"Let's Talk AI" Podcast Series

Bio: Mark Crowley is an assistant professor at the University of Waterloo's Electrical and Computer Engineering department and the ECE Machine Learning Lab director. Mark received his Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of British Columbia working in the Laboratory for Computational Intelligence with David Poole. He completed a postdoc at Oregon State University working with Tom Dietterich's machine learning group on robust decision-making under uncertainty in simulated Forest Fire domains. His areas of research are reinforcement learning, deep learning and ensemble learning. He has worked on various projects focusing on ecology, sustainable forest management, autonomous driving, medical imaging and physical chemistry.

Bio: Vijay Ganesh is an associate professor at the University of Waterloo's Electrical and Computer Engineering department, with a cross-appointment at the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science. He is also the Co-Director of the Waterloo Artificial Intelligence Institute (Waterloo.AI).

Bio: Dr. Laschowski received his PhD from the Department of Systems Design Engineering, with a specialization in biomedical engineering, at the University of Waterloo. He is also a member of Waterloo.AI.

Bio: I am an Assistant Professor at the University of Waterloo's Cheriton School of Computer Science. I run The Salon. I'm interested in reliable and trustworthy statistics and machine learning, including considerations such as data privacy and robustness.

Bio: Dr. Helen Chen is the Associate Director of Professional Practice Centre in Health Systems, she is also the faculty lead of the WHISTL research group. Additionally, she is an assistant research professor, jointly appointed to both the School of Public Health and Health Systems and to the Cheriton School of Computer Science.

Bio: I am a Post-Doctoral fellow at SIRRL at the University of Waterloo under the supervision of Professor Kerstin Dautenhahn. I graduated with a Ph.D. degree from REAL at The Pennsylvania State University, under the supervision of Professor Alan R. Wagner. Before joining Penn State, I completed my undergraduate in Electrical Engineering from the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore. I was also a part of the Global UGRAD program funded by USEFP and spent a semester at the University of Central Missouri during my undergraduate studies.

Bio: I was born in Saskatoon and grew up in Calgary and Montreal. However, I spent my teens and young adult life in Nigeria and India. As a result, I was exposed to rather extreme differences in economic conditions and material comforts. I became interested in why people in prosperous countries like Canada could obtain their groceries and household needs from large and clean stores while individuals in less developed countries, had to access tumultuous (and vibrant) bazaars. The acute and chronic poverty I also encountered impacted me, and I began to wonder on what a government could and should do in terms of policy intervention. I saw economics as a natural outlet to answer these questions.

Bio: Rodney Smith’s research involves the study of electrocatalysts for use in sustainable energy storage systems. His research examines the chemistry of electrode surfaces, measures electron transfer kinetics and probes electrochemical reaction dynamics in an effort to guide the design and fabrication of solid-state electrocatalysts.

Bio: Zhao Pan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Waterloo and the Principal Investigator of the Interdisciplinary Fluid Physics Lab - Pan Lab. Prior to joining Waterloo, he worked at Utah State University and Florida Center for Advanced Aero-propulsion (FCAAP, FSU) as a postdoctoral fellow.

Bio: William Melek is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Waterloo. He also serves as the Director of the Laboratory of Computational Intelligence and Automation and the Director of RoboHub.

Bio: Sirisha Rambhatla, Assistant Professor, University of WaterlooBio: Dr. Rambhatla is an Assistant Professor in the Management Sciences Department, Faculty of Engineering with cross appointments with David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science and Systems Design Engineering Department at the University of Waterloo.