Google’s Ming Jack Po Opens Seminar Series, Which Brings Academic/Industry Leaders To DBMI Students

Check out our DBMI Seminar Page

Ming Jack Po MD, PhD, a product manager in Google Health, discussed several techniques used currently in machine learning during the Sept. 30 edition of the DBMI Seminar, which welcomes both internal and external speakers to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital for weekly presentations for DBMI students and faculty.

Dr. Po, who received his MD and PhD from Columbia University, gave an overview of the AlphaGo computer program beat world champion (and human) Lee Sedol, and how it differed from the IBM Deep Blue chess program that defeated world champion Garry Kasparov. He also discussed some recent and ongoing work by Google’s research teams to advance the applications of machine learning, particularly its role in biomedical research, and he shared some of the unique challenges around applications in healthcare.

The DBMI seminar series is a 1-credit course for DBMI students who can benefit from hearing new methods of research from speakers from both academia and industry. Several students shared their impressions from Dr. Po’s talk.

“Their ability to advance deep learning methods with massive hardware resources and savvy understanding of grid-like topologies is remarkable,” said Jack Angiolillo MD, MBA, a postdoctoral research fellow. “It would be exciting to learn more about how they manage governance of their daring projects.”

“[Dr. Po] presented a comprehensive overview of what Google does,” said PhD student Anna Ostropolets. “Although it was focused on the products and techniques that they utilize, we were able to see what is used in the real world and not only in academic centers. Plus, they do what they’re good at and make a difference rather than tackle large problems and achieve nothing. They apparently take into account past mistakes and try not to repeat them, which on its own is pretty interesting and impressive.”

You can watch Dr. Po’s presentation below the upcoming schedule, or on the DBMI YouTube Channel. We will post the presentations of all external speakers who agree to share their talks online.

Below is the most updated schedule for the fall seminar. Any updates will be posted at the official DBMI Seminar page. On Oct. 7, Dr. Gen Li, an Assistant Professor of Biostatistics in the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia will present on Integrative Analysis of Multi-view Data for Dimension Reduction and Prediction.

DBMI Seminar, Fall 2019

Sept. 23: Michelle Chau, Alex Hsieh (Student Seminar)
Sept. 30: Ming Jack Po • Google
Oct. 7: Gen Li • Biostatistics, Columbia University
Oct. 14: Brandon Fonwalt • Geisinger
Oct. 21: Slyvia Cho, Alex Kitaygorodsky (Student Seminar)
Oct. 28: DBMI Students Only
Nov. 4: Holiday
Nov. 11: Jason Adelman, Medicine/DBMI, Columbia University
Nov. 18: AMIA Annual Symposium
Nov. 25: TBA
Dec. 2: Jonathan Elias, Jiayao Wang (Student Seminar)
Dec. 9: Michael Cantor • Regeneron Genetics Center