Waterloo.AI & Communitech, Industry Day Fall 2022: Data - The Fuel for AI

Topic: Data Trends in Canada & abroad

Bio: Mr. Arora has led significant transformational initiatives throughout his career, with experience and partnerships spanning all three levels of government, the private sector and international organizations, including the UN and the OECD. He has led projects on high-profile policy issues, legislative and regulatory reform, and overseen large national programs. He has served in senior Assistant Deputy Minister roles at Statistics Canada, Natural Resources Canada and Health Canada, before taking on the role of Deputy Minister of Statistics Canada and the Chief Statistician of Canada in 2016.

Topic: Synthetic Data

Bio: Jimmy Lin is a Professor and the David R. Cheriton Chair in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. Previously, he was at the University of Maryland. He completed his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT in 2004. His research aims to build tools that help users make sense of large amounts of data. He works at the intersection of information retrieval, natural language processing, and databases, with a focus on large-scale distributed algorithms and infrastructure for data analytics.

Topic: Making Aviation Smarter with Data

Bio: Dr. Reem Al-Halimi is the Chief Data Scientist at NAVBLUE, An Airbus Company, with a focus on bringing value to customers through smarter workflows. Since receiving her doctorate degree in Computer Science from the University in Waterloo in 2004, Dr. Al-Halimi has worked on machine learning projects that utilize a variety of data including images, robotic arm sensor data, greenhouse sensors, free text, and aviation data.

Panel Discussion Moderator

Bio: Vijay Ganesh is an associate professor at the University of Waterloo's department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, cross-appointed with the School of Computer Science in the Faculty of Math, and the Co-Director of the Waterloo AI Institute. He is also a member of the Waterloo Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute, the Waterloo Computational Math program, and the Waterloo blockchain research community. Vijay completed his Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University in 2007 and was a research scientist at MIT from 2007 to 2012.

Topic: FAIR Health Synthetic Data Network

Bio: Dr. Chen specializes in health data analytics, health systems interoperability, and digital health. Her research focuses on developing interpretable machine learning models and explainable AI algorithms to accelerate real-world data extraction and real-world evidence generation in healthcare and public health. Her research team works closely with clinicians to improve natural language processing algorithms in extracting and understanding clinical text and medical records. She co-leads the Professional Practice Centre for Health Systems at the University of Waterloo and is the President of the Canadian Personalized Healthcare Innovation Network.

Topic: Data Markets and Innovation

Bio: Professor Sen uses AI methods to study public policy issues and employs economic models to evaluate the societal impacts of different data governance initiatives.

Topic: Turning Data Into Capital

Bio: Andrew is an entrepreneur and investor with a penchant for standing at the intersection of complementary industries. He is the Co-Founder and CEO of Delphia — a membership-based investment collective where people pool their data to gain access to exclusive investment strategies. After selling his previous startup to Shopify, he purchased a Toronto-based research lab with the mission of helping people derive benefit from their data. He went on to steer the lab’s novel predictive methods toward the forecasting of capital markets, partnering with some of the top minds in quantitative investing along the way to form Delphia and help people turn their data into capital.

Panel Discussion Moderator

Bio: Kevin has over 20 years of experience in entrepreneurial, technical and leadership roles in the private and not-for-profit sectors.  Prior to his current role, Kevin was the Managing Director of Canada’s Open Data Exchange (ODX), a national initiative that helped companies access and commercialize data from public and private sources. In a similar vein, Kevin was also the founding Managing Director of the Canadian Digital Media Network (recently rebranded as Canada’s Technology Network), a national initiative that provides entrepreneurs and small- to mid-sized tech companies with co-working space, mentorship, training, peer learning, exposure to funding/venture capital and more, while accelerating their ability to sell into international markets. Kevin has also held Senior Research, Vice-President, President and C-level roles with several companies in the high-tech sector. Kevin holds a Bachelors and Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Doctorate in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and is also a licensed Professional Engineer in the Province of Ontario.