Keeping Up with the Speed of Disruption: Session 1

Jen brings life and vitality to her work with leaders and organizations. Her passion for process design, engagement, leadership and great work, has been developed in a variety of roles throughout her 25-year career. Jen has a profound commitment to connect proven and innovative process with your unique organizational culture and strategy to produce real & sustainable results. She has worked with hundreds of leaders focused on discovering how collaborative leadership can contribute to organizational success.

Elissa was appointed Executive Director of the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy in January 2018.

Elissa completed her PhD in Neuroscience from the University of British Columbia in 2006.  Following a post-doc at Lund University, in Sweden, she decided to pursue a career in research strategy, policy and leadership.   In November 2008, she joined the University of Toronto’s Office of the Vice-President, Research and Innovation and was Director of Strategic Initiatives from January 2011 to June 2015.  In that role, she led a small team dedicated to advancing the University’s strategic research priorities, including international institutional research partnerships, the institutional strategy for prestigious national and international research awards, and other strategic initiatives, including establishing the SOSCIP research consortium in 2012.  From 2015-2018, she led SOSCIP through a major period of growth and expansion as its Executive Director helping to establish the consortium as Ontario’s leading platform for collaborative R&D in data science and advanced computing. As the Executive Director of the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy, she is working with the three AI Institutes in Montreal (MILA), Edmonton (Amii) and Toronto (Vector Institute) to strengthen Canada’s leadership in AI research.

With MILA since 2009, Executive Director since 2015, and in charge of the MILA R&D team since 2017, Myriam has over 15 years of professional experience in artificial intelligence, project management and software development, in the industrial as well as in the academic research environments. She holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence and a Bachelor degree in Physics Engineering.

She is also the Director of Collaborative Research Hub Deep Learning at IVADO, The Institute of Data Valorisation. As such, and because MILA wishes to strengthen the collaboration with its colleagues in Data Sciences and Operations Research and contributes to the economic growth of Montreal through industrial partnerships, she establishes the liaison between both institutes.

Mathieu Germain is a research scientist in deep learning at MILA – Quebec’s Institute of Artificial Intelligence, a leading machine learning research institute directed by Yoshua Bengio. He obtained a Master’s in deep learning with Hugo Larochelle at Sherbrooke University after co-founding INVUP, a startup that helped organizations manage their volunteering and donation programs that went on to win multiple awards. His research focuses on uncovering the principles of learning that yield intelligence. Mathieu is also passionate about sharing science and engineering with others via outreach through public lectures and mentoring Canadian startups and established companies. Currently, in addition to being at the core of the tech transfer team at MILA and contributing to the AI boom of Montreal, he is a Program Manager of the 2018 edition of the prestigious Neural Information Processing Systems conference.

Nazim holds in doctorate in Physics from the University of Oxford.  His research was based at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider where he used machine learning to probe the mysteries of the universe.

As part of Deloitte’s Analytics team, he uses this love of science and computing to challenge his customers to think about their data in new ways to drive novel insights.

Jon has over 20 years of public and private sector management consulting experience spanning seven industries. He has extensive project experience in service delivery modernization, organizational change management, cost management, process redesign, business case development, project & portfolio management, large package software implementations, and business transformation. Jon’s experience in large enterprise system implementations complimented by deep exposure to the functions of both operational and corporate services domains, offers executives unique advisory insight in service delivery redesign, and complex technology enablement. As a seasoned project and program manager of large scale change agendas, Jon has a breadth of experience in the full project lifecycle of large transformation initiatives and the required project rigour, planning, talent management and quality controls needed to deliver results. Substantial expertise assisting senior management execute on strategic objectives showcases his enterprise-wide advisory capabilities. Strong team working skills and an effective consulting style makes Jon a reliable leader in public or private sector projects.

Ben Syme works as a Customer Success Manager at MindBridge Ai.  He works primarily with CPA firms through the implementation and change management processes to leverage MindBridge’s industry leading Ai Auditor platform.  Working with all levels within each organization from Executive Champion to end user has given Ben a unique insight into the successes and challenges of AI implementation.

Andrew Popp has nine years of experience developing business with, and delivering solutions to, federal, provincial and international governments. He joined the MindBridge team to disrupt current auditing practices by providing a more effective and efficient way to detect anomalies in financial data.

Amidst discussion of the Internet of Things, Fenwick McKelvey studies the Internet as Things. Investigating the machines, bots, artificial intelligence, algorithms, and daemons that make up the Internet’s infrastructure, his research takes him from debates at the CRTC to data centres and from Gilles Deleuze to John Dewey. His recent and ongoing studies have focused on the daemons that manage Internet flows and their role in Network Neutrality debates, the new software and social media platforms that mediate political engagement, and the algorithms and AIs that govern the discoverability of online content. Dr. McKelvey is an Assistant Professor in Information and Communication Technology Policy in the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University.

Abhishek Gupta is an AI Ethics Researcher based out of District 3, Concordia University and McGill University in Montreal, Canada. His research focuses on practical ways to address ethical concerns in deploying AI solutions in different industries. At District 3, he is researching the labor impact of AI in the financial services industry along with retraining and curricula changes required to meet these challenges. At McGill University, he is building a curriculum via a 4-part workshop series to introduce the topic of the ethical development of AI.