RCOS - Spring 2011 Group Photo with Dr. Chris Welty and Prof Ed. Rogers (Dr. Welty's advisor)
What a fantastic week the past week was. We had heard about Watson playing Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. The lead manager of Watson at IBM Research is Dr. David Ferrucci,who got his masters and doctoral degrees from Computer Science Department at RPI, as well as Dr. Chris Welty, a principal scientist in that group (Prof. Ed Rogers was their adviser). In addition, Chris also got his BS from our department and he was a CS lab director. I had pleasant memories of interacting with both Chris and Dave with their sense of humor and outside the box thinking. In addition to the above two, we have Adam Lally in that group who got his BS from RPI. So we can say 20% of Watson had its origin from RPI!
The upper echelons of RPI did a wonderful three day bash at EMPAC with a panel discussion and TV screening of Jeopardy. You can look at the details here. Either Chris or Adam gave a brief overview of different aspects of Watson before the panel discussion and that set the mood for lively interactions and mind blowing discussions. To top that, excellent food (free to boot) was served at Epicurean Cafe at EMPAC.
Crowd of nerds and geeks (I am proud to be a part of that) cheered when Watson trounced its opponents. The Nay sayers had a field day celebrating the "Toronto" answer. After all if Watson had not said that Nay sayers may feel bad (So Watson was even empathetic - I know I am walking on thin ice). Please read this official blog here about EMPAC experience.
Chris gave a talk to RCOS student about the software engineering aspects of Watson. As usual, Chris's talk was lucid and clearly presented. Chris also invited questions from the audience and as usual RCOS students asked intelligent and engaging questions.
The you tube link to his presentation is here.
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