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

AI4Society is organizing its annual Reverse Expo on February 18 and invites our alumni, our industry partners, and our broad community with an interest in AI to connect with UoA researchers and students. This mini-conference offers a space where students, researchers, and community members alike ask questions, explore innovative ideas, and plan collaborations to develop creative solutions to some of our world’s most pressing problems.

We will meet virtually, showcasing posters on a broad range of AI-related research projects, including (but not limited to) data analysis and visualization, information extraction, robotics, search, planning, sensor-data analysis, machine learning, and AI applications.

Learn more 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!

The first ACG conference was held in 1975 (then called Advances in Computer Chess). 47 years later, we are still going strong! Since the 1990s, the conference has been organized by the International Computer Games Association.

ADVANCES IN COMPUTER GAMES

CONFERENCE 2021

ACG features cutting edge artificial intelligence technology as applied to computer games. This year’s conference was held online November 23-25.

Watch all the presentations in the link below!

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

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.

UPCOMING 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.  

Find AI4Society Dialogues podcast in these platforms

AI Events

Using Qiskit applied to machine learning

Tuesday, Feb. 22 | 6pm - 9pm (EST)

Using Qiskit applied to machine learning is an excellent opportunity to introduce students to the implementation and training of quantum variational classifiers (QVCs) using the Qiskit software development kit.

LEARN MORE AND REGISTER

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.

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 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

Job Opportunity at Government of Alberta

Data Scientists, looking to be part of something new and make a positive impact? Help us influence and regulate fair automobile insurance pricing for Albertans! We need you to help us build data analytic tools to support continuous improvement. This team regulates automobile insurance rating programs and educates the Alberta consumer. Our work makes a difference!

APPLY HERE

35th Canadian Conference on AI

The 35^th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence will take place virtually in Toronto, Ontario, from 30 May to 3 June, 2022. All presentations and posters will be online, with in-person social events to be scheduled in Toronto for those who are able to attend in-person. Viewing rooms and isolated presentation facilities will be available for all visitors to the University of Toronto during the event.

We invite papers that present original work in all areas of Artificial Intelligence, either theoretical or applied. Submit by February 18th, 2022

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.

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.

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.

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.

NEW PAPER - ALGORITHMIC RISK

Technological advances embedded within algorithmic decision systems are being deployed every day. Some of these investments are unquestionably worthwhile, while some others prioritize commercialization of technology ahead of societal impact. The article uses a real-world case from the healthcare sector to demonstrate the design and governance shortfalls of an algorithmic tool through its lifecycle.

Read the full article here.