Fancy winning a ticket to the European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (ECML-PKDD) or a cash prize? Put forth your technical and artificial intelligence skills to help astronomers understand planets outside our solar system, and you just may.
The Ariel Data Challenge 2023, launched on 14 April, invites experts with an AI or machine learning background from industry and academia.
The European Space Agency’s Ariel telescope, poised to launch in 2029, is expected to complete one of the largest-ever surveys of exoplanets. Ariel will study the light emitted by each exoplanet’s host star after traveling through the planet’s atmosphere.
By studying this information, scientists can examine the chemical components of the spectra, revealing more about these planets and their origins.
“AI has revolutionized many fields of science and industry in the past few years. The field of exoplanets has fully arrived in the era of big data and cutting-edge AI is needed to break some of our biggest bottlenecks holding us back,” said Dr. Ingo Waldmann, Associate Professor in Astrophysics, University College London, who is also a lead for the Ariel Data Challenge.
The aim of the challenge—open from 14 April to 18 June 2023—is to source new methods from the AI community that will help elucidate data collected by Ariel.
Participants are at liberty to use any data pre-processing technique, algorithms, and other tools to provide their solutions. Any number of solutions may be submitted, and collaborations between teams are permitted.
Unlike previous years, participants are provided access to High Powered Computing resources through DiRAC, part of the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council’s computing facilities.
“With the arrival of next-generation instrumentation, astronomers are struggling to keep up with the complexity and volume of incoming ex-planetary data. The ECML-PKDD data challenge 2023 provides an excellent platform to facilitate cross-disciplinary solutions with AI experts,” said Kai Hou (Gordon) Yip, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at UCL and Ariel Data Challenge Lead.
The top three winning teams will receive tickets to the machine learning academic conference ECML-PKDD scheduled to be held in Turin this year, with the winners being invited to present their solutions at the conference and to the Ariel consortium.
The competition, supported by the UK Space Agency, Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), European Research Council, UKRI Science and Technology Funding Council (STFC), European Space Agency, and Europlanet Society, has been running annually since 2019 and is open to all.
The challenge aims to rally new ideas and nurture brainstorming and collaborations by some of the best minds.
