Eye Data & AI Summit

The School of Optometry & Vision Science, alongside the Centre for Bioengineering and Biotechnology (CBB), Waterloo.AI, Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute, the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Health are hosting a full-day summit on Saturday, June 8, 2024.

The summit will gather invited experts in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and privacy, leaders from the optometry profession in Canada, and industry to better understand how we may be able to work collectively towards a national eye data repository. 

As primary eye care providers, optometrists diagnose, manage, and treat ocular disease, often collaborating with patients and their health teams to address systemic conditions like hypertension and diabetes. They are increasingly involved in stroke prevention and brain injury rehabilitation. All this longitudinal health data could help unlock advances in AI, research, enhanced patient outcomes, population health management, and public health policy development. A national eye data repository at the University of Waterloo could streamline data sharing, and create a learning and research resource that would be an exemplar for the world.

Registration is required for this event. Please register here.

For any questions regarding the summit, please email Stan Woo. 

---

AGENDA | SPEAKERS | REGISTER | ACCOMMODATIONS | SPONSOR

---

Agenda

Summit activities will include a combination of panel presentations and workshops to share use cases, identify needs, potential challenges and considerations required to develop the infrastructure to receive, de-identify and organize vision and health data by optometry.

*Agenda is subject to change*

Location: Health Expansion (EXP) 1689

Time	Location	Session
8:00 a.m. - 9:00 a.m.	Health Expansion	Breakfast
9:00 a.m. - 9:15 a.m.	EXP 1689	Opening Remarks       Speaker: Stan Woo and Clark Dickerson
9:15 a.m. - 10:15 a.m.	EXP 1689	Talk: Title TBD* Speaker: Jimmy Lin
10:15 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.	Health Expansion	Refreshment Break
10:30 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.	EXP 1689	Talk: Math as the New Microscope Speaker: Anita Layton
11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.	Misc	Breakout session
12:30 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.	Health Expansion	Lunch
1:30 p.m. - 2:30 p.m.	EXP 1689	Talk: Title TBD* Speaker: Anindya Sen (Cybersecurity & Privacy Institute)
2:30 p.m. - 2:45 p.m.	Health Expansion	Refreshment Break
2:45 p.m. - 3:45 p.m.	EXP 1689	Talk: CAN-VIEW: Establishing a National Eye Data Repository for AI-Driven Vision Care Policy and Innovation Speaker: Helen Chen
3:45 p.m. - 4:45 p.m.	Misc	Breakout session
4:45 p.m. - 5:15 p.m.	EXP 1689	Closing Remarks Speaker: Stan Woo
5:30 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.	Optometry Student Commons OPT	Reception

Back to top

---

Speakers

Helen Chen

Director, Professional Practice Centre in Health Systems, Program Lead, Master of Health Informatics Program, Professor of School of Public Health Sciences, Cheriton School of Computer Science | University of Waterloo, Canada

Dr. Chen specializes in health data analytics, health systems interoperability, and digital health. Her research focuses on developing interpretable machine learning models and generative AI algorithms to accelerate access to real-world data and evidence generation for learning health systems. Her research team works closely with clinicians to improve machine learning models in natural language processing and understanding medical records.

She leads the Master of Health Informatics Program and the Professional Practice Centre in Health Systems at the University of Waterloo.

Back to top

---

Clark Dickerson

Executive Director, Centre for Bioengineering and Biotechnology (CBB) | University of Waterloo, Canada

Clark Dickerson is a Professor of Kinesiology and Health Sciences (Faculty of Health) and Canada Research Chair of Shoulder Mechanics, as well as the Executive Director for the Centre for Bioengineering and Biotechnology (CBB) at the University of Waterloo, where he has been since 2005. His research focuses on human musculoskeletal biomechanics, particularly of the shoulder. He earned his BSME at Alfred University, his MS in bioengineering from Clemson University, and his PhD in biomedical engineering from the University of Michigan. His current research interests include the development and experimental evaluation of computational shoulder models, digital ergonomics, age and disease-related shoulder disorder prevention, assessment, and mitigation, in vitro tissue mechanical characterization, and comparative and developmental shoulder mechanics. His work also extends to the design and evaluation of assistive devices, including upper limb exoskeletons and therapeutic soft robots.

Clark Dickerson is an author of over 145 peer-reviewed research articles and over 300 conference and invited talks. He is a past-president of Canadian Society for Biomechanics and current chairperson of the Board of the International Shoulder Group (a technical group of the International Society of Biomechanics).

Back to top

---

 Anita Layton

Canada 150 Research Chair in Mathematical Biology and Medicine, Professor of Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, Pharmacy and Biology | University of Waterloo, Canada

Dr. Anita Layton is the Canada 150 Research Chair in Mathematical Biology and Medicine, and Professor of Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, Pharmacy and Biology at the University of Waterloo. She joined the University of Waterloo in 2018. Before then, she held the position of the Robert R. and Katherine B. Penn Professor of Mathematics, and Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Medicine at Duke University. She is the Deputy Editor of the American Journal of Physiology–Renal Physiology, Associate Editor of SIAM Review Book Section, and Associate Editor of the SIAM Journal on Applied Dynamical Systems. She also serves as the Associate Dean, Research and International, for the Faculty of Mathematics, and chairs the Research Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Council at the University of Waterloo.

Her research focuses on the development and application of mathematical models to gain insights into the physiology and pathophysiology of the mammalian kidneys. In particular, she is interested in understanding the cardiovascular benefits of novel antiglyceamic therapies in diabetes and chronic kidney diseases, and in unraveling the mechanisms underlying the sex differences in blood pressure regulation.

Back to top

---

Jimmy Lin

David R. Cheriton Chair in Software Systems, Professor | University of Waterloo, Canada

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. He completed his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT in 2004 and previously worked at the University of Maryland.

His research focuses on creating tools to help users make sense of large data sets, working at the intersection of information retrieval, natural language processing, and databases. He specializes in large-scale distributed algorithms and infrastructure for data analytics.

From 2010-2012, he spent a sabbatical at Twitter, developing services for content identification and analytics infrastructure, including Hadoop tools and machine learning libraries. He also worked at Cloudera in 2009, where he built their first training and certification program.

At the University of Waterloo, he serves as the Chief Technology Officer of Primal, a company specializing in synthetic semantic data. Previously, he was the Chief Scientist of RSVP, a startup focused on deep natural language understanding technologies. Follow him on Twitter!

Back to top

---

Stan Woo

Director, School of Optometry & Vision Science | University of Waterloo, Canada

Dr. Woo received his Doctorate of Optometry (OD) from the University of California at Berkeley. He then went on to the University of Houston College of Optometry (UHCO) where he completed a Master’s degree in Vision Science and a residency in Low Vision Rehabilitation. Upon graduation, he continued at UHCO as a faculty member and held the positions of chief of the Vision Rehabilitation Service, founding director of the UEI Center for Sight Enhancement, and director of the Residency in Low Vision Rehabilitation. His research interests include vision rehabilitation and systems for optimizing patient care outcomes.

Dr. Woo also practiced part-time in the Texas Medical Center with the Retina Consultants of Houston for eighteen years. In 2013, he completed an MBA with a concentration in medical and health care management at Rice University Jones Graduate School of Business.

In 2013, he joined the Southern California College of Optometry (SCCO) at Marshall B. Ketchum University as dean and professor. Dr. Woo’s leadership team initiated an ambitious project to incorporate interprofessional education and collaborative practice at Marshall B. Ketchum University (MBKU) with optometry, physician assistant, and pharmacy students.

Dr. Woo is a diplomate in Low Vision, American Academy of Optometry (AAO) and a diplomate with the American Board of Optometry (ABO). He served as president of the Texas Optometric Association, and is a director of the American Board of Optometry.

He has also been an active volunteer serving the Department of Veterans Administration, the American Schools and Colleges of Optometry, AAO, American Optometric Association, National Board of Examiners in Optometry, and the professional OD committee for the Accreditation Council on Optometric Education. Dr. Woo has lectured nationally and internationally on topics including vision rehabilitation, retinal disease and pharmacology.

Stan is married to Dr. Lisa Woo who has been a successful solo, private practice optometrist for over fourteen years. She joined the School as a clinical lecturer on September 1, 2017. Together, they have 3 wonderful children: Kate, George, and Victor.

Back to top

---

Register

Please register by May 30, 2024. Due to room capacity limitations, registration will be closed once capacity limit has been reached.

For those travelling outside of the city, there is availability at both Homewood Suites and Hampton Inn and Suites in Waterloo St. Jacobs, and Delta Hotels in Waterloo.

We thank the following sponsor for making this event possible.