Priya’s Freedom to Give Back, by Peter Georgescu in the Huffington Post
“I recently met a remarkable young woman, the child of immigrants from southern India, who has yet to enter graduate school but has already completed fundamental research on the nature of artificial intelligence. Her name is Pratyusha “Priya” Kalluri, and she’s from America’s heartland, Madison, Wisconsin—though when I spoke with her she was in Spain doing computer research at the Complutense University of Madrid. In the fall, she’ll be entering the graduate program at Stanford University. Her family’s emphasis on education motivated Pratyusha to pursue an undergraduate degree at MIT. In an early project, she built systems to reveal the goings-on inside the human body: at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, she developed an algorithm to identify the gene pathway changes that underlie breast cancer. In this work, she took the approach of many AI researchers—examining how to apply computer intelligence to existing practical endeavors, opening up new vistas into the human body. She created data mining software able to analyze large datasets about many patients in order to enable scientists to spot the key genetic changes that signal the onset of an aggressive cancer.”
Vreau să vedeți România de mâine: 25 la sută dintre copii „abandonează” azi școala! Și nu, nu o fac de capul lor…, by Mirela Oprea in Republica.ro
“În nordul ţării un copil vrea să meargă la şcoală. A vrut el, a vrut mama lui şi a vrut pentru el şi o doamnă asistent social. O doamnă care nu numai că vrea să îşi facă meseria, dar şi ştie cum să o facă, mergând pe teren, acolo unde sunt oamenii cei mai nevoiaşi dintre noi. Cei care nu au o casă aşa cum înţelegem noi cuvântul „casă”, adică acea alcătuire de materiale de construcţii care ne dă dreptul la arondarea pe o stradă, un număr (de bloc, apartamente etc.) şi apoi o adresă de domiciliu înscrisă în actul de identitate. Acolo unde merge doamna asistent social să-şi facă meseria, oamenii trăiesc pe groapa de gunoi a oraşului, din gunoaiele acestuia, dar nu din pricina asta ca nişte gunoaie. Materialele de construcţii pe care ei le-au folosit pentru alcătuirea a ceea ce ei numesc „case” (cartoane, plastic etc.), nu le dă dreptul la arondarea pe o stradă, la un număr şi apoi la o adresă de domiciliu înscrisă în actul de identitate. În afară de asta, ei sunt oameni ca noi, care îşi doresc ce e mai bine pentru copiii lor. S-au bucurat foarte tare când doamna asistent social a organizat o grădiniţă de vară pentru copiii din comunitatea lor nedomiciliată. Dar apoi mamele acestor copii, când a venit toamna, nu au îndrăznit să spere că ar putea să înscrie copiii la şcoală. Au mai încercat şi alte mame înaintea lor şi nu au reuşit.”
The Future of the MBA, in 3 Questions, by Claire Preisser on the Aspen Institute’s blog
“Given my job title, you would expect me to clear my calendar, put all devices on airplane mode, and dive into Duff McDonald’s “The Golden Passport: Harvard Business School, The Limits of Capitalism, and the Moral Failure of the MBA Elite.” My work at the Aspen Institute seeks to change how business is taught, so to unleash a new generation of managers who can better align business decisions with the long-term health of society. And McDonald’s book is, by all accounts, a well-researched and provocative expose of Harvard Business School (HBS), arguably the most influential institution in the world we try to influence. But I have a premonition that I won’t get too far in the McDonald’s 578 pages. It isn’t that McDonald’s treatise is all wrong. We concur fully on fundamentals: first, management education matters. Around the world, business is increasingly the degree-of-choice for our best and brightest, at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Management educators are the under-appreciated “gatekeepers” in our free-market system—teaching the next generation of business leaders, consulting to the globe’s largest firms, and creating the new knowledge and theories that shape our firms, economies and very societies.”
For the First Time, UNESCO’s Peace Prize Goes to a Mayor, by Feargus O’Sullivan in CityLab
“You probably haven’t heard of the winner of this year’s UNESCO Peace Prize. In the past, the award, officially called the Félix Houphouët-Boigny Prize, has been granted to internationally renowned figures including Nelson Mandela, Yasser Arafat, and Shimon Peres. This year, for the first time ever, the award goes to a mayor: 56-year-old Giusi Nicolini, mayor of a small Italian island that’s home to about 6,000 people. The island in question is Lampedusa, a small islet roughly equidistant from Southern Sicily, Malta and Tunisia. In recent years, it’s found itself at the heart of Europe’s refugee crisis. As mayor, Nicolini has stood out from her colleagues by campaigning to ensure that the island deals as efficiently and humanely as possible with the migrants and refugees fleeing war-torn Middle Eastern countries by sea. In campaigning across Europe to ensure better funding and faster visa processing for refugees and migrants, Nicolini has made Lampedusa a rare (though controversial) bright spot on a continent where hostility to even desperate migrants, partly manufactured by the media, has grown. The crisis Nicolini and her fellow islanders face is not a small one.”
These apps let your neighbours share your car, basement, tools, skills and meals, by Burhan Wazir on the World Economic Forum’s Agenda Blog
“Amsterdam has created dozens of new digital platforms encouraging citizens to participate in the sharing economy. An app called ParkFlyRent leases out cars parked by holidaymakers at Schiphol airport. Instead of the cars sitting idle for weeks, they are rented out and a portion of the income is handed to the owners. An app called Djeepo finds private storage spaces (basements, attic and spare rooms) for those needing extra room for their belongings. Konnektid allows users to share skills like guitar playing or foreign languages. We Helpen gives details of voluntary work available in the city’s neighbourhoods. An app called Camptoo allows people to rent privately owned motorhomes, which are usually only used 4-5 times a year. Abel connects drivers with passengers who are going in the same direction. ‘We wanted to truly make living in the city a shared experience,’ explained Harmen van Sprang, one of the organisers of Amsterdam’s sharing economy initiative. ‘We want people to feel like they have a connection not just with the city, but to each other as well.’ The apps lift citizens into the sharing economy and remind them that sustainability is an in-built motive.”
aspen5ideas 