you imagine how I felt? Little Ada next to such a big Buddha? I hadn't realised I could feel even smaller than I did yesterday!
On the last day we went to Tim Ho Wan, the cheapest Michelin star restaurant in the world! Dim sum is just my kind of food: petite and delicious.
Afterwards we took a walk around the city, playing hide-and-seek in the roots of the massive banyan trees growing in the city.
From Hong Kong I travelled onwards to Toronto, where Anna Louise is spending a few months at UofT's Knowledge Representation lab.
The Robotics Institute held a very interesting workshop, and we were invited!. I was fascinated by the presentation on how to build tiny little swimmers and grabbers and walkers, that can be operated by changing magnetic fields, and are designed to go inside your body and do all kinds of good!
Later, I joined Anna in one of her favourite places to work outside the lab: the balcony of Balzac's coffee shop in the Distillery District. Of course we couldn't go there without tasting the mini donuts... Let's just say it should be a crime to sell hickory-smoked-maple-syrup-and-walnut mini donuts... they are too good!
I also got to be a tourist, and we visited Hogtown's first post office. Surprise: it still is a post office! For 2 CAD you can even write a letter with quill and seal it with a wax stamp!
Time for another trip! Anna Louise and I travelled to Orlando, FL for a conference, but gave ourselves one day off to see the Kennedy Space Centre. What can I say? You can't be a little lego nerd with a love for big machines and visit Orlando without going to see the big space rockets!
The first moon landing by the Apollo 11 crew is 50 years ago this year, so of course I had to go see the big Saturn V rocket! We talked to a former NASA engineer, who was responsible for the computers that ensured that the different stages of the rocket would ignite on time. All he had to do to become in charge of this, was follow a two-week course on computers! He even had stories of how they showed him a little thing called a 'transistor' and asked him if he knew any use for it! And there I was thinking I was old!
He also told us he worked with Christa McAuliffe on her mission, and was with her parents when she died. Afterwards, he spent a week showing Richard Feynman around the Space Center when he visited to help them solve the mystery of why the Challenger exploded.
Finally, he told me to go see the bit of Moon Rock they had on display there for anyone to touch. Of course I also posed with the big Lego astronaut on display there, before taking the bus back to the main visitor's center.
There, I attended a lecture by Bruce Melnick, where he told us about the only three-person EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity) in history, on the legendary STS-49 mission. Later, he was kind enough to take a picture with us.
Anna Louise and I are in Orlando to attend the 25th Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. There are so many people! This year, the conference was sold out within 10 minutes. Being surrounded here by 25 thousand (!) women in tech makes me think that we probably don't have a pipeline problem...
I'm spending a lot of time queueing for sessions. Sometimes we have to be there at least 45 minutes before the session starts, to ensure we can get in. Luckily the shuttle bus from the hotel starts as early as 5 am, so we can go early if we want to. On the second day, we did just that and lined up to take our picture in front of the big GHC sign outside the convention center. In the background you can see this year's motto: We will change the direction of Tech together.
Anna is here on a travel grant from Google, for which she could apply because she is a Women Techmakers scholar. Google organised a dinner for the scholars to get together and socialise. I enjoyed meeting Anna's friends, and we got some pretty nice swag.
At the conference there also is a big career fair, where you can talk to companies and universities. My favourite stand was the one from AnitaB.org. They had hired an artist who interviewed us on our ideas for increasing and/or retaining diversity in tech and then drew them on massive signs. So much fun to watch!
As the mother of computing, I was delighted to see so many smart, passionate and inspiring women here at the conference. I hope I will one day be back!
We returned to The Six for Anna's last week there. We returned just in time to attend the Fields Lecture by Sergey Levine on
Then we had to say goodbye to her desk (which she had borrowed from a colleague who preferred working from home, to the D.L. Pratt building (where the lab is) and to UofT's St. George campus.
Worst of all, we had to say goodbye to the grad students we shared the lab with, and to the two amazing KR professors: Fahiem Bacchus (who supervised and hosted us) and Sheila McIlraith (who made sure we were invited to social activities and lectures and generally helped us integrate in the group). We are taking away good memories of them all!
We went to the Prenup Pub across the street for one last game of Hanabi and a last round of beers and fries, for now... We hope to come back soon!
Sorry! I'm not very much up-to-date with recording my travels! Please be patient while I try to find my pictures from this adventure :)
I've had an amazing visit to Linz (Austria), meeting lots of interesting people. First of all, prof. Gerhard Widmer, who shares my passion for computer music. Then, I met prof. Johannes Fürnkranz, an expert in interpretable machine learning and game playing.
Afterwards, I met prof. Armin Biere, who builds some of the world's best SAT solvers and is a leading expert in formally verifying hard and software. Staying in the realm verification, I also met prof. Martina Seidel, who does exciting research on automated theorem proving, software verification and quantified Boolean logic.
I'm glad to have some time for sightseeing during my visit to Austria! Holger and I met with prof. Sepp Hochreiter, one of world's leading experts on deep learning, who took us to St. Florian, where Anton Bruckner used to play the organ in this amazing baroque church. We were joined by Martina Hochreiter, who's expert knowledge in musicology and the history of Linz delighted me as much as it did Holger.
After visiting Linz, I had a quick stop in Brussels, where I saw the European Parliament (at least from the outside). OK, this statue is far bigger than me, but my vision appears to have an impact on the nearby European institutions... too bad my native England is about to distance itself from what's going on here, but my ideas know no borders, so I'm not that concerned.
At the end of January, Pieter took me to the annual conference of the Belgian Operational Research Society in Lille (the irony!). It was a nice change of pace to meet researchers from a different field, and I learned a lot about optimization. Specifically, the integration of machine learning within optimization seems worth investigating. I wonder why that is? Pieter also introduced me to a lot of interesting people, including Patrick De Causmaecker (head of Pieter's research group in Belgium) and Kenneth S¨örensen (professor at Antwerp University and current ORBEL president).
For the conference dinner, I managed to convice Pieter to go with the vegetarian menu, which made me extremely happy!
Anna Louise and I travelled to Titisee to attend the Spring workshop on Mining and Learning (SMiLe), organised by KU Leuven. The program was absolutely excellent, with talks that were not only very interesting, but also very well presented. We made a lot of new (scientific) friends and came home with a lot of fresh inspiration.
We also had a bit of leisure time, which we spent outside, in the snow. A bit cold, but a very welcome change from sitting inside all day. We hope to be back some day!
Today Leiden University celebrates her 445th dies natalis! The Ada group took me along to the celebrations in the Pieterskerk, where the university was founded on a cold February morning, so many years ago!
After singing along to Io Vivat, we listened to prof.dr. Bibi van den Berg and prof.dr. Aske Plaat delivering the dies oration. They spoke about the technological and psychological aspects of making our information-driven society safe and accessible, arguing that governments have a responsibility for this, since access to information is a basic need of their citizens. Afterwards, during the reception, I was honoured to meet the two professors, and the three of us posed for a celebratory picture!
A key figure in the dies celebrations is beadle Erick van Zuylen. He leads the cortège from the Academic Building to the Pieterskerk on special days like our dies. He is also the one who keeps the time during PhD defenses, banging his staff on the floor and shouting "Hora est!" when the time has run out. I was very honoured to meet him!
