Virginia Tech alumna named ethics co-chair for leading conference in artificial intelligence and machine learning

Cherie Poland earned a Master of Engineering from the Department of Computer Science’s first new graduate program for the Virginia Tech Innovation Campus. Photo courtesy of Cherie Poland

Virginia Tech alumna Cherie Poland has been named one of four ethics co-chairs for the 36th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), the most prestigious conference in artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML).  

This is the latest entry on Poland’s list of achievements. To name only a few, she was issued one European patent and had five of her U.S. patent applications filed; created and later sold a biotech company; ran her family-owned cattle ranch (while holding a full-time position as a biotech patent examiner at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office); and earned six college degrees, including a J.D.

The most recent, in December 2021, is from Virginia Tech, where she was a student at the Sanghani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics. She received a Master of Engineering from the Department of Computer Science, one of the first degree programs for the university’s Innovation Campus. Read more about Poland here.