Research Workshop Collaborations with the Ken Kennedy Institute

The Ken Kennedy Institute is dedicated to creating lasting impact in the community. We support efforts at Rice University to collaborate with faculty and local organizations to host a multitude of research workshops related to applications of artificial intelligence, data, and computing.

Health Equity Workshop

• April 23, 2024
• Co-organizers: Momona Yamagami and Rice Digital Health Initiative
• This workshop brought together scientists and clinicians working on health equity research to facilitate new collaborations and identify a shared research agenda across disciplines. The workshop covered a broad range of topics in health equity including: 1) accessible healthcare technologies, 2) racial/ethnic/social determinants of health, 3) fairness in machine learning, 4) explainability in machine learning.
• Learn more here.

RAD Microbes Boot Camp

• December 14-15, 2023
• Organizer: Todd Treangen
• Boot Camp on Reading, Assembling, Analyzing, & Deciphering Microbial Genomes. This hands-on workshop covered end-to-end microbial genome analysis, discussing the pros and cons of decisions made during the process. Topics included library preparation, sequencing, bioinformatic tool selection, parameter settings, and interpretation of results.

Quantum Workshop

• October 26-27, 2023
• Organizer: Tasos Kyrillidis
• This workshop aimed to bring physicists, chemists, computer scientists, and engineers together to facilitate discussions around why tackling quantum-related questions is important. Topics of interest included new variational quantum methods, understanding the complexity of quantum objectives through classical and quantum complexity theory, new applications of quantum algorithms, as well as new experimental insights using existing quantum-based technologies/hardware.
• Learn more here.

RAD Genomics Workshop

• October 9, 2023 | November 7, 2022
• Co-organizers: Todd Treangen and Vicky Yao
• Workshop on Reading, Assembling, Analyzing, & Designing Genomic Data focused on bringing together scientists spanning multiple disciplines to encourage discussion and engagement, as well as provide a new platform for networking and collaboration in genome informatics in the Gulf Coast region.

Texas Colloquium on Distributed Learning (TL;DR 2023)

• September 28-29, 2023
• Co-organizers: Tasos Kyrillidis, César A. Uribe, and Sebastian Perez-Salazar
• The purpose of this workshop is to gather leading researchers on Federated Learning, Distributed Computing, and Large-Scale ML at Rice University; the workshop will discuss and focus on efficient distributed learning algorithms on how to train such large models using less costly/specialized computing platforms. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, Systems and infrastructure, Fairness, Hardware for on-device distributed learning, Privacy concerns, Optimization advances, Theoretical contributions, and Applications of distributed learning.
• Learn more here.

Houston Methodist Nursing Innovation Retreat

• October 4, 2022
• Co-organizers: Houston Methodist and Rice ENRICH
• The day opened a conversation between Rice faculty and Houston Methodist nurses on novel ideas such as reducing barriers optimizing nursing care at the bedside and improving nursing workflow.

Rice-Methodist Robotics and Imaging Retreat

• April 9, 2022
• Co-organizers: Houston Methodist and Rice ENRICH
• The retreat consisted of short presentations, break-out sessions, and planning for potential collaborations between Rice University and Houston Methodist facility. Our seed funding commitment grew into a seed grant program to foster innovative research between Rice University and the Houston Methodist Academic Institute faculty, collaborating researchers, and clinician scientists. Each institution will share equally in the funding of 20 multi-year projects in robotics, imaging, nursing, cardiovascular engineering, and psychological and behavioral health.

COVID-19 Symposium

• March 11, 2022
• Co-organizers: Rice Treangen Lab
• The symposium reflecting on 2 years of scientific accomplishments since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Attendees heard from six distinguished speakers about several topics surrounding the challenges and successes throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methodist Psychiatry and Rice Scalable Health Labs Workshop

• February 7, 2022
• Co-organizers: Houston Methodist and Rice ENRICH
• The workshop included short presentations by Rice Scalable Health Labs’ faculty, graduate students, and research engineers looking for potential collaborations with Houston Methodist.

“Unofficial" NeurIPS Workshop

• December 9, 2021
• Organizer: Anshumali Shrivastava
• In tradition of the conference, the workshop highlighted the latest research on machine learning and artificial intelligence from 18 Rice graduate students.

Scalable and Sustainable AI: Overcoming the Wide Gap Between AI in Theory and AI in Production

• October 27, 2021
• Organizer: Anshumali Shrivastava
• A technical workshop highlighting deep learning and high-performance computing. The workshop explored recent advances in designing a new generation of scalable and sustainable AI algorithms that are exponentially cheaper and can cope with future demands.

COVID-19 COV-IRT Symposium

• March 31, 2021 | July 17, 2020
• Co-organizers: COV-IRT COVID-19 International Research Team and Todd Treangen
• Attendees heard from scientists driving research into COVID-19. The purpose of the Coronavirus International Research Team (COV-IRT) is to rapidly improve our understanding of SARS-CoV-2 and develop a vaccine and/or therapeutics against SARS-CoV-2. This interdisciplinary group from over 28 institutions worldwide is coordinating projects focused specifically on SARS-CoV-2, including determining heterogeneity of the viral genome sequence, analyzing host response to COVID-19 disease, characterizing potential co-infections, and identifying potential therapeutic targets for preclinical and clinical development.

Rice-MD Anderson D3CODE Initiative Workshop

• August 13-14, 2020
• Co-organizers: UT MD Anderson Cancer Center
• Matched potential strategic partnerships between Rice faculty and MD Anderson researchers for MD Anderson’s Data-Driven Determinants for COVID-19 Oncology Discovery Effort (D3CODE), which is a collection of over 30 COVID-19 related projected.