Description:

FALL KICKOFF MEETING: Wednesday, September 25, 2019 at 6:30pm in Chambers Hall, Evanston

DATA SCIENCE NIGHTS are monthly hack nights on popular data science topics, organized by Northwestern University graduate students and scholars. Aspiring, beginning, and advanced data scientists are welcome!

LECTURE: ​"Open standards for machine learning model deployment" with IBM Developer Advocate Svetlana Levitan.

This year, for the fall kickoff of Data Science Nights we are excited to host a representative of IBM Cognitive Applications for Chicago, Svetlana Levitan. Svetlana is a Developer Advocate of IBM with many years of experience with IBM statistical Software SPSS, and Predictive Model Markup Language (PMML). She is the Chicagoland Technical Experts Community Chairperson, a Meetup organizer for Big Data Developers, Open Source Analytics, and Chicago Cloud Developers, and is also part of the Center for Open-Source Data and AI Technologies (CODAIT). This is an excellent opportunity to connect with IBM representatives!

TALK ABSTRACT:

Machine learning and data science are in popular demand. Predictive model deployment is the part of the machine learning process where the practical results are achieved, when the model is used for generating predictions on new data (known as scoring). The deployment used to present big difficulties, as models were typically built in one environment and needed to be deployed in a different one. Often they would need to be re-implemented in a new programming language, that would be very slow and error-prone.

Join us to learn about open standards that have made the process of model deployment easier. Predictive Model Markup Language (PMML) and Portable Format for Analytics (PFA) were developed by the Data Mining Group (DMG). PMML has been around for more than 20 years and is used widely. PFA is an emerging standard that is getting a lot of interest. Open Neural Network eXchange (ONNX) format was recently developed by Microsoft and Facebook as a way to exchange deep learning (DL) models between different DL frameworks, then it was open sourced. It is now very actively worked on by many companies and contributors. Attendees will get a good understanding of predictive model deployment challenges and approaches.

AGENDA:

6:15pm - Refreshments
6:30pm - Presentation by Svetlana Levitan, IBM Developer Advocate, IBM Cognitive Applications.
7pm - Discussion about topics and working groups for future hacking night sessions

For more info: data-science-nights.org

Supporting Groups:

This event is supported by the Northwestern Institute for Complex Systems and the Northwestern Data Science Initiative, in collaboration with ACiDS.