Program
Here's the schedule at a glance. All times are shown in Arabian Standard Time (AST), Qatar:
Sunday 9th
8:00 - 8:45: Coffee - Industry related activities
10:00 - 11:00: Opening Remark by MenaML team and QCRI's Dr. Ahmed Elmagarmid
11:00 - 12:00: Keynote by Shakir Mohamed
12:00 - 13:30: Lunch
13:30 - 15:00: Intro to DL and transformers by Sahra Ghalebikesabi & Ehsaneddin Asgari
15:00 - 15:30: Break
15:30 - 17:00: Practical: Transformers/LLM by Ibrahim Alabdulmohsin & Mehdi Bennani
17:30 - 19:30: Welcome Dinner
Monday 10th
8:00 - 8:30: Registration / Coffee - Industry related activities
08:30 - 10:00: Data Science challenges: Qeen.AI and QCRI
10:00 - 11:00: Keynote: Arabic LLM by Mohamed Eltabakh
11:00 - 11:15: Break
11:15 - 12:15: LLM Reasoning by Mohammad Raza
12:15 - 13:30: Lunch
13:30 - 15:30: Practical: efficient LLM training by Pranali Yawalkar
15:30 - 16:00: Break
16:00 - 17:15: Panel: AI as a Career Choice in the Region
Panelist:
Dr. Dena Al-Thani, Associate Professor and Co-founder of the A-Sense Centre of Excellence, College of Science and Engineering, HBKU
Prof. Khaled Harras, Professor and Senior Associate Dean at Carnegie Mellon University
Dr. Morteza Ibrahimi, CEO of QeenAI
Mr. Masoud Al Rawahi, Founder and CEO of PhazeRo
Moderator: Dr. Mohamed M. Abdallah
17:15 - 18:30: Dinner
18:30: Buses leaving to Premier Inn hotel
Tuesday 11th
7:45: Buses leaving Premier Inn hotel
8:00 - 8:45: Registration / Coffee - Industry related activities
09:15 - 10:50: Gen AI and Diffusion models By Safa Messaoud and Andrew El-Kadi
10:50 - 11:00: Break
11:00 - 11:50: Multi-modality by Amin Sadeghi
11:50 - 12:00: Break
12:00 - 12:45: Privacy considerations and mitigations in Generative AI By Badih Ghazi
12:45 - 14:00: Lunch & Mentorship - Check your email for pairing!
14:00 - 15:00: AI Security by Alex Kaskasoli and Nasem Shalbak
15:00 - 15:30: Break
15:30 - 17:00: Poster Session - Check your email for schedule!
17:00 - 18:30: Networking Dinner
18:30: Buses leaving to Premier Inn hotel
Wednesday 12th
7:45: Buses leaving Premier Inn hotel
8:00 - 8:45: Coffee - Industry related activities
08:45 - 10:15: Intro to RL & Deep RL by Sanjay Chawla & Mina Khan
10:15 - 10:30: Break
10:30 - 12:30: Practical: RLHF by Yasin Abbasi Yadkori
12:30 - 14:00: Lunch & Mentorship - Check your email for pairing!
14:00 - 15:00: AI for Sustainability by Chris Brown
15:00 - 15:30: Break
15:30 - 17:00: Poster Session
17:00 - 18:30: Networking Dinner
18:30: Buses leaving to Premier Inn hotel
Thursday 13th
7:45: Buses leaving Premier Inn hotel
8:00 - 8:45: Coffee - Industry related activities
09:10 - 10:10: AI for Education by Avishkar Bhoopchand
10:10 - 10:20: Break
10:20 - 11:20: AI for health by David Barrett & Alan Karthikesalingam
11:20 - 11:30: Break
11:30 - 12:30: AI for Algorithms by Alhussein Fawzi
12:30 - 14:00: Lunch & Mentorship
14:00 - 15:00: AI for Biology by Alex Graves
15:00 - 15:30: Group picture / Break
15:30 - 16:30: AI for Genomics by Natasha Latysheva
17:00 - 18:30: Networking Dinner
18:30: Buses leaving to Premier Inn hotel
Friday 14th
7:45: Buses leaving Premier Inn hotel
8:00 - 8:40: Coffee - Industry related activities
09:30 - 10:20: Practical Challenge - closing session
10:20 - 11:00: The future of AI in the region (unconference)
11:00 - 11:30: Closing ceremony
13:00 - 14:30: Lunch
Poster Sessions
The poster session will be held on February 11th and 12th from 15:30 to 17:00.
Each participant will have a designated stand to display their poster, allowing attendees to visit and learn about your project. Please bring your printed poster with you, as we will not be able to print it for you on site.
Posters will be judged by our lineup of speakers and mentors, and feedback provided at the end to help improve posters in the future.
Poster Template: You can find a poster template here if that's helpful
Poster Size: A1 paper.
If you have any question, please email us at posters@mena.ml
Lab Sessions & Tutorials
The sessions will consist of coding exercises, with a description of the task, some boilerplate code (data loading, preprocessing etc) already provided and some blanks to be filled in by the participants. We will be using Google Colab (colab.google.com).
The sessions will be using PyTorch and Python. To brush up your knowledge in Python and PyTorch, check out this page with many examples available.
The tutorials can already be found in the dedicated GitHub repository.
Tutors will be around and available to explain the exercises and will be there for the duration of the laboratory to answer questions and provide guidance to the participants. The participants will be encouraged to ask questions and interact with the tutors and among themselves to solve the tasks.
Sponsor Booths
Sponsors will be at the venue to interact with the attendees, provide information on the applications of ML and AI at their company and discuss job opportunities with interested participants during coffee and lunch breaks. This is a unique opportunity to get to know them better and establish connections, so don’t hold back!