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Mentoring the next generation of energy professionals
By Amy U.
On Tuesday, June 25, Co-operative and Experiential Education partnered with Women in Renewable Energy (WiRE) to promote inclusive careers in the field of renewable energy through a “speed-mentoring” event.
Throughout the evening, female undergraduate and graduate students from diverse faculties had the opportunity to network with and learn from professionals across the green energy sector, including those from large oil and gas companies, utilities organizations and start-ups in the field of renewable energy.
“Our continuous motivation behind these speed-mentoring events is to challenge students to explore career paths and possibilities in the energy sector,” says Brittany Berry, Co-lead, WiRE Hamilton Chapter. “More importantly, speed-mentoring allows students to form long-lasting relationships with mentors who can help shape their eventual career paths,” says Roopam Singh, Co-lead, WiRE Hamilton Chapter.
The event was held in the “Make Change” classroom of evolv1, Canada’s first-ever zero-carbon building located on Waterloo’s north campus. With its focus on shifting the nature of energy production and promoting gender equality in this sector’s hiring practices, “making change” was definitely a theme of the evening.
“Many students commented that the speed mentoring conversations were very beneficial to them, and the industry professionals were happy to give back,” says Cathy Lac-Brisley, Market Research Manager, Co-operative Education. “We can’t stress enough the importance of giving our students and industry leaders the right platform and resources to network and stay connected.”
To learn more about the event, visit our Facebook page which features some highlights from the evening.
Vector Institute funds Pathfinder Project at Kimia Lab
The Vector Institute, an independent, not-for-profit research institute focused on leading-edge machine learning, announced the second in its series of Pathfinder Projects to implement Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the health sector.
The second Pathfinder Project, performed in partnership with the University Health Network (UHN) and the University of Waterloo will enhance radiology diagnoses with AI.
Pathfinder Projects are small-scale efforts designed to produce results in 12 to 18 months that guide future research and technology adoption. With technical and resource support from the Vector Institute, the projects each bring together a multidisciplinary research team to tackle an important health care problem or opportunity using machine learning and AI more broadly. Each project was chosen for its potential to help identify a “path” through which world-class machine learning research can be translated into widespread benefits for patients.
Coral Review, a software solution developed at UHN, is a peer learning tool used by clinicians in diagnostic imaging to support continuous quality improvement of radiologist practice. Using an algorithm developed by Dr. H.R. Tizhoosh, Director of the Laboratory for Knowledge Inference in Medical Image Analysis (Kimia Lab) at UWaterloo and a Faculty Affiliate at the Vector Institute, an AI-enabled Coral Review would scan through thousands of existing medical images (i.e., x-rays) for ones similar to a patient’s and recommend a diagnosis to the attending physician.
Professor Tizhoosh will be at the forefront of this important shift as he seeks to enhance University Health Network’s (UHN) medical imaging peer review system, Coral Review. It is the second of the Vector Institute’s Pathfinder Projects, which bring together multidisciplinary research teams to tackle important health care problems using machine learning.
“Coral Review currently enables anonymous peer reviews of medical imaging diagnoses. However, it is limited by the availability of physicians who perform the review or ‘second opinion’,” says Leon Goonaratne, Senior Director of Information Technology, UHN. “An AI-enabled peer review solution has the ability to provide the physician with more information when they perform the review, including the identification of images corresponding to rare or difficult to see cases”.
Read the full story on the Vector Institute's website.
Velocity Fund Finals and other notes
The 25thVelocity Fund Finals $5K competition takes place today as ten student entrepreneurs pitch their startups in the Student Life Centre (SLC), competing for a share of $20,000 in grant funding. The event begins at 11:00 a.m. with a fireside chat between Velocity Director Jay Shaw and Hongwei Liu, founder of MappedIn. After a lunch break at noon, the pitches begin at 12:30 p.m.
Undergraduate students have been notified that their fall 2019 class schedules are now available in Quest. Students can check Quest for their Drop/Add Period online appointment time to see when they can begin making changes to their schedule. Students can visit the Quest help pages for assistance viewing their schedule or appointment time. Quest opens up enrolment to students between July 18 to 23, with the course add period for all students running from July 24 to September 17.