About the Series
Intelligent Informatics @ Bloustein is a series of interactive informatics seminars and workshops on the use of data science and artificial intelligence for urban, public policy, healthcare, and organizational analytics.
UPCOMING EVENTS
April 21, 2023 | 11:00 a.m

GSODI Forum on Open Data and Artificial Intelligence
A discussion on the value creation potential of aligning open data with AI, especially generative AIs like ChatGPT and Bloom, with reflections on public policy
at the Gov. James J. Florio Special Events Forum, 33 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ
Visit the event page for more information or click below to register.
PAST EVENTS
Knowledge Graphs in Natural Language Processing: Overcome Domain Adaptation Challenges in Language Models
The event was hosted by the PISG, the MPI program and the Rutgers Urban & Civic Informatics (RUCI) Lab, the Bloustein Student Services and BGSA in collaboration with our partners at Rutgers University and our external collaborators.
Event presented by Vivek Kumar, Marie Sklodowska-Curie Scholar, University of Cagliari, Italy
Vivek Kumar is an NLP Enthusiast. He is presently working as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Researcher with the University of Cagliari, Italy and Philips Research, Netherlands for PhilHumans (European Commission, Horizon 2020, ITN project). Prior to this, he worked as a Research Engineer for the project “Search for Hidden Particle” (SHiP) of the European Commission of Nuclear Research (CERN) at NUST-MiSiS. He received his MS degree from NUST-MiSiS in Computer Science. In his career so far, he has authored several publications with Journals, Book Series and Conferences of International repute. He is also the reviewer / editor for several Journals and International Conferences of IEEE, Springer, ACM, etc.
Open Data for Society: Accelerating Solutions for Society’s Most Pressing Challenges
We welcome our distinguished speakers from the AI for Good Lab @ Microsoft.
- Anthony Cintron Roman is the Director of Data Architecture & Strategy with the AI for Good Lab at Microsoft, where he works with a team of data engineers, data scientists and researchers in Machine Learning and data science-based projects across Microsoft AI for Good efforts. He specializes in cloud solution architecture and open innovation and has a BS in computer science and an MBA with a specialty in the management of information systems.
- Lucas A. Meyer is the Principal Data Scientist with the AI for Good Lab at Microsoft, and he specializes in models to promote economic development and detect financial misconduct. Lucas also worked in fraud detection at Amazon, and has an M.Sc. and an MBA from the University of Washington.
- Prof. Jim Samuel, Director of the Master of Public Informatics (MPI) program at the Bloustein School, provided closing comments on the potential societal implications of combining artificial intelligence and open data.
Data Visualization with Python Jupyter Notebooks – A Hands-on Introduction
The session consisted of brief presentations, with around 100 minutes of interactive work-along demo of data visualization with Jupyter Notebooks, and ended with Q&A. Participants learned to create data visualizations and can opt to either access Rutgers University’s high-performance computing (HPC) platform/cloud* or to run the code locally on their own computers.
- Dr. Bala Desinghu, Senior Scientist from OARC, Rutgers University provided an interactive introduction to data visualization with insights on the use of high-performance computing.
- Dr. Abhishek Tripathi, Associate Professor, School of Business, TCNJ, introduced the use of Python libraries such as Seaborn, Plotly and Cufflinks for creating advanced and interactive data visualizations.
- Dr. Jim Samuel, Associate Professor, Rutgers Bloustein School, concluded the session with insights on the use of Artificial Intelligence for visualizations and language data visualizations.
This workshop was hosted by the Rutgers Urban and Civic Informatics Lab (RUCI Lab) at the Bloustein School and the Rutgers Office of Advanced Research Computing and sponsored by the Bloustein School Master of Public Informatics program. It was organized by Dr. Bala Desinghu and Dr. Jim Samuel in collaboration with our partners, the Eastern Regional Network (ERN), the Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub (NEBDI Hub), and the New Jersey Big Data Alliance (NJBDA).
Introduction to the Power of GitHub for Analytics
This workshop instructed participants in how to get started with GitHub from scratch, including the basics of GitHub (account creation, organization use, permissions, and more); using GitHub to manage code and projects for academic research and teaching; best practices for data science workflows in GitHub; GitHub Actions for automated web scraping, data acquisition and dynamic data visualizations via RMarkdown; and publishing static websites and hosting them via GitHub pages.
This workshop was led by Gavin Rozzi, Research Computing Specialist at the Rutgers Urban and Civic Informatics Lab (RUCI Lab). Gavin also teaches graduate courses in the Bloustein School’s Master of Public Informatics Program
Public Informatics for a Better Future: Textual Analytics with R and Social Media Data
In this virtual workshop, Dr. Jim Samuel, Executive Director of the Bloustein School’s Master of Public Informatics, provides an interactive introduction to textual analytics and natural language processing. The session includes a presentation and an approximate 30-minute interactive work-along demonstration for textual analytics using R-Studio. Participants will learn to generate insights from social media data related to current events or issues of public importance.