The Office of Research presents the next Research Talks lunchtime panel with four researchers, including the Faculty of Arts' Professor Heather Douglas (Philosophy), discussing the future of autonomous vehicles and responsible innovation.
Speakers
Responsible innovation: Heather Douglas is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Associate Director for the Waterloo Institute for Sustainable Energy, and Waterloo Chair in Science and Society. Her research focuses on the interface between science and policy, including the use of science in policy-making and policies for science. She believes the value-free ideal for science is an inadequate ideal, for both epistemic and moral reasons arising from the importance of science for policy-making. She also works on the moral responsibilities of scientists with respect to their work, how to understand scientific integrity, and how the institutional structures of science help or hinder scientists in doing their work with integrity and responsibility.
Safety and security of real-time software and autonomous driving: Sebastian Fischmeister is an Associate Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and has a cross-appointment with the Cheriton School of Computer Science. His research focuses on safety and security of cyberphysical systems such as autonomous vehicles, aerial vehicles, and medical devices. His research targets systems research at the intersection of software technology, distributed systems, and formal methods. Recent key highlights of his research center on the topics of information extraction, specification mining, runtime monitoring, and anomaly/intrusion detection shown in demonstrators such as the APMA Connected Vehicle, the Renesas Skyline autonomy demonstrators, and the DENSO cooperative driving demonstrator.
Research and development of unmanned systems: Jayant Bansal is a roboticist, specializing in research and development of unmanned systems, with a focus on driverless vehicles. Jayant has a strong background in developing and leading teams specializing in development of specific areas of technology – developing culture – as the core building block for an organization with strong deliverables and continuous value addition. Jayant is currently the Engineering Group Manager – Autonomous Vehicles at General Motors, Canada and leads a team which defines and designs various systems and modules of the GM Autonomous Vehicle.
Legal aspects of technology: George Takach practices all facets of the law related to technology and is a senior partner with McCarthy Tétrault, a leader in technology law in Canada. George brings significant value to clients in their tech company mergers and acquisitions/financing deals, sophisticated tech licensing/tech procurement transactions, and challenging e-commerce activities, including work on cloud, SaaS, Big Data, Autonomous Vehicles, AI, and fintech deals. George represents a wide range of software, hardware and other technology companies on commercial and financing/mergers and acquisitions matters. He has a national tech procurement practice, regularly assisting companies and organizations in all sectors of the Canadian economy, including in the public sector.
Research Talks is supported by the Research Support Fund.