A virtual colloquium on engineering and the Sustainable Development Goals
On October 26, 2020, Dr. Omar Costilla Reyes announced that he would take part on October 29 in a panel on artificial intelligence and digital health with colleagues from the Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá. The panel belonged to the university’s “Primer Coloquio Virtual Internacional de Ingeniería, Ciencias y Tecnología y el Vínculo con los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible,” a free online colloquium organized by the university. The Sustainable Development Goals are the 17 goals adopted by the United Nations for 2030, among them good health and well-being and quality education. The event poster lists the session as a “conversatorio,” or moderated discussion, on artificial neural networks, health and smartphones.
Neural networks, smartphones and health
An artificial neural network is a machine-learning model made of layers of simple mathematical units whose connections are adjusted from examples, so that it can learn patterns such as those linking sensor readings to behavior. A smartphone carries many sensors, including motion, location and usage logs, and the patterns in those signals can reflect sleep, activity and social contact. Using such passive data to study behavior and health is known as digital phenotyping, a topic Dr. Costilla Reyes also presented that autumn at McLean Hospital’s Technology in Psychiatry Summit 2020 and at the Tecnológico Nacional de México. Researchers study these patterns alongside clinical assessments.
Panelists and how to follow the discussion
The poster names the speakers as Dr. Javier Sánchez Galán of CEPIA at the Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá, Dr. Cristian Pinzón of the university’s ROBOTSIS group at its Centro Regional de Veraguas, and Dr. Omar Costilla-Reyes of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In his Spanish-language announcement, Dr. Costilla Reyes shared registration and stream links so that others could follow the event.