The first Medical Data plus Pizza meeting for 2020 proved futuristic. Can the same machine learning techniques that produce deepfakes improve the survival rates for malaria patients? Will protein sequencing overtake genetic sequencing to help cancer patients access the best personalised treatment?
The textile industry is among the world’s most harmful industries. Textile production pollutes rivers, uses excessive amounts of water and chemicals, and labour conditions are often very poor. All this only so we can fill our wardrobes for very little money. Happily, there are many initiatives that give us hope by trying to do things differently and better. Stef le Fèvre from the City of Amsterdam talks about what’s happening in the Amsterdam Area and what we can do to make a positive impact.
In 2016, the Utrecht Sustainability Institute and the Amsterdam Economic Board organised a Circular Economy Lab to discuss how to make the mattress industry more circular. Mattresses currently represent the largest waste stream within the household waste category. Each year, consumers discard more than one million used mattresses – enough to fill the entire Amsterdam Arena all the way to the roof. Year after year after year. The vast majority of these discarded mattresses are incinerated.
As Amsterdam knowledge institutes commit 1 billion euros to AI research in the coming decade, those already in the data science trenches remind us: while the potential of applying data science for the benefit for patients seems almost infinite, there’s still a lot of work to be done.
On 14 and 15 November 2019, the City-zen Closing Event took place in Brussels. The two-day event marked the end of the City-zen program. It was a showcase of accumulated knowledge of five years of City-zen projects. The sessions at the event were aimed at integration of results, sharing of learnings and identifying barriers for replication. An unmistakable call to apply the lessons learned and make use of the insights gained.
The knowledge institutions of Amsterdam have joined forces and are investing 1 billion euros in the development of responsible AI technologies over the next ten years, by setting up research programmes, attracting top scientists and educating students with state-of-the-art knowledge of AI. Collaborations with top institutes around the world, public partners and the business community will be greatly expanded. The European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS) announced this week that the UvA has been selected as an ELLIS Unit to help keep in Europe talent in machine learning and related AI research fields for Europe.
Historical quays are collapsing, the first particulate matter refugees have reported and narrow streets are lined with traffic jams with polluting vans and trucks; we now really need to get started with smart and clean city logistics in the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area.
The Amsterdam Science & Innovation Awards go to innovations in 3D-printed embryo models, following criminal money through bank data and tackling the phosphate challenge. The Impact Awards go to Jaap Bonjer, Erwin Peterman and Gijs Wuite, and Roeland van Geuns.
The most recent Amsterdam Life Sciences Café focused on what startups in the life sciences industry must do to go to the next level. Basically, you need near-infinite patience, a risk-taking attitude and two billion euros. But most importantly: you need the right partners.
As medical data science evolves, how can it create personalised treatments for health and wellbeing and improve patient care? This was tackled during the latest Medical Data plus Pizza Meeting, the first joint meetup by Amsterdam Medical Data Science and Amsterdam Data Science. And as a reflection of ever-growing interest: the event took place in Amsterdam UMC’s expansive Amstel Zaal.
