Estimating the information diffusion in complex networks of variables and time series is a fundamental problem in information theory with many applications. We propose a scheme that uses the generalization abilities of cross-entropy in deep neural networks (DNNs) to improve entropy estimation and related information theoretic measures. The talk will include numerical examples (joint work with Yuval Shalev and Amichai Painsky)

Professor Irad Ben-Gal is the head of the Laboratory of AI Business & Data Analytics (LAMBDA) at the Engineering Faculty in Tel Aviv University. He held a visiting professor position at Stanford University, teaching “analytics in action” and co-heading the TAU/Stanford “Digital Living 2030” research initiative that focuses on future challenges of modern digital life. Irad is a world-renowned expert in practical machine learning, statistical process control and predictive analytics with more than 20 years of experience in the field, including R&D collaborations with companies such as Oracle, Intel, GM, AT&T, Applied Materials and Nokia. He wrote four books, published more than 100 scientific papers and patents, supervised dozens of graduate students and received numerous awards for his work. Irad is the co-founder and chairman of CB4 (“See Before”), a startup backed by Sequoia Capital that provides predictive analytics solutions to retail organizations. He is an advisory board member in several startup companies that focus on AI applications.

We will discuss emerging opportunities with the advancements in AI, how AI can help address societal problems, and opportunities for multidisciplinary AI research

Yossi Matias is Vice President, Engineering, at Google. He is leading strategic efforts in Search (Google Autocomplete, Search Live Results, Google Trends, Search Console), Conversational AI (Google Duplex, Call Screen, Live Caption, Read Aloud), and other Research initiatives (from foundations to applications in Health). He is the global lead of Crisis Response (SOS Alerts, Public Alerts, Flood Forecasting), and is a founding co-lead of Google’s AI for Social Good initiative.

Yossi is the founding Managing Director of Google's Center in Israel, which he established and grew to over 1500 on staff. He is on the board of IATI and co-chair of its multinational company forum. He is the founding exec lead of Google for Startup Campus Tel Aviv, and of Launchpad and other global entrepreneurship programs. 

Prof. Matias is on the CS faculty of Tel Aviv University, and previously a Research Scientist at Bell Labs and visiting professor at Stanford. He published extensively, has over 60 patents on his name, and pioneered some of the early technologies for the effective analysis of big data, internet privacy, and contextual search. 

Yossi is an ACM Fellow and a recipient of the Godel Prize and of the Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award for seminal work on the foundations of streaming algorithms and their application to large-scale data analytics.

Major Gen. (Ret.) Prof. Isaac Ben-Israel serves as Head of the Blavatnik Interdisciplinary Cyber Research Center (ICRC). Additionally, he serves as Chairman of the Yuval Ne’eman Workshop for Science, Technology and Security, Chairman of the Israeli Space Agency in the Ministry of Science, Technology and Space.

Isaac Ben-Israel was born in Israel (Tel-Aviv), 1949. He studied Mathematics, Physics and Philosophy at Tel-Aviv University, receiving his Ph.D. in 1988. He joined the Israel Air Force (IAF) after graduating high school (1967) and has served continuously up to his retirement (2002). During his service, Isaac Ben-Israel has held several posts in operations, intelligence and weapon development units of the IAF. He headed the IAF Operations Research Branch, Analysis and Assessment Division of IAF Intelligence, and was the Head of Military R&D in Israel Defence Forces and Ministry of Defence (1991-1997). In January 1998 he was promoted to Major General and appointed as Director of Defence R&D Directorate in IMOD. During his service he received twice the Israeli Defence Award.

After retirement from the IDF Isaac Ben Israel joined the University of Tel-Aviv as a professor and was the head of Curiel Centre for International Studies (2002-2004), the head of the Program for Security Studies (2004-2007), Executive Director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Technological Analysis & Forecasting at Tel-Aviv University (ICTAF) (2010-2013), Deputy Director of the Hartog School of Government and Policy in Tel-Aviv University (2005-2015) and a member of Jaffe Centre for Strategic Studies (2002-2004). In 2002 he founded and headed the Yuval Ne’eman Workshop for Science, Technology and Security. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of Ariel University Centre (2009-2011), and a member of the advisory council of Neaman Institute for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology at the Technion (2000-2010). In 2002 he founded RAY-TOP (Technology Opportunities) Ltd, consulting governments and industries in technological and strategic issues.

Professor Ben-Israel was a member of the 17th Knesset (Israeli Parliament) between June 2007 and February 2009. During this period he was a member of the Security and Foreign Affairs Committee, the Finance Committee, the Science & Technology committee, the Chairman of the Homeland Security Sub Committee and the Chairman of the Israeli–Indian Parliamentary Friendship Association.

In 2011 he was appointed by the Prime Minister to lead a task force that formulated Israel national cyber policy. Following that he founded the National Cyber Headquarters in the PM Office. In 2014 he was appointed again by the PM to lead another task force which resulted in a government decision (February 2015) to set up a new National Cyber Authority. Isaac Ben Israel was a member of the board of directors of IAI (2000-2002), the board of the Israel Corp. (2004-2007) and the R&D advisory board of TEVA (2003-2007) and Chairman of the Technion Entrepreneurial Incubator (2007). He was the Chairman of Israel National R&D council between 2010-2016.

Professor Ben-Israel has written numerous papers on military and security issues. His book Dialogues on Science and Military Intelligence (1989) won the Itzhak-Sade Award for Military Literature. His book on The Philosophy of Military Intelligence had been published by the Broadcast University (1999) and has been translated into French (2004). His book Science, Technology and Security: From Soldiers in Combat up to Outer Space, was published in 2006. His book on Israel Defence Doctrine was published in 2013.
Isaac is married to Inbal (née Marcus) and they have three sons: Yuval (1981), Roy (1984) and Alon (1988).

Current Positions
– Chairman of Israel Space Agency (since 2005).
– Professor at Tel-Aviv University, teaching at the Security Studies Program (since 2002) and at the Cohen Institute for the History & Philosophy of Sciences and Ideas (since 1989).
– Positions at Tel-Aviv University:
* Head of Security Studies Program (since 2004-2007, 2010-).
* Head of the Blavatnik Interdisciplinary Cyber Studies Centre (since 2014)
* Head of the Yuval Ne’eman Workshop for Science, Technology and Security (since 2002).
– Member of the board of Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies (since 2000)
– Member of the academic council of Afeka – Tel-Aviv Academic College of Engineering(since 2003)
– Founder and CEO of RAY TOP Technologies Ltd. (since 2002)
– Founder and CEO of RAY TOP SINGAPORE Pte. Ltd. (since 2003)
– Partner at Cyber Security Group (since 2016)
– Member of the Advisory Board of RED DOT fund (since 2016)

Positions and Memberships abroad
– Member of IAA – International Academy of Astronautics (since 2012)
– Member of Singapore RIEC – Research, Innovation and Enterprise Council (since 2012)
– Member of the Board of the Agency for Science, Technology & Research in Singapore – A*STAR (since 2013)
– Commissioner at GCSC – Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace (since 2017)

Prizes and Awards
1972 Israel Defence Award, for developing an airborne weapon delivery system for F-4E.
1976 Israel Air Force Award, for developing a C4 system.
1984 IDF Director of military Intelligence Prize for Creative Thinking.
1990 Itzhak-Sade Award for Military Literature, for the book Dialogues on Science and Military Intelligence.
2001 Israel Defence Award (Second time), for a project introducing a new concept of future warfare.
2002 Singapore Defence Technology Distinguished Award for his “outstanding contribution to bilateral defence relations between Israel and Singapore”.
2008 Lions “Man of Excellence”, for his contribution to Israel Security.

Born and raised in Tel Aviv, Ariel Porat served as an officer in the “8200” IDF Intelligence Corps unit for 5 years. He subsequently enrolled in law studies at Tel Aviv University, where he earned his LLB and direct JSD before performing post-doctoral studies at Yale Law School. His main research areas are torts, contracts, remedies, and law and economics.

He joined the Tel Aviv University faculty in 1990. From 2002 to 2006, he served as Dean of the Buchmann Faculty of Law, where he introduced a number of joint LLM programs and student exchange programs with leading schools abroad, and from 2013 to 2014 he chaired the University Strategic Steering Committee tasked with the academic restructuring of the University.

Driven by a deep sense of social responsibility, Porat conceived and launched a pioneering admittance program at TAU for students from Israel’s geographic and social periphery, and was additionally involved in other initiatives intended to widen the circle of educational opportunity for underrepresented groups in Israel.

Porat is Alain Poher Professor of Law at TAU and Associate Member and Fischel-Neil Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Chicago. He was also a Visiting Professor at the University of California at Berkeley, Columbia University, New York University, Stanford University, University of Toronto and the University of Virginia. He is a member of the American Law Institute, a former board member of the American Law and Economics Association and a former president of the Israeli Law and Economics Association. From 1997 to 2002, he was the Director of TAU’s Cegla Center for Interdisciplinary Research of the Law. He is the founder of the journal Theoretical Inquiries in Law and was its editor-in-chief in the years 1999-2003.

Porat is the author of four books and more than 90 articles published by the world’s leading academic presses and scholarly journals.

Professor Emeritus Paul Feigin joined the Technion in 1976. He completed his Ph.D from the Australian National University in 1975.

Professor Feigin is a statistician who has contributed to theory and application of data analysis in a variety of fields. His research covers areas such as inference for stochastic processes, nonparametric statistics, statistical analysis of genetic data, and analysis of customer patience in call centers. He applies modern methods of forecasting and data-mining (now called Machine Learning) as well as design and analysis methods used in clinical trials. He is an elected fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and of the International Statistical Institute.

Alongside his academic activities he has earned extensive experience in consulting for medical companies such as Teva Pharmaceuticals and MeMed. For over a decade he served as the scientific director of TechnoSTAT, a statistical consulting company. Together with the late Prof. Ayala Cohen, he established the Technion Statistical Laboratory which he has returned to lead.

Professor Feigin served as the Technion’s Senior Executive Vice President (2007 – 2013), the Technion Vice President for Strategic Projects (2013 – 2016) and as the Assistant to the Technion President for Strategic Projects (2016-2018). He earlier served as Dean of The William Davidson Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management (1999–2002).

He was recently appointed as the Director of the Israel Data Science Initiative (IDSI), an umbrella body established to coordinate the activities of the seven university Data Science Research Centers as well as to advance the field of data science through interfacing with government, industry and international organizations.

Professor Mark Shtaif is the rector of Tel Aviv University. After completing his BSc, MSc, and DSc degrees in Electrical Engineering at the Technion in 1997, he joined the research team of AT&T Labs in New Jersey as a Senior and then Principal Member of Technical staff, studying communication technologies. In 2002 he joined the Faculty of Engineering at Tel Aviv University and served as the head of the School of Electrical Engineering in 2017 – 2020.

Professor Shtaif is a communications scientist working mostly in the field of fiber optics and optical communication systems. Within this general area of activity he integrates the fields of optics, quantum theory, nonlinear systems, communications theory, information theory, and signal processing. Over the years he has contributed to a variety of topics including optical amplification, analysis of nonlinear propagation, polarization-related phenomena, analysis of noise and signal detection, quantum information in fiber systems, and fundamental limits to optical communications.

In his most notable recent work he has contributed to the analysis of polarization-dependent loss in fiber communications, to the nonlinear-noise model in fiber-optic transmission, to the theory of space-division multiplexed communications, and to effective phase reconstruction by means of the Kramers-Kronig receiver.

Yossi Matias is Vice President, Engineering, at Google. He is leading strategic efforts in Search (Google Autocomplete, Search Live Results, Google Trends, Search Console), Conversational AI (Google Duplex, Call Screen, Live Caption, Read Aloud), and other Research initiatives (from foundations to applications in Health). He is the global lead of Crisis Response (SOS Alerts, Public Alerts, Flood Forecasting), and is a founding co-lead of Google’s AI for Social Good initiative.

Yossi is the founding Managing Director of Google's Center in Israel, which he established and grew to over 1500 on staff. He is on the board of IATI and co-chair of its multinational company forum. He is the founding exec lead of Google for Startup Campus Tel Aviv, and of Launchpad and other global entrepreneurship programs. 

Prof. Matias is on the CS faculty of Tel Aviv University, and previously a Research Scientist at Bell Labs and visiting professor at Stanford. He published extensively, has over 60 patents on his name, and pioneered some of the early technologies for the effective analysis of big data, internet privacy, and contextual search. 

Yossi is an ACM Fellow and a recipient of the Godel Prize and of the Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award for seminal work on the foundations of streaming algorithms and their application to large-scale data analytics.