Contests in Signal Processing and Machine Learning

During the last couple of months, a few new Signal Processing and Machine Learning contests were initiated. Some of the ongoing ones with a strong relation to Signal Processing include:

From the domain of remote sensing and automated image classification, there is a Kaggle contest asking to automate the right whale recognition process using a dataset of aerial photographs of individual whales. Automating the identification of right whales would allow researchers to better focus on their conservation efforts. With fewer than 500 North Atlantic right whales left in the world's oceans, knowing the health and status of each whale is integral to the efforts of researchers working to protect the species from extinction.

The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2) is working to improve humanity through fundamental advances in artificial intelligence and the Aristo project at AI2 is focused on building an AI system that demonstrates the ability to consistently understand and correctly answer general questions about the world. When taking an exam, questions are parsed and processed along with any accompanying diagrams to determine a strategy for answering. Your goal in this Kaggle contest is to create a model that gets to the head of the class using a dataset of multiple choice questions and answers from a standardized 8th grade science exam.