Highlights from the Next Gen session at the 13th Heidelberg Laureate Forum
Three minutes is not much time to explain a research project. Yet that was the challenge for the young researchers who took the stage at the 13th Heidelberg Laureate Forum’s Next Gen session, moving from quantum systems and knot theory to weather prediction and genomics.
Across several talks, a common thread emerged: Science and technology often become useful at scale by simplifying and classifying. But what do those simplifications leave out? Priscilla Chinwendu Ezulu teaches AI to recognize which of Igbo’s more than 20 dialects someone is speaking at a given moment, rather than assuming a single “Igbo.” Natalia Garcia San Miguel groups schools in Peru by infrastructure and social conditions instead of mere proximity, in order to improve access to menstrual products. And Lidia Alecci asks when a smartwatch model trained on the average person should give way to a personalized one.
Read the full story by Andrei Mihai here: What Gets Lost When We Design for the Average?
Caption: The Next Gen presenters at the 13th Heidelberg Laureate Forum. Image credits: HLFF / Flemming.