DESIGN INNOVATIONSEGAL DESIGN INSTITUTE
at the McCORMICK SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING

The next seminar in the One McCormick Series, which seeks to build community and connectivity at Northwestern Engineering, focuses on McCormick student groups and student life.

Greater involvement with campus life has been associated with higher academic achievement, student satisfaction with college, and persistence toward graduation. Key ways to encourage student involvement are cultivating a sense of belonging and communicating to the students that they matter. The McCormick School of Engineering supports involvement and connection through a robust infrastructure of student-led organizations—and continued to do so as the COVID-19 pandemic threatened to disrupt these pathways to involvement.

Assistant Dean for Student Affairs Ellen Worsdall will share examples of how student organizations have successfully navigated the challenges presented by the pandemic and adapted their activities to the rapidly changing conditions of the past year. A Q&A with two student leaders will illustrate how these groups are providing opportunities for students to feel that they belong to the McCormick community.

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Join Northwestern’s Center for Human-Computer Interaction + Design (HCI+D) for an engaging conversation about how we can partner with machines to think and talk about data to uncover truths and tell never-before-told stories. Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg will present on their group’s human-centered research and design work that aims to make people-centered AI partnerships productive, enjoyable and fair.

Talk abstract: “Participatory Machine Learning” - How should people relate to artificial intelligence technology? Is it a tool to be used, a partner to be consulted, or even a source of inspiration? As technology advances, choosing the right human / AI relationship will become an increasingly important question for designers, technologists and users. We will show a series of examples from the People+AI Research (PAIR) initiative at Google--ranging from data visualizations and tools for medical practitioners to guidelines for designers--that illustrate how AI can play each of these roles. But how do we decide which role is right for a given situation? Our answer rests on the idea of broadening participation in the construction, use and evaluation of this technology.

Speaker Bios: Fernanda Viégas and Martin M. Wattenberg are pioneers in data visualization and analytics who have built systems used daily by millions of people throughout the world. As leaders of Google’s PAIR (People+AI Research) initiative, they work on new ways for people to explore and understand data. Their work has also been exhibited in venues such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, London Institute of Contemporary Arts, and the Whitney Museum of America Air. Fernanda Viégas is a Brazilian scientist and was named as one of the most influence women in technology by Fast Company. Martin Wattenberg, as a director of R&D at Dow Jones created some of the early digital journalism technology and his visualization of stock markets and baby names are considered Internet classics.

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Join us for an online information session to learn how you can become a senior leader in creating advanced and ground-breaking new products with the Master of Product Design and Development Management at Northwestern (mpd2).

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Co-sponsored by the Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern (ISEN) and the Center for Engineering Sustainability and Resilience (CESR).

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Speaker: Joseph Holtgreive, assistant dean for undergraduate engineering

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Memorial Day (no classes)

Spring examinations begin

Spring examinations end

This ceremony will honor all 2021 McCormick undergraduate, master’s, and PhD graduates.

The ceremony will be ticketed, and further information regarding the maximum number of tickets available will be released soon.

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Commencement (Tentative)