Friday, Feb. 18 | 11:00am - 2:00pm

The AI4Society Reverse EXPO 2022 aims to bring together the U of A AI research community and stakeholders from industry, government, and not-for-profit organizations, to learn about undergraduate and graduate students AI-related research and applications, and to explore opportunities for future collaborations.

Are you a UoA researcher (faculty member or student) conducting AI-related research? We want to include and showcase your work at the event! Register here
Are you a member of our community (from industry, government or not-for-profit sector) or an alumnus of the UoA and want to learn more about AI on our campus? Register here

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

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.

NEW RELEASE!

Social media platforms are public venues where conversations about issues of public interest take place. These online conversations have real world impact. The project objective is to understand the vocabularies, speakers, interlinking of conversations, associated topics/themes, and make this all public to draw these narratives together and support solutions-based policy conversations.

A TOOLKIT FOR ANALYZING ONLINE CONVERSATIONS FOR SOLUTIONS BASED POLICY DEVELOPMENT

The tool can aggregate these indicators at the level of tweet authors to shed light on the activities and style of influencers of public opinion. Finally, it offers rich visualizations to enable users to gain insights on their datasets.

Read the full release here

LEARN MORE IN OUR WEBSITE

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

January 24th, 2022

Episode Seven: Adriana Ríos Rincón: Social robots and assistive technologies

As advances are made in artificial intelligence, questions are being raised about how we should relate to AI, especially when it’s embodied intelligence. In other words - how will we relate to robots? Dr. Adriana Ríos Rincón is a researcher who uses robots in her work with children.

UPCOMING RELEASE

February 7th, 2022

Episode Eight: Bo Cao: Machine learning and mental health

According to the Canadian Mental Health Association, in any given year, 1 in 5 people in Canada will personally experience a mental health problem or illness and by age 40, about 50% of the population will have or have had a mental illness. How might advances in precision health change how we address mental health problems? Dr. Bo “Cloud” Cao research interests include developing tools to enable personalized diagnosis and treatment for mental disorders, brain development and aging as well as neuromodulation and neurofeedback.

Find AI4Society Dialogues podcast in these platforms

AI4Society Events

Digital Law Forum 2022 - Myths & Reality, Artificial Intelligence and the Law

Friday, Feb. 15-16 | All day
The Digital Law and Innovation Society at the University of Alberta Faculty of Law is organizing its second annual Digital Law Forum in February 2022. We are inviting students, researchers and professors to submit proposals to present their research in the Forum.

Digital Law Tea Time Talks!

Thursday, Feb. 10 | Noon
Professor Hegde has a special focus on privacy, ethics and artificial intelligence (AI). She brings extensive practical experience with AI to her academic work. Come ask Professor Hegde about how her work intersects with access to justice and law.

Blackness against the Surface of Black Art

Monday, Feb. 7th | 3:00pm
This talk will consider how and what it means when black art and culture are weaponized against the political force and life worlds of black people. It focuses on the strategic appearance of black “political” art and murals across the rapidly gentrifying landscape of Downtown Oakland during and after the uprisings of the summer of 2020.

OPPORTUNITIES

Apply to the AI4Good Lab!

Our 7-week machine learning (ML) training program provides education, mentorship, and hands-on project experience to women and people whose genders are underrepresented in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) industry.

Application period: January 15th to February 15th

Program dates: May 2nd to June 21st, 2022

Software Workshop

We provide accessible workshops that require little to no prior knowledge to take part. We are excited to bring back the Software stream of our workshop series once again this year. This 10 day workshop targeted at beginners will take participants through the fundamentals of software development, with a focus on neurotech applications, like analyzing real brain data.

REGISTER HERE

Precision Health Innovator Award

The University of Alberta Precision Health Innovator Award honors faculty who have made important contributions to society by developing novel ideas and insights through their precision health related research. Precision Health (PH) is an emerging approach to health and wellness that expands on efforts to diagnose and treat disease through advances in technology, data and analytics. It comprises various activities from the promotion of health and wellness and the prevention of disease, to customized treatment strategies, and grouping of populations to determine the best care by targeting genetic, biological, environmental, and social and behavioral determinants of
health.
The Award was established by the University of Alberta’s Precision Health Signature Area (PHSA) Steering Committee.
More information here.

Visiting Researcher Grant

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. It offers researchers the opportunity to get to know the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers.
We offer financial support for a self-organized research stay in a department/working group in one of the 18 Helmholtz centers. Your research must have a strong link to the field of (applied) information & data sciences.

Find more information here. Apply before March 15th

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.
By combining the expertise of Canadian and leading international researchers, it is expected that Canadian researchers will leverage the best international knowledge to help address important research challenges in the natural sciences and engineering (NSE) disciplines and will provide trainees with an outstanding research environment. These collaborations will ultimately strengthen research excellence in Canada and abroad.
Alliance International is a new, permanent stream of Alliance. There is no deadline to apply and grants will be awarded throughout the year. Alliance International offers two grant types: Catalyst grants and Collaboration grants.

Find more information here

Strengthening inclusive science and innovation systems in the Americas

This funding opportunity seeks to strengthen science, technology and innovation (STI) in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) by supporting 1) regional collaboration for research and policy uptake; 2) inclusive STI; and 3) strong granting councils and regional science coordination agencies.

The funding opportunity is divided into two main streams: 1) supporting collaborative research in LAC, in partnership with science granting councils (SGCs), with an emphasis on mainstreaming gender and inclusion across all activities; and 2) supporting capacity-strengthening activities that enable SGCs) and regional science coordination bodies to effectively deliver on mandates and enhance national and regional STI systems.

BUDGET: CAD1.5 million to CAD5 million

Apply by February 18th, 2022.

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.