IBM Watson/Bluemix Cognitive App Development Platform at CITRIS

Come learn how you can rapidly prototype & build cognitive apps in the cloud using IBM tools - specifically IBM Watson Services on the Watson/Bluemix platform. Students should bring their laptops and can work on Bluemix themselves during the demo. Start a free Bluemix trial before the event to work along with the presenters: ibm.biz/bluemixsv. Lunch will be provided, and the event will be broadcast live at http://video.citris.berkeley.edu/playlists/webcast/

"Navigating the Cognitive Era: IBM point of view on the growth of data and the role of cognitive computing to assist in making sense of that data"
Richard Rodts - Program Director, IBM Watson Academic Programs

Richard Rodts is the Program Director for Watson Academic Programs at IBM. He has responsibility to work with executives in education to include cognitive technology in the classroom and promote entrepreneurship among student groups. Prior to joining IBM, Richard worked in director level positions within the Business Analytics space. In his current role, Richard leads a team that evangelizes the importance of utilizing cognitive computing to transform how we engage with technology and in turn create meaningful change in our businesses as well as society.

"A Cognitive Journey through the Lens of IBM Watson"
Armen Pischdotchian - Watson Academic Partners: technical mentor for universities

A world of sensors and devices that communicate with one another often analyzing data and predicting futures, are about to meet cognition; where systems understand, reason and learn. Come for a journey beginning from the Jeopardy! days to API services that employ neural network deep learning technologies as we usher in the cognitive era. Armen currently mentors university faculty and conducts enablement sessions for both IBMers and partners pertaining to the Watson Ecosystem offerings. During the past three years at Watson, Armen has consulted and deployed various Watson solutions around the world.

HANDS-ON workshop: Building apps augmented with cognitive services
In this demo you build an app and bind it to three services: Personality Insights, Question-Answer and AlchemyAPI service. This workshop tells the story of frustrated author who is under stress. Using character traits revealed by PI service, the analyst poses health related questions to the Watson health corpus and, at the same time, extracts keywords (AlchemyAPI) from the returned answers that may prompt the analyst to query further using the DeepQA pipeline (QA service).
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This program is open to students across all disciplines to learn about this project. In addition, we will discuss the CITRIS Mobile Apps Challenge, which will be accepting applications in January for Spring 2016 challenge. This challenge encourages teams of students from UC Berkeley, UC Davis & UC Merced to develop innovative mobile applications for today’s most pressing societal needs. Through a rigorous 3-month process, students will design, prototype and pitch their ideas. The challenge will culminate in a selection process with prizes, along with a Demo Day to showcase the student’s projects. Learn more about the challenge here.