AUGUST

Welcome!

Summer is going by at full speed! We hope that you are enjoying every minute of it. We are getting ready to officially launch AI4Society in September - our original plans for an April 1st even thwarted by COVID-19. In the meantime, we are pleased to present to you our first monthly newsletter*. We look forward to regularly share updates, resources, and opportunities. We hope you will find it informative and useful! Any feedback on its content is welcomed.

*Members on our mailing list have automatically been included in our distribution list. If you wish to opt-out, you can unsubscribe by following the link at the bottom of the newsletter.

Announcements

Follow us on social media

We have social media pages! If you haven't seen them yet, you can follow @UofA_Ai4Society on Twitter and our Linkedin page.

Students can now join AI4Society 

We are currently looking to add students to our network of AI4Society members. If you have graduate students with individual research projects that touch on artificial intelligence, machine learning, or data science, please send them our way. Many events, projects, or internship opportunities we share might be of interest to them.

Available funds for research proposals development

Signature Research Areas have access to funds through the VPRI to help researchers secure external funding. Priority is given to initiatives that involve an interdisciplinary research team, aiming at a large grant. This funding is available until March 31st, 2021, or until it runs out. If you are interested in securing such funds, send us an email with the following information:
- Principal Investigator and Team Members
- Funding Agency and Program
- Amount of funding to be requested
- Application deadline
- Brief description
- Importance to the AI4Society Signature Area
- Amount of funding requested
- How will the funds be used

Do you teach a course on AI, ML, or data?

We compiled a list of offered courses in Fall 2020 and Winter 2021 that touch on artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science. This list will be available on our website shortly and allow students to find these courses in a one-stop-shop. We will also promote courses on our social media pages to encourage enrollment. 

If you teach a course on the topic and it is not on our list, send us an email with the course number and description. We will gladly add it to our list.  

Upcoming: Collaboratories

Wish to collaborate with other researchers involved in AI4Society from across various departments and faculties on an interdisciplinary project? Collaboratories will work on addressing “grand challenge” problems and pursue major federal and international grants. AI4Society will provide support to collaboratories for website design, communications, administration, advancement, student support, funding and grant writing (need to apply), and workshops.
Contact us for more details! 

Suggestions for our new PODCAST

We are currently developing a podcast project in partnership with KIAS. We project to release the first episode this Fall. Therefore, we are seeking ideas and speakers.

What should be our TITLE?
Do you have any ideas for TOPICS of broad interest?
Do you want to PARTICIPATE and be interviewed on a topic? 
Share your ideas and interest with us!

Learn more about ethics and artificial intelligence

Check out The International Review of Information Ethics 28th volume dedicated to Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Society. This issue comes from the conference of the same name organized by the Kule Institute for Advanced Study in 2019. It is also the first issue published on the PKP platform, managed by the University of Alberta Library, thanks to the support of KIAS and AI4Society.

Opportunities

USchool is looking for presenters

We are helping USchool expand their network of presenters that work on artificial intelligence and machine learning. They would contact presenters for their availabilities throughout the year and support them in developing their sessions.
Consult this brochure for more details
We encourage AI4Society members to sign up!

Become a mentor for the next generation!

Various groups across campus are looking for STEM field researchers, professionals, or students who would like to get involved as mentors. 

1. UA-WiSE & WISER is recruiting for this year's  Virtual Mentorship Program running from September 2020 to March 2021. There's a minimum commitment of 12 hours. This program is dedicated to women in the STEM field. 
   Deadline for applications:
   August 21, 2020 (Mentors from academia, industry, and government with five or more years of experience )
   September 30, 2020 (Early-career professionals with five years of experience or less and undergraduate students)
   Apply here
    
2. Ada's team has a mentorship program targeting underprivileged high school students lacking the exposure or confidence to pursue post-secondary. If you are interested or have contacts that can help them (e.g., finding students in grades 11-12, know individuals with connections to school boards, etc.), click here to join or add contacts to their network. 

Journal issue on Robotics

AI4Society member, Mahdi Tavakoli, is the lead guest editor for a special issue for Frontiers titled Robotics, Autonomous Systems, and AI for Nonurgent/Nonemergent Healthcare Delivery During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic. For more information about the research topic, click here. 

There are four different pathways to publishing a paper in this special issue:
- Frontiers in Robotics and AI (Biomedical Robotics section)
- Frontiers in Big Data (Medicine and Public Health section)
- Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence (Medicine and Public Health section)
- Frontiers in Neurorobotics 

Submission deadline: September 30, 2020
You can submit your abstract and manuscript online.

Grants and competitions

Multiple grants and competitions related to our research area are available and have upcoming deadlines. Click on each title to access the full details of each grant :

CCS/CIHR/Brain Canada Spark Grants
Up to $150,000 individual grants
Registration deadline: August 28, 2020
Full application deadline: October 16, 2020
Research Areas: any research area; particular focus on non-traditional cancer fields like engineering, AI, robotics, physics, nanoscience, statistics, informatics, computer and data sciences, and behavioural science.

Campus Alberta Neuroscience Entrepreneurship Seed Grant Program
Up to $30,000 individual grants
Deadline: September 11, 2020
Research Areas: must be related to neuroscience, and multiple disciplines are eligible, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, pain and opioids, cannabis, spinal cord injury, and healthy brain aging and dementia.

2020 Sony Research Award Program
Faculty Innovation Award: Up to $100,000 USD
Focused Research Award: Up to $150,000 USD
Deadline: September 15, 2020
Research Areas: Machine Learning; Computer Vision; Human Computer Interaction; Visual/Visualization; Communications; Audio, Music, Speech, and Language Processing; RF Sensing; Robotics; Software and Security; System Architecture and Processor.

Microsoft Upskilling Journey Challenge (for students)
Prizes: Microsoft Surface Go, Surface Pro, mentoring, etc.
Deadline: August 27, 2020
The objective of this challenge is for students to complete as many Microsoft Learn modules around AI and Machine Learning as they can to collect the most XPs and accomplish a task based on learnings from the modules. It's free to sign up!

Want to share something with AI4Society members?
Send us the information
We'll add it in our next newsletter and social media pages