An Introduction to Julia and why it matters for Machine Learning

Are you a data scientist, data analysis, or are into technical computing? 📊 💻
Are you tired of writing code in a high level languages that runs painfully slow? 😰
Do you want to write concise and beautiful code that runs as fast as C? 🤔

Then you're in the right place!
Welcome to our 3rd Meetup!

Your chance to be introduced to a language that is set to transform the Machine Learning and technical computing landscape, Julia.

All those who are interested in Julia or Machine Learning, we're pleased to invite you to a JULIA TALK by VIRAL SHAH, co-creator of Julia project and Co-founder & CEO of Julia Computing Inc. with the title: "An Introduction to Julia and why it matters for Machine Learning"

This meetup is hosted by Optomatica, A Machine Learning & Data Science Company, and Zewail City of Science and Technology.

Abstract:

We ask, what might the ideal ML language of the future look like? Our thoughts are published in this blog post:

https://julialang.org/blog/2017/12/ml&pl

As programming languages (PL) people, we have watched with great interest as machine learning (ML) has exploded -- and with it, the complexity of ML models and the frameworks people are using to build them. State-of-the-art models are increasingly programs, with support for programming constructs like loops and recursion, and this brings out many interesting issues in the tools we use to create them -- that is, programming languages.

While machine learning does not yet have a dedicated language, several efforts are effectively creating hidden new languages underneath a Python API (like TensorFlow) while others are reusing Python as a modeling language (like PyTorch). We'd like to ask -- are new ML-tailored languages required, and if so, why?

Now that Julia 1.0 is released, we will also discuss how Julia evolved to get where it is today, and how it might evolve to taking on some of the challenges posed by machine learning.

Speaker's Bio:

Dr. Viral Shah is a co-creator of the Julia project and Co-founder and CEO of Julia Computing. He has had a long-term track record of building open-source software.
Apart from Julia, he is also co-creator of Circuitscape, an open-source program which borrows algorithms from electronic circuit theory for ecological conservation. In the Government of India, he was an early member of the country’s national ID project - Aadhaar. The experiences of implementing technology at such scale for a billion people are collected in his book: Rebooting India. Viral has a Ph. D. from the University of California at Santa Barbara, in Computer Science.

Schedule:
6:30 - 7:00 PM - Intro & Refreshments
7:00 - 8:30 PM - Dr. Viral Shah Talk
8:30 - 9:00 PM - Open Discussion & Closing

Location:
Zewail City of Science and Technology
Ahmed Zewail Road
October Gardens, 6th of October City
Giza, Egypt
Tel.: +2 02 385 40 398

Location Map:
https://goo.gl/maps/dyCWoBe9C822

Note: RSVP is a must. Doors will be open at 6:00 PM.

For any questions or details, please contact us through PyData-Cairo Meetup Messages/discussion board, or Facebook page.