GREAT SUCCESS!

AI4Society organized the annual Reverse Expo on February 18th. Students, alumni, industry partners, and a broad community with an interest in AI to connected during this three hour conference.

More than 150 registrants met virtually, visiting the 64 posters of AI-related research projects, that included research on data analysis and visualization, information extraction, robotics, search, planning, sensor-data analysis, machine learning, and AI applications, and many others like visual arts, music, and more!

As we build a website that will display all this fantastic material we decided to keep the Gather Town map, feel free to visit it and check the posters! simply click below:

REVERSE EXPO 2022 WEBSITE

August, 25th to 28th | online and on site at Osaka Ibaraki Campus by Ritsumeikan University

This year’s conference theme will be “Games for Learning”. Games in various formats will always have a role in our society, we learn through them, about them, and in playing them. While some might see games as frivolous play, others can see the learning potential gaming can provide. In the right context, games can be a powerful learning tool for children and adults alike.

Please be aware that, as of now, it is not possible to enter Japan on a tourist visa. No exceptions can be made for academic conferences. Participants from outside Japan should assume at this stage that their presentation will be made online.

Submit your proposal before April 15th, 2022

Learn more here

Responsible AI Event during Canadian AI

Drs. Bagheri (Ryerson University), Stroulia (University of Alberta), and Taylor (University of Guelph) are organizing a Responsible AI session during the Canadian AI conference, May 25-28 2022.

Given the many activities that are fortunately happening around the responsible and ethical aspects of AI here in Canada, we were hoping to organize an event in conjunction with Canadian AI 2022 this year to become familiar with what everyone is doing and what activities they are engaged in.

It would be wonderful to have a unified community here in Canada around responsible AI so we can support each other and find ways to more effectively collaborate and synergize. We are aiming for a casual, discussion-oriented event rather than talks or formal presentations.

We would appreciate it if you could let us know (a) if you are interested in attending the (virtual) session, and (b) who else you would recommend we invite to the session.

Please send us your ideas and comments to ai4s@ualberta.ca

AI4Society Support for Students From Under-Represented Groups

AI4Society has partnered with Women in Scholarship, Engineering, Science, and Technology (WISEST), the Black Youth Mentorship and Leadership Program and Research Internship Experience and the Verna J. Kirkness Education Foundation, to enable more students to experience AI on our campus and to increase the diversity of our field.
For AI4Society members who wish to host students under these programs, AI4Society will subsidize the host's costs, so that hosts will only have to pay at most 50% of the internship.
We hope that you will consider hosting a student in your lab this summer and get them excited about AI!

Students and Hosts interested find out more here

Mentorship opportunity - Black Youth Mentorship and Leadership Program

The Black Youth Mentorship Program (BYMP) is an interdisciplinary program aimed at preparing Black youths to succeed both in university and in the world of work. The BYMP is currently seeking mentors of any background, especially from AI4 Society, for the mentorship and leadership programs that include Black Youth mentees in Grade 10 and 11. Mentors can assign a project over a 6-week period in July and August and/or meet with students once a week for 1 hour. This will particularly be of interest to researchers who want to promote equity, diversity and inclusion on their research team. Deadline for application is April 1, 2022.

Learn more here

UofA and EPS Seed Grant Program

The Office of the Vice-President (Research and Innovation) (OVPRI), the Kule Institute for Advanced Study (KIAS), and the AI4Society Signature Area (AI4S) at the University of Alberta, in partnership with the Edmonton Police Service (EPS), are pleased to announce the launch of Year 2 of our University of Alberta and Edmonton Police Service Seed Grant Program.
These grants provide support for the co-development of research collaborations between University of Alberta researchers and members of Edmonton Police Service. The program will fund up to three projects per year. Grants are capped at a maximum of $10,000 each, are to be carried out over a period of 18-months, and should focus on one or more the following areas:

Policing among marginalized populations
Police legitimacy and racism
Use of data and analytics in policing
History of Colonialism and the impacts on policing today
Evaluation of Edmonton Police Service training initiatives

The Program Guidelines are attached for your information. They can also be found on our Internal Research Funding website. Applications are to be submitted to Leslie Parsad at uofaepsgrant@ualberta.ca by 4:30 p.m., NEW DEADLINE: Friday on March 11, 2022.

AI4Society Dialogues Podcast

After a quite successful first season, we are thrilled to bring to you a second collection of 10 new episodes, this time focused on AI and Health. For this ambitious project we are collaborating with our research and teaching Signature Areas partner Precision Health. Together, we are interviewing University of Alberta highlighted professionals working on Health using AI, we will explore how advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning are shaping the direction of healthcare. We’ll talk to researchers working on furthering our knowledge of major diseases, like cancer and diabetes. We’ll find out how fields like computer vision and natural language processing are intersecting with medicine and we’ll talk about the entrepreneurial journey that some of these researchers are taking and how these exciting developments are paving the way for personalized healthcare.

PREVIOUS RELEASE

February 21th, 2022

Episode Nine: Padma Kaul: Epidemiological approaches in women's health data

Women are disproportionately affected by heart failure after heart attacks and underrepresented in clinical trials. This lack of medical data about women hinders our ability to really understand the impacts some medications have on women. Dr. Padma Kaul is working to change this.  

UPCOMING RELEASE

March 7th, 2022

Episode Ten: Marilène Oliver: Knowing our virtual selves

Some artists work with clay, or paint, but Dr. Marilene Oliver works with a digitized version of the human body. Her work explores the zeros and ones that we become when WE are rendered into data. Dr. Marilene Oliver is Assistant Professor of Visual Art at the University of Alberta. Her work is at the crossroads of new digital technologies, traditional print, and sculpture - producing objects that bridge the virtual and the real worlds. 

Find AI4Society Dialogues podcast in these platforms

Society, Culture and Technology

Of Effacement

Tuesday, March 8th | 3:00pm

Dr. David Marriott teaches Philosophy at Emory University. His most recent books include Lacan Noir: Lacan and Afro-pessimism (Palgrave, 2021), Before Whiteness (City Lights, 2022), Duppies (Commune Editions, 2019), and Whither Fanon? Studies in the Blackness of Being (Stanford, 2018). Essays from another work in progress – "Of Effacement" – have appeared or are due to appear in diacritics, Textual Practice, and Critical Times.

A Physics Lesson: Notes on a Cultural Genealogy of Human Mediatic Forms

Tuesday, March 28th | 3:00pm

Neferti X. M. Tadiar is professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University.

Her new book, Remaindered Life (Duke, 2022), is an extended meditation on the disposability and surplus of life-making under contemporary conditions of global empire.

Winter '22 ICE Program Intake

The Innovation, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship (ICE) Program has extended the application deadline for our Mentorship Programs—open to UAlberta students, recent alumni, and researchers! If you are interested in or currently developing a technology-based product or venture, learn more about how ICE can help through access to mentorship, equipment/facilities, and learning resources.

APPLY HERE

Join ICE for an info session on Wednesday, March 9 @ 5:30 PM by registering here

Women in AI Awards

Have you applied for the Women in Artificial Intelligence Awards North America 2022 powered by @GET Cities! If you are a North American female innovator, researcher, policy-marker, leader or practitioner in AI, in Startup, Government, Research or working on AI for good initiatives, you are encouraged to apply and be recognized through this prestigious award!

Job Opportunity at NAIT

JR Shaw Applied Research Chair in Industrial Informatics. An exciting opportunity has been created to build NAIT’s applied research expertise within the data science life cycle. The JR Shaw Applied Research Chair in Industrial Informatics will support NAIT’s industry partners by extending and supporting digital adoption across enterprises of various sizes.

APPLY HERE

Job Opportunity at AI4Good

The AI4Good Lab is looking to hire 15+ graduate students on a part-time basis to provide ~15 hrs/week of virtual teaching and mentorship to our Lab participants on the topic of Machine Learning.

The job description is available in this PDF document here and the application form can be found here.

LEARN MORE ABOUT AI4Good

Are you an undergraduate student working on a project in Artificial Intelligence? The Canadian Undergraduate Conference on AI is the best opportunity you have to show off all that hard work. Design Team applications open until March 21st. Apply now!

Apply here: https://forms.gle/1aWTM9fjoWPgNXke9

Helmholtz Visiting Researcher

The Helmholtz Visiting Researcher Grant offers doctoral students and postdocs the opportunity to do a fully-funded short-term research stay at one of the 18 Helmholtz centers. The program is promoted by HIDA, the Helmholtz Information and Data Science Academy.
The aim of the program is to enable new research collaborations, to foster knowledge exchange, and to explore new or emerging research topics in the field of information and data sciences. The program addresses researchers in both academia and in industry whose research has a strong link to the (applied) information and data sciences.

Apply before March 15th

Find more information here.

NSERC Alliance International grant

We are pleased to announce the launch of the Alliance International grants, a new funding stream to support Canadian university researchers working with leading international academic researchers to establish and grow international research collaborations and projects of global importance that will generate benefits to Canada.
NSERC recognizes the need to support engagement with international collaborators to further develop areas of Canadian research strength and leadership. Alliance International will support Canadian researchers working with international colleagues to pursue new knowledge, technologies, and solutions to complex problems.

Find more information here

Who
Any UofAlberta community member (faculty, researcher, or student) interested in any and all aspects of Artificial Intelligence!

Why

To stay informed about AI-related funding opportunities and events (research grants, internships, competitions, ...)
To access AI4Society support for research and teaching initiatives
To profile your research and to collaborate with other community members, through our Forum.

How
Send an email with a brief description of your affiliation, interests, and activities related to artificial intelligence to ai4s@ualberta.ca.