Data Science Institute, The University of Chicago

Please join us for our monthly Chicago Data Night, cohosted by Drive Capital, ChiData and the DSI, and this month with special partner, Booth's Center for Applied AI. Practitioners, academics, and aficionados within the Chicago area are all invited to be part of a community at the intersection of industry and academia, brought together by a mutual interest in data. Each month, guest speakers will cover a specific data-related topic.

Hors d’oeuvres and drinks will be provided. Admission is free, and we strongly encourage an RSVP to attend.

Meeting Location
Drive Capital, Fulton East Building
215 N Peoria St
Chicago, IL 60607

AGENDA
5:30pm: Networking Reception
6:00pm: Welcome Remarks
6:05pm: Guest Speaker
6:50pm: Q&A
7:00pm: Networking Reception
7:30pm: Event Concludes

Title: Benchmarking Predictive Intelligence with Prophet Arena

Abstract: What is true machine intelligence? Accurately detecting objects, holding smooth conversations with a human, winning math Olympian, or something beyond? This question is of particular importance to artificial intelligence (AI) because much of AI’s progress has been driven by optimizing clearly specified metrics.

In this talk, I propose forecasting — the ability to predict future events – as a fundamental frontier of machine intelligence. To this end, I will introduce Prophet Arena, a live benchmark for evaluating forecasting capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs), and will share our initial findings on their predictive intelligence.

Bio: Haifeng Xu is an assistant professor in computer science and data science at the University of Chicago, and directs the Strategic Intelligence for Machine Agents (SIGMA) research lab which focuses on AI agents and data-driven decision making. His works have been recognized by a few awards, including an AI2050 Early Career Fellow, IJCAI Early Career Spotlight, a WWW best paper and a Google Faculty Research Award.

Please join us for our monthly Chicago Data Night, cohosted by Drive Capital, ChiData and the DSI, and this month with special partner, Booth’s Center for Applied AI. Practitioners, academics, and aficionados within the Chicago area are all invited to be part of a community at the intersection of industry and academia, brought together by a mutual interest in data. Each month, guest speakers will cover a specific data-related topic.

Hors d’oeuvres and drinks will be provided. Admission is free, and we strongly encourage an RSVP to attend.

Meeting Location
Drive Capital, Fulton East Building
215 N Peoria St
Chicago, IL 6060

AGENDA
5:30pm: Networking Reception
6:00pm: Welcome Remarks
6:05pm: Guest Speaker
6:50pm: Q&A
7:00pm: Networking Reception
7:30pm: Event Concludes

Talk: Building AI Tools for the Enterprise

Bio: Kemal Badur, CTO, Information Technology Services, University of Chicago. Kemal Badur is a senior leader with extensive experience in supporting and advancing technology in complex and distributed institutions. He has successfully established collaborative partnerships with partners, faculty, and students to make technology an integral part of mission support. His expertise in building exceptional teams helps deliver excellent service to the users and great value to the institution. Kemal is skilled at communicating vision, securing buy-in, and driving culture change to develop high-performing organizations.

He currently serves as AVP and Chief Technology Officer, Information Technology Services at the University of Chicago, where he oversees the University’s global hybrid infrastructure, enterprise architecture, technology operations, and customer support. He has implemented various critical projects for the organization, including deploying and supporting collaboration technologies that enabled the campus and the health care system to switch to a hybrid environment for the pandemic. He also developed a methodology for strategic planning and led the creation of three-year roadmaps for all technology areas, along with a portfolio management process to prioritize and allocate resources to strategic projects. Kemal has also made operational excellence improvements, such as consolidating data centers and server rooms around campus to reduce institutional risk and costs and executing a $15M network upgrade program that delivers a modernized network with improved performance and security for the University. He also led the development of a sophisticated end-user support program that brought almost 10,000 computers under management and improved support and security for users.

In addition to his leadership of the technology function, Kemal also works across the organization to deliver cultivate cross-functional collaboration and create opportunities to advance the University’s mission and vision. In this capacity, he has worked with Procurement and Office of Business Diversity to engage with qualified minority and women-owned businesses in information technology and develop opportunities for them in the University ecosystem. These efforts have yielded several contracts and established relationships with new partners that will help the University stay ahead of technology trends and support its mission to engage with the community.

Prior to his current position, Badur served as Senior Director, Infrastructure, Office of Information Technology, at the University of Minnesota. In this position, he provided leadership for the IT infrastructure function for the entire University system, delivering solutions to support teaching, research, and outreach for 25,000 staff and 65,000 students across five campuses. Before starting this career in information technology, Kemal was a research economist and academic with several years of experience in the finance industry. He holds a master’s degree in economics from the University of Minnesota and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Bosphorus University in Turkey. He has taught courses in both institutions in microeconomics, econometrics, dynamic programming and management of information systems.