Indigenous Women Upholding Indigenous Rights and Knowledge, and Leading Climate Solutions

During this UNPFII side event we hear from global Indigenous women leaders on the impacts of

Indigenous Women Upholding Indigenous Rights and Knowledge, and Leading Climate Solutions

During this UNPFII side event we hear from global Indigenous women leaders on the impacts of fossil fuels, deforestation, and the climate crisis in their communities and how they are implementing solutions, practicing traditional knowledge systems, upholding Indigenous rights, and advancing policies and practices of care and climate justice.

Panel ONE
-- Ruth �chav’aya K’isen Miller (Curyung Tribe of Dena’ina Athabaskan) | Indigenous Climate Activist, Turtle Island, USA
-- Yasso Kanti Bhattachan (Thakali) | Founding Member and the Vice Chair of the National Indigenous Women’s Forum (NIWF), Nepal
-- Claire Charlo ( Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribes)| Indigenous Feminisms Organizer, Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), Turtle Island/USA
-- Xiye Bastida (Otomi-Toltec)| Co-founder and Board, Re-earth Initiative, USA

Panel TWO
-- Josefina Tunki (Shuar) | First woman president of the Shuar Arutam organization (PSHA)
-- President Whitney Gravelle (Bay Mills Indian Community) | President and Executive Council Bay Mills Indian Community, Chair of the Department of Interior’s Secretary’s Tribal Advisory Committee and Commissioner on the Michigan Advisory Council on Environmental Justice, Turtle Island/USA
-- Michelle Woodhouse (Métis) | Water Program Manager, Environmental Defence, Canada
-- Majo Andrade Cerda (Kichwa) | Young leader of the Kichwa People of Napo, Land is Life’s Latin America Program Assistant, Ecuador
Panel moderation and comments by Osprey Orielle Lake, WECAN Executive Director

AI is getting bigger, but does bigger always mean better? As Large Language Models (LLMs) dominate the scene, their staggering resource consumption raises urgent questions about sustainability and

AI is getting bigger, but does bigger always mean better? As Large Language Models (LLMs) dominate the scene, their staggering resource consumption raises urgent questions about sustainability and efficiency. In this webinar, we challenge the notion that AI must be massive to be powerful. We introduce the Expressive Neural Network (ENN), a novel architecture that rethinks activation functions through the lens of classical signal processing, specifically, the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT). This innovative approach not only enhances a network's flexibility and expressiveness but also leads to faster convergence and significantly smaller models, reducing both energy consumption and computational costs. ​

Our discussion bridged the gap between traditional signal processing techniques and modern AI, demonstrating how established mathematical tools can inspire next-generation machine learning. We explored how ENNs can revolutionize edge computing, enabling efficient AI in resource-constrained environments, and why expressiveness – not just size – is the key to the future of neural networks. If LLMs are the brute force of AI, could ENNs be its precision tool?

Speaker:
Ana Pérez-Neira, Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya, Spain​​

Moderators:
Ian F. Akyildiz, Editor-in-Chief, ITU Journal on Future and Evolving Technologies (ITU-J FET)​​

Alessia Magliarditi, ITU Journal and ITU-T Academia Coordinator, International Telecommunication Union (ITU)

This webinar is organized by the ITU Journal on Future and Evolving Technologies (ITU J-FET), an international journal providing complete coverage of all communications and networking paradigms, free of charge for both readers and authors. The ITU Journal considers yet-to-be-published papers addressing fundamental and applied research. Open topics for future research will be discussed. See more information on the ITU Journal webinar series and the open Calls for Papers for the upcoming ITU Journal’s issues here.

Mark Lee and