You might have heard about the Higgs Machine learning challenge (HiggsML higgsml.lal.in2p3.fr) that has been organised last year. Official simulated ATLAS events were publicly released, and participants competed to invent the most powerful algorithms to improve the statistical significance of the Higgs to tau+tau- signal.
The participation was overwhelming with more than 1700 teams, Machine Learning specialists, physicists and students, submitted more than 30.000 solutions, making it the most popular Kaggle challenge at the time. During these few months, a typical HEP problem has been tackled with the most advanced machine learning techniques, which have quickly outperformed traditional HEP tools (TMVA in particular, but improvements to TMVA triggered by the challenge are already in the pipeline).
This mini workshop is a step towards importing the lessons of the challenge back into High Energy Physics.
The winners will be visiting CERN Tuesday 19th May and will participate to a special (webcasted) workshop at 3PM in the CERN Main Auditorium, see cern.ch/higgsml-visit.
Cheers
David