Computational Sustainability

Abstract:

Computational sustainability is a new interdisciplinary research field with the overarching goal of developing computational models, methods, and tools to help manage the balance between environmental, economic, and societal needs for a sustainable future. I will provide an overview of computational sustainability, with examples ranging from wildlife conservation and biodiversity, to poverty mitigation and materials discovery for renewable energy materials. I will highlight cross-cutting computational themes, opportunities, and challenges in Artificial Intelligence to address sustainability problems.


Biography:

Carla Gomes is a Professor of Computer Science and the director of the Institute for Computational Sustainability at Cornell University. Gomes received a Ph.D. in computer science in the area of artificial intelligence and operations research from the University of Edinburgh. Her research area is Artificial Intelligence with a focus on large-scale constraint reasoning, optimization, and machine learning. Recently, Gomes has become deeply immersed in research in the new field of Computational Sustainability. From 2007-2013 Gomes led an NSF Expeditions-in-Computing in Computational Sustainability that nucleated the new field of Computational Sustainability. Gomes is currently the lead PI of a new NSF Expeditions-in-Computing that established CompSustNet, a large-scale national and international research network, to further expand the field and Computational Sustainability. Gomes is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and a Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).


*Light refreshment will be served after the talk.*