Innov8 Speaker Series Brings Jisheng Wang to Guide Thought on Artificial Intelligence and Wifi

UTO’s first installment of Innov8, a speaker series bringing thoughtful and outstanding voices to share their insights, was held on Wednesday, bringing the expert knowledge of Jisheng Wang to the ASU community. Jisheng is the Head of Data Science at Mist Systems, a Juniper Company, and he presented his thoughts and work on the subject of autonomous networks and using artificial intelligence to support our internet connectivity and wifi networks.

"I'm proud and excited about the turn out of our first Innov8,” UTO’s Executive Director of Cloud and Advanced Network Engineering Services Timothy Summers, who also created the series, said. “It was humbling and inspiring to see how the innovative spark can take hold and spur rich engagement.”

Held in a small, intimate setting with subject matter experts hoping to add even more knowledge to their work, Jisheng’s presentation was punctuated with curious questions, knowing nods and acknowledgement of the difficulties of network development...with bouts of laughter in response to the in-jokes about those difficulties. “Our speaker took a complicated concept and showed us the human possibilities that lie ahead,” Timothy said. Throughout much of the technical discussion, a few key themes emerged.

First, Jisheng noted that wifi has almost become a basic need for human survival in the case of many people. People are spending more time with mobile devices, with 5 billion people owning at least 13 of them worldwide (whether they are phones, tablets, laptops, etc.). And since it has changed our daily personal lives, Jisheng said, it’s also changed enterprise and business success.

With the growing number of devices connected to the Internet of Things and 5G networks, the complexities involved in the growing workload exceed human capabilities. With AI and automation, the processes that make our new basic human need possible can be improved and maintained more effectively, as Jisheng explained.

This first Innov8 presentation stimulated discussion before and after the event, and we are excited to present a speaker each month going forward. “We're proud that ASU and its partners could come together in such an encouraging way,” Timothy concluded. We will be sharing the details of each new event via our social media channels (Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram) as well as the series’ dedicated page. Keep an eye out for future installments!