Columbia Entrepreneurship

Combine Demo Day
2018-04-13 08:30 - 12:00 UTC
OPEN TO ALL
REGISTER
New startups in NYC Media Lab’s Combine cohort will deliver their pitch. Eleven teams from across the City’s university ecosystem participated this year, developing startup concepts ranging from machine learning and artificial intelligence to blockchain and virtual and augmented reality.
Join us to see how 12-weeks of an intensive customer discovery and market validation curriculum shaped each team’s venture. As a member of NYC Media Lab’s innovation community, you are invited to attend.

Technology and Innovation in Entrepreneurship
2018-04-11 15:00 - 16:30
Wednesday, April 11, 2018 | 3:00-4:30pm International Affairs Building, 1501
Mr. XU Xiaping, Founding Partner, ZhenFund
Mr. WU Sheng, Founder, Context Lab Dr. David Park, Dean, Strategic Initiative Dr. Peter Marber MIA ’87, SIPA Advisory Board Member Mr. Xu, XiaoPing is the Founding Partner of ZhenFund(真格基⾦). He is known as one of China ’ s pioneering angel investors. Forbes magazine selected him into Midas List,the world’s top 100 investors of the year for 2016 and 2017 respectively. Mr. Xu was also a CoFounder of New Oriental Education & Technology Group (NYSE: EDU),the largest provider of private education in China.
Wu Sheng,the founder of Context Lab (景室), is a distinguished researcher of Chinese Internet industry who provides original business methods and theories to entrepreneurs.
Wu Sheng is also one of co founders of Luogic Show and Iget App. Meanwhile, he serves as a longterm counsellorto JD MI and VIP.com to assistthem in solving strategic problems atthe organizational level.
David K. Park is Dean of Strategic Initiatives and serves as a senior advisor to the Executive Vice President and Dean of Faculty of the Arts and Sciences at Columbia University.
Dr. Park is a member of Columbia University’s Data Sciences Institute’s New Media Center, and Fellow atthe Center forthe Management of Systemic Risk at Columbia University. Dr. Park is also a founding member of Columbia University’s Digital Storytelling Lab. Author, professor, and Wall Street professional, Peter Marber has been a pioneering figure in global finance for three decades. Peter is an award winning money manager, and sits on SIPA’s Advisory Board.

The Transparency Series - Series 7, Documents as Data (Workshop)
2018-04-08 10:00 - 17:00
OPEN TO COLUMBIA JOURNALISM STUDENTS
A unique set of seminars and hands-on workshops that bring new technology and design ideas to the Columbia Journalism community. The goal is simple — help students learn new ways to find and tell stories, new ways to inform and entertain. Each topic will commence with a Friday evening panel discussion and will follow with a Saturday hands-on workshop centered around building.
Students attending three of the seminar-workshops over the course of the year will receive a graduation award indicating the extra breadth they sought out during their time at the J-School.
MORE INFO
***
Artists Allison Parrish and R. Luke DuBois will introduce and discuss the ways in which textual materials (literature, poetry, news articles, government records and other primary sources, etc.) can be worked with as data in creative and insightful ways. Participants in this workshop will be exposed to some common techniques for textual analysis and representation of documents common in contemporary practice. Participants will be led through creative exercises around the intersection of computation and language as a way to gain familiarity and comfort with this medium. The workshop will involve a bit of programming in Python to allow participants to work with, visualize, and generate text in interesting ways.

#StartupColumbia Festival
2018-04-06
OPEN TO ALL
Get Tickets
Join the 5th Annual #StartupColumbiaFestival, Friday, April 6th Miller Theater.
We’ll drill down on the coming of the New Space Revolution, Democratization of Leadership, Data Ethics, and How Blockchain will Liberate the Netizens. Lunch will be served by 20 different Columbia food and beverage founders at the Columbia Food Founders Fare. And oh yea, we’ll be giving away $200,000 to the Columbia Venture Competition Winners.
Early Bird Tickets on Sale Now at StartupColumbia.org

Artists Using Data, Talk Series | James Hoff: Untitled
2018-04-05 10:30 - 11:30
James Hoff, whose work encompasses painting, sound, writing, and performance, has maintained a strong focus on distributed forms and experiments with language, including cross-disciplinary investigations that address orally-transmitted syndromes, computer viruses, and ear worms.

The Business Side of AI: A Conversation with Bill O'Farrell and Avi Goldfarb
2018-04-02 19:00 - 20:00
OPEN TO ALL
When: Monday, April 2, 2018, 6:00-7:30 p.m.
Where: Warren Hall 310
Join us on Monday, April 2, 2018 for a conversation exploring the path to success for launching and growing an AI startup.
Professor Bill O’Farrell was most recently co-founder and CEO of Body Labs, a computer vision and AI company focused on providing the human body as a digital platform for a broad range of markets, including online apparel sales, gaming, health and fitness and AR/VR applications. Amazon purchased Body Labs in September 2017. Prior to starting Body Labs, Bill co-founded and was CEO of CoSA (makers of After Effects, acquired by Adobe), SpeechWorks (NASDAQ: SPWX, merged with Nuance) and OpenAir, Inc. (acquired by NetSuite).
Professor Avi Goldfarb is the Ellison Professor of Marketing at Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. His research focuses on the impact of information technology on marketing and on the economy. His most recent book, Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence, lifts the curtain on the AI-is-magic hype and shows how basic tools from economics provides clarity about the AI revolution and a basis for action by CEOs, managers, policy makers, investors, and entrepreneurs.
The discussion will be moderated by Lang Center Faculty Director Olivier Toubia, Glaubinger Professor of Business.

Storytelling Workshop
2018-03-28 15:30 - 16:45
Are you planning to pitch your venture, tell your founder’s story, or simply develop a presentation for a course or job interview? Join us at the Design Studio for our storytelling workshop on Wednesday, March 28st, 3:30-pm-4:45pm.
Knowing how to tell a compelling story about yourself or your product is one of the most important yet overlooked traits of a successful entrepreneur. This workshop will help you develop the core of your story – from forming the backstory of a product to creating the narrative of your personal journey. Explore how to construct a coherent narrative, expand your creative confidence, and strengthen your skill with the art of a good story.
In the past, this workshop has been helpful for teams who are gearing up for a final pitch at the Columbia Venture Competition, Dean’s Challenge or a final presentation for class. This workshop is open to all students, staff and alumni at the Columbia community.

Data Science Day (Event)
2018-03-28 09:00 - 17:00
Open to all
Regiser here
Celebrating 5 years of Data Science at Columbia University
Join us for demos and lightning talks by Columbia researchers presenting their latest work in data science. The event provides a forum for innovators in academia, industry and government to connect.
Roone Arledge Auditorium
Lerner Hall | Columbia University
2920 Broadway, New York, NY 10027

DEADLINE: MassChallenge
2018-03-28
OPEN TO ALL
APPLY (Columbia students can use promocode 2018BOSCOlumbia 25 when they apply)
MassChallenge helps entrepreneurs solve the world’s biggest challenges. We accelerate the highest-impact, highest-potential startups through a selective, zero-equity program that connects participants to:
▪ Expert mentors
▪ World’s top corporates (Microsoft, Pepsi, GE, and more)
▪ Free office space in the heart of Boston’s Innovation District
▪ Tailored curriculum
▪ $1.5M in cash prizes
To date, 1,211 MassChallenge alumni have raised over $2 billion in funding, generated approximately $900 million in revenue, and created over 65,000 total jobs. We have deep experience in launching successful startups.

SPARK WORKSHOP: Helping Good People Do More Good for More People
2018-03-27 18:00 - 20:00
OPEN TO ALL
SPARK WORKSHOP
Open Collaborative Social Innovation: Helping Good People Do More Good for More People
Facilitated By George Kyriakopoulos
Tuesday, March 27, 2018
6-8 p.m.
Refreshments included with RSVP
Uris Hall, Room 140
3022 Broadway
New York, NY 10027
OVERVIEW
Large corporations are leveraging the best collaborative innovation technologies to generate billions of dollars in new business. By bringing together thousands of minds from around the world to engage on tactical, strategic, and operational problems, they’re able to identify solutions that would otherwise never see the light of day.
What if these same technologies could be leveraged for problem solving for social impact? What if nonprofits of any size, anywhere around the world, could tap into the expertise and resources of those same minds?
Endeavour Innovation is a single, central, open impact innovation platform available to nonprofits at no cost. They are creating the capacity to engage with anyone, anywhere around the world, and at any time for social impact.

AREAS FOR DISCUSSION

What are the fundamental benefits to having a single platform for global open collaboration?
What are universities’ or corporations’ willingness to pay?
What would motivate individuals or teams to commit time to global innovation challenges?

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY
George Kyriakopoulos is currently a Senior Innovation Consultant at Brightidea working primarily with Fortune 500 corporations globally. He builds continuous programmatic innovation into organizations by helping to create an environment where the risky practice of innovation can survive and flourish through appropriate exposure and expansion in time.

Spark provides Social Innovators with an opportunity to explore resources, connections and potential solutions to help their social ventures. These workshops tap into the collective knowledge within Columbia University and the larger entrepreneurial and social impact community.
Spark is a platform for ventures to make valuable connections, as the audience is a self-selected group interested in the topic area. Ventures are also able to gather ideas through group brainstorming to help them address specific questions or problems within the business organization.
These workshops are free and open to all who are willing to bring their ideas, experience, and connections to help solve social and environmental challenges that social innovators aim to address.
If you are unable to attend the above event but would like more information on Spark, please register for our mailing list.
For more information, or if you would like to suggest a future Spark workshop, please contact socialenterprise@gsb.columbia.edu.
This workshop is supported by the Lang Center for Entrepreneurship, and the Tamer Center for Social Enterprise at Columbia Business School.

The Transparency Series - Series 6, Climate Change (Workshop)
2018-03-25 10:00 - 17:00
OPEN TO COLUMBIA JOURNALISM STUDENTS
A unique set of seminars and hands-on workshops that bring new technology and design ideas to the Columbia Journalism community. The goal is simple — help students learn new ways to find and tell stories, new ways to inform and entertain. Each topic will commence with a Friday evening panel discussion and will follow with a Saturday hands-on workshop centered around building.
Students attending three of the seminar-workshops over the course of the year will receive a graduation award indicating the extra breadth they sought out during their time at the J-School.
MORE INFO
***
Food production. Transportation. Energy usage. Critical infrastructure. Climate change is affecting almost every aspect of our lives. But reporting on climate is challenging, and many journalists feel uncomfortable engaging the topic outside an environmental beat. The subject can be technical, supported by data and models, some of which do not agree.
With this edition of the Transparency Series, we focus on climate change. For previous events, we presented techniques — network analysis, poll interpretation, mapping. This time, our technique is “interdisciplinary collaboration” — working with scientists to tell better stories. In a day-long workshop we will learn from leading climate scientists about how to cast climate as a character in stories, and not just the environment story. Sports? Real estate? Politics? Through collaboration, we can explore many more topics.
The morning will be spent with Gavin Schmidt, Director and leading scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Sciences, and Susanne Rust, Director of the Environmental Reporting Fellows at the Columbia Journalism School. In our time with them, we will survey the current landscape of reporting on climate change, and look to the tools, data and resources that exist for reporters trying to write about the topic. In the afternoon, students will be paired with PhD students in Columbia’s Environmental Science program to come up with pitches of their own–new stories to contextualize the impacts of climate change.

Third Thursday: VC 101 by Curtis L. Mo
2018-03-22 17:30 - 19:30
OPEN TO ALL
Thursday, March 22
5:30 PM – 7:30 PM
524 Mudd
REGISTER HERE

Third Thursday is a recurring open forum and networking and info session for the Columbia University entrepreneurship community. It provides students, faculty, staff, and alumni the opportunity to hear ideas from across campus, form teams, and explore career options. You’ll hear from Columbia alumni and other experts on their experiences working in the field, how they’ve applied their Columbia experience in their careers, and more.

Join us on Thursday, March 22 to hear from Curtis L. Mo, who will cover topics on venture capitals and funding. Curtis Mo has represented emerging growth companies, major public companies, investment banks, venture capital funds and private equity funds in hundreds of public offerings, mergers and acquisitions, buyouts, venture capital financings and other complex transactions. He has extensive experience in corporate governance matters and regularly acts as general outside counsel to public and private companies at all stages of development, particularly in the technology, life sciences, clean energy technology and consumer sectors.

For more details about the event, click here.

Have an announcement or idea to pitch to the group? Contact us (seaseship@columbia.edu) in advance and come prepared to pitch it!

Making Markets Work for Underserved Communities: Micro and Small Enterprise Development
2018-03-20 18:00 - 20:00
OPEN TO ALL

Tuesday, March 20
6:00–8:00 p.m.

Columbia Business School
3022 Broadway, Uris Hall, Room 333
New York, NY 10027
RSVP →

How can we make markets more accessible and competitive to enable individuals to find their own way out of poverty? How do we effectively promote entrepreneurship through government policy, private sector business practices, and social sector advocacy? What are the risks and challenges for micro and small enterprises in rural settings?
Join us for a ten-minute film screening of Zaza Rising and a panel discussion on making markets work for underserved communities through micro and small enterprise development, featuring:

Ambassador Valentine Rugwabiza, Permanent Representative to Rwanda’s UN Mission
Karen Yelick, CEO of Indego Africa
Leslie Labruto, Global Energy Lead at Acumen
Lora Romano, Corporate Social Responsibility Manager at Blue Marble Organic Ice Cream
George Franklin ’18BUS, Founder of Baobab Circle
Brigit Helms, Senior Advisor at DAI

About Zaza Rising
This short, ten-minute documentary tells the timely story of one Rwandan woman’s courage, strength, and hope for a better tomorrow. Christine Nyirahabimana started a small bakery in rural Rwanda, hiring 10 HIV positive, single mothers as her employees. Despite incredible odds stacked against her, she is a beacon of light for her community and an inspiring example of how one individual can effect change and break generational cycles of poverty through social entrepreneurship.

Patents, Licenses, and Science-based Startups: Tech Transfer at Columbia and Beyond
2018-03-14 16:30 - 18:30
OPEN TO ALL
Wednesday, March 14th
4:30pm – 6:30pm
Davis Auditorium – CEPSR Room 412
530 West 120th Street
Register here

About the Event: Each year, Columbia University researchers create over 400 scientific inventions, which turn into over 200 new patent applications, over 100 licenses to industry, and over 20 new IP-backed startups. These inventions eventually save and improve the lives of people around the world, and the revenue generated flows back to the inventors and university to help catalyze new research breakthroughs in the future. In this interactive presentation, Columbia Tech Ventures’ Executive Director Orin Herskowitz, will discuss how all of this happens at Columbia and our peer universities; the ways that modern universities are supporting the creation of new startups based on scientific research; and the challenges entrepreneurs and investors often face while bringing these new technologies to market.

About the Speaker: Orin Herskowitz, Executive Director, Columbia Technology Ventures; Senior Vice President for Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer

Orin Herskowitz is the Senior VP of Intellectual Property and Tech Transfer for Columbia University, as well as, Executive Director of Columbia Technology Ventures (CTV). He also is an Adjunct Professor, teaching an Intellectual Property for Entrepreneurs course. He has served on boards or served as the Principle Investigator for a number of innovation and entrepreneurship-focused initiatives, including the NYC Media Lab, the PowerBridgeNY clean energy proof-of-concept center, the Columbia Coulter Translational Partnership, the NYC ACRE technology incubator, and Harlem Biospace; has been a peer reviewer for innovation and entrepreneurship awards for the National Science Foundation and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities; and is a frequent speaker at IP- and technology-focused events in NYC and across the country. He is a board member for the Center for American Entrepreneurship, a nonpartisan, not-for-profit research, policy, and advocacy organization engaging policymakers in Washington and across the nation regarding the critical importance of entrepreneurs and start-ups to innovation, economic growth, and job creation. Orin is also an appointee to a two-year term on the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (NACIE), a Federal committee that advises the U.S. Secretary of Commerce on issues related to accelerating innovation, enhancing entrepreneurship, and expanding workforce skill development.

Questions? Contact techventures@columbia.edu

SXSW Columbia Alumni Networking Reception
2018-03-10 16:30 - 18:30
Presented by Columbia Business School and the Alumni Club of Austin
Saturday, March 10, 2018 from 4:30-6:30 p.m.
Moonshine Patio Bar and Grill, 303 Red River Street, Austin, Texas

Free of charge

Join Columbia alumni for a networking reception at the SXSW festival. This event will be a great opportunity to interact with your peers in a variety of industries from all over the country. There will be a cash bar and complimentary appetizers.
Please RSVP here by Friday, March 9.
If you have any questions, please contact Matt Fox’02 at mlf87@caa.columbia.edu

Social Entrepreneurship Lightning Talks & Panel Discussion
2018-03-07 18:00 - 20:00
OPEN TO ALL

Join SIPA for an evening of Lightning Talks with social entrepreneurs, who have grown their startups, projects, ideas side-hustles from the ground up.
Learn about the tech behind what it takes to build a successful mobile iOS app, and hear about creating a global think tank to empower women and what it takes to start a 501(c)3 to teach kids to code.

Speakers
Jonathan Uy, CTO of Shine, former Mobile Lead for DoSomething.org (Columbia alum!)
Jennifer Ilanolo, Founder of Concordia Project
Rebecca Garcia, Co-founder of CoderDojo NYC

Studio Hours at the Design Studio (Open Collaboration Time)
2018-03-07 15:00 - 17:00, 2018-02-21 15:00 - 17:00 | Columbia Entrepreneurship Design Studio, 490 Riverside Dr., New York, NY, 10027, United States
OPEN TO ALL IN THE COLUMBIA COMMUNITY
Do you have an idea and want to get personal design thinking feedback from the Design Studio? During Studio Hours, teams or individuals are invited to discuss their projects or ideas one-on-one with human-centered designers in the Studio. Teams of Columbia affiliates are also welcome to use the studio space for working independently on their entrepreneurial projects.

Women in Data Science (WiDS) Conference
2018-03-02 09:00 - 14:30
RSVP for the WiDS Conference at SAP Hudson Yards
Sign up now to attend! WiDS is a global conference movement and community, taking place in 120+ locations during the month of March 2018.
Venue: SAP Next-Gen, 10 Hudson Yards, 48th Floor, New York NY-10001
Date & Time: March 2nd 9am – 2:30pm
Registration Required – Sign up here
The Global WiDS Conference aims to inspire and educate data scientists worldwide, regardless of gender, and support women in the field. This annual one-day technical conference provides an opportunity to hear about the latest data science related research and applications in a broad set of domains. All genders are invited to participate in the conference, which features exclusively women speakers.
Speaker Highlights:

Winnie Chang
Parinaz Vahabzadeh, Head of Analytics Labs at Coach
Laura Norén, Postdoctoral Scholar and Adjunct Professor at NYU’s Center for Data Science
Cathy Cooper, Senior Director for Enterprise Analytics at SAP
Claudia Perlich, Senior Data Scientist for Two Sigma
Roxanna Geambasu, Associate Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University
Ann Rosenberg, SVP and Global Head of SAP Next-Gen
Nami Choe, Head of the Platforms Data & Measurement Team at Google
Maritsa Toro, Digitas at Publicis Groupe
Sinziana Eckner, JP Morgan Chase
Hannah Davis, Creative Technologist + Musician, programmer and generative musician
Sinead Kaiya, COO at SAP P&I
Frida Polli, CEO & Co-Founder at Pymetrics

Join the digital conversation on Twitter with @WiDS_Conference using the hashtag #WiDS2018, #SAPWiDS & #sheinnovates.

Artists Using Data, Talk Series | Luke DuBois: “Sex, Lies, and Data Mining”
2018-03-01 10:30 - 11:30
OPEN TO ALL COLUMBIANS
Prentis Hall Rm 101
Stemming from his investigations of “time-lapse phonography,” his work is a sonic and encyclopedic relative to time-lapse photography. Just as a long camera exposure fuses motion into a single image, his projects reveal the average sonority, visual language, and vocabulary in music, film, text, or cultural information.

APPLICATION DEADLINE: Tamer Fund for Social Ventures
2018-03-01
OPEN TO ALL COLUMBIANS
The Tamer Fund for Social Ventures (“the Fund”) provides seed grants to nonprofit, for-profit, or hybrid early-stage Columbia University affiliated social and environmental ventures. Preference will be given to start-up ventures that have the potential to be financially self-sustaining in the longer term.
Read more about the criteria and process HERE.
For questions, please reach out to tamersvfund@gmail.com.

Data-Driven Discovery and Decision Making - A Paradigm Shift for Large-Scale Experimental Science
2018-02-27 11:00 - 12:15
Tuesday, February 27, 2018
11:00AM-12:15PM
CEPSR 414, DAVIS AUDITORIUM

“Data-Driven Discovery and Decision Making – A Paradigm Shift for Large-Scale Experimental Science”
New instrument technologies are enabling a new generation of in-situ and in-operando experiments, with extremely fine spatial and temporal resolution, that allows researchers to observe as physics, chemistry and biology are happening. These new methodologies go hand in hand with an exponential growth in data volumes and rates – petabyte scale data collections and terabyte/sec. At the same time, scientists are pushing for a paradigm shift. As they can now observe processes in intricate details, they want to analyze, interpret and control those processes. Given the multitude of voluminous, heterogenous data streams involved in every single experiment, novel real-time, data-driven analysis and decision support approaches are needed to realize their vision. This talk will discuss state-of-the-art streaming analysis for experimental facilities, its challenges and early successes. It will present work currently carried out at Brookhaven National Laboratory and identify areas for collaboration.
Kerstin Kleese van Dam is the director of the Computational Science Initiative (CSI) at the Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), in Long Island, NY. With 100 petabytes, BNL hosts the second largest scientific data archive in the US and the fourth largest in the world, it processes annually in access of 400 petabytes of scientific results.
CSI conducts leading edge computer science and applied mathematics research to address the associated analysis challenges, specific focus areas are machine learning, visual analytics and programming models.

Before she joined BNL Kerstin was associated division director at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Director of Computing at University College London Medical School and Data Management Group Lead at the Science and Technology Facilities Council in the UK.

Hosted by Prof. Steven Nowick (Dept. of Computer Science)

The Future of Investing: Fintech NYC
2018-02-22 18:30 - 19:00
Join Dean Mary C. Boyce, Professor Xunyu Zhou and Addepar CEO, Eric Poirier (SEAS ’04) as they discuss how new advances in technology are transforming traditional investing practices. Is Artificial Intelligence or Intelligence Augmentation the answer to making better financial decisions? Zhou and Poirier are two experts offering insight on the breakthroughs taking place and shaping the future of the finance industry and beyond.
Thursday, February 22, 2018
JP Morgan Chase & Co.
383 Madison Ave.
12th Floor Conference Center
New York, NY 10017
6:30 p.m. doors | 7:00 p.m. discussion
8:30 p.m. networking reception
Tickets are $10
Includes beer, wine, and heavy hors d’oeuvres
REGISTER HERE

DEADLINE: Columbia Venture Competition
2018-02-22
YOUR CHANCE TO WIN A PIECE OF $200,000
APPLY HERE
This year the Columbia Venture Competition (CVC) has four challenges but you may only enter one. The descriptions, rules, and eligibility guidelines are listed below. Each challenge will split $50,000 among the top three winners. Three of the challenges are open to students and recent alumni (five years or less from their most current Columbia degree) from any Columbia-affiliated school, including Barnard and Teachers College. The Undergraduate Challenge, sponsored by Columbia College, is open to all current Columbia College, Columbia Engineering, General Studies, and Barnard College undergrads. CVC judges will come from Columbia’s worldwide alumni community from Beijing to Brooklyn and will represent diverse backgrounds and a wide-ranging set of expertise. START YOUR EXECUTIVE SUMMARIES NOW. THE ONLINE COMPETITION PLATFORM OPENS ON FEBRUARY 10, SUBMISSION DEADLINE IS FEBRUARY 22.
APPLY

The American Bionics Project: Promoting Revolutionary Technology for People with Disabilities
2018-02-20 18:00 - 20:00
Facilitated by Steven Galeazzi ’10BUS
Tuesday, February 20, 2018
6:00–8:00 p.m.
Columbia Entrepreneurship Design Studio
Riverside Church
490 Riverside Drive, Room 430
New York, NY 10027
RSVP →
Refreshments included with RSVP
There is a gap between the needs of people with physical disabilities in the United States and the solutions available to meet those needs. What if technologies for people with physical disabilities could be profitable while also helping those in need? What if they could be designed not only to serve people with disabilities, but also to spur innovation for broader consumer markets?
By providing early stage funding and business advisement, The American Bionics Project will serve as the catalyst for advanced technologies and medical solutions for people with physical disabilities.
Join this spark workshop to help The American Bionics Project explore resources, connections, and potential solutions to help their social venture.

Data for Good
2018-02-20 17:30 - 19:30
LOCATION
Bloomberg Center, Cornell Tech
2 West Loop Road
New York, NY 10044
February 20, 2018
Reception: 5:30pm-6:30pm
Talk: 6:30pm-7:30pm
Every field has data. We use data to discover new knowledge, to interpret the world, to make decisions, and even to predict the future. The recent convergence of big data, cloud computing, and novel machine learning algorithms and statistical methods is causing an explosive interest in data science and its applicability to all fields. This convergence has already enabled the automation of some tasks that better human performance. The novel capabilities we derive from data science will drive our cars, treat disease, and keep us safe. At the same time, such capabilities risk leading to biased, inappropriate, or unintended action. The design of data science solutions requires both excellence in the fundamentals of the field and expertise to develop applications which meet human challenges without creating even greater risk.
The Data Science Institute at Columbia University promotes “Data for Good”: using data to address societal challenges and bringing humanistic perspectives as—not after—new science and technology is invented. Started in 2012, the Institute is now a university-level institute representing over 250 affiliated faculty from 12 different schools across campus. Data science literally touches every corner of the university.
In this talk, Jeannette Wing, Director of the Data Science Institute, will present the vision on how the Institute plans to address some of the key challenges and opportunities of data science, highlighting educational and research activities, as well as future initiatives that may directly impact the data science community at Columbia, New York City, and beyond.

Data for Good
2018-02-16 12:00 - 13:30
OPEN TO ALL

Friday, February 16, 2018
12:00PM-1:30PM
CEPSR 750

In this talk, we discuss a systematic evaluation of the impact of financial regulations concerning the collateralization of derivative trades on systemic risk – a topic that has been vigorously discussed since the financial crisis in 2007/08. Experts often disagree on the efficacy of these regulations. Compounding this problem banks regard their trade data required for a full analysis as proprietary. We adapt a simulation technology combining advances in graph theory to randomly generate entire financial systems sampled from realistic distributions with a novel open source risk engine to compute risks in financial systems under different regulations. This allows us to consistently evaluate, predict and optimize the impact of financial regulations on all levels – from a single trade to systemic risk – before it is implemented. The resulting data set is accessible to contemporary data science techniques like data mining, anomaly detection and visualization. We find that collateralization reduces the costs of resolving a financial system in crisis, yet it does not change the distribution of those costs and can have adverse effects on individual participants in extreme situations.
Remote participants can register for online streaming in advance at:
https://columbiauniversity.zoom.us/meeting/register/4e9e74be7f16abb08c34be5db4a05ad8
Jointly sponsored by the Data Science Institute and the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy

Third Thursday Series | Startup A to Z
2018-02-15 17:30 - 19:00
OPEN TO ALL COLUMBIANS
Thursday, February 15 (Mudd 524, 5:30pm) will feature Brandon Maier, who will cover “crafting your executive summary” as well as a number of other topics in Startup A to Z. Brandon Maier has extensive experience building financial and marketing strategies for startup companies. He has been part of two venture backed startup teams, including serving as Financial Controller for the Winklevoss-backed bitcoin exchange BitInstant and founding Jozii.com, a student-based job matching service which amassed over 100,000 student users in the United States.
REGISTER

Artists Using Data, Talk Series | Gene Kogan: Machine Learning In the Composer's Future Toolkit
2018-02-15 10:30 - 11:30
OPEN TO ALL COLUMBIANS
Prentis Hall Rm 101
In this talk, Kogan reviews the evolving application of machine learning to computational and new media art, with an emphasis on audio, demonstrating how new approaches to software can augment and counterpoint the normal compositional process.

DEADLINE: Hult Prize Ivy
2018-02-14
Hult Prize has case competitions from the local to global scale, where the winning team will receive $1,000,000 seed capital to implement their idea to create impactful change. Hult Prize Ivy will be a division of the Hult Prize within the Ivy League allowing teams win Hult Prize Ivy’s several-thousand-dollar cash prize and fast-track into an 8-week Accelerator program in Castle in London to have the opportunity to pitch their idea at the United Nations and have the chance to compete to win the $1,000,000.
Applications are accepted on a rolling basis until March 14th 11:59pm. For more information, please feel free to visit www.HultPrizeIvy.org or www.HultPrize.org, or email info@hultprizeivy.com.
