The 2023 edition of the Lisbon Machine Learning Summer School (LxMLS 2023) was held in July, bringing together more than 170 students for an intensive week focused on exploring the realms of machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP). Once again, CMU Portugal Program has supported this event, continuing the strong connection with this annual event, which has now spanned over a decade.
The school encompasses a wide spectrum of machine learning topics, ranging from theoretical foundations to practical applications, all of which play a pivotal role in tackling the challenges presented by language processing problems arising in different application areas. The event is a collaborative effort involving Instituto Superior Técnico (Técnico), Instituto de Telecomunicações, Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores, Investigação e Desenvolvimento em Lisboa (INESC-ID), the Lisbon ELLIS Unit for Learning and Intelligent Systems (LUMLIS), and Unbabel, Zendesk, and IBM Research, with the support of the CMU Portugal Program.
The 13th edition drew in a diverse group of participants, including experts in the field of ML and NLP, reaching out to students of various nationalities and academic backgrounds, such as Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, Biomedical Engineering, Linguistics, and Economics.
Among the speakers at the event was Bhiksha Raj, Carnegie Mellon University Professor at Language Technologies Institute and Fellow at IEEE. Bhiksha Raj works in four broad areas: Speech recognition, Audio processing, Neural networks, and Privacy/Security for voice processing. His involvement in multiple LxMLS editions underscores his commitment to the program. Additionally, he has collaborated with Portuguese researchers on projects backed by the CMU Portugal initiative and has co-supervised dual-degree Ph.D. candidates.
The event also featured the active participation of CMU Portugal faculty and alums in the organization and speaking engagements. They were André Martins, Isabel Trancoso, Mário Figueiredo, and Zita Marinho, contributing to the event’s success. The steering committee also included Fernando Pereira, a member of CMU Portugal’s External Review Committee, who serves as a VP and Engineering Fellow at Google, where hehe leads pioneering research and development efforts in the realms of natural language understanding and machine learning.
