AI Seminar Series 2023: Oliver Schulte

The AI Seminar is a weekly meeting at the University of Alberta where researchers interested in artificial intelligence (AI) can share their research. Presenters include both local speakers from the University of Alberta and visitors from other institutions. Topics can be related in any way to artificial intelligence, from foundational theoretical work to innovative applications of AI techniques to new fields and problems.

On November 10, Oliver Schulte — Professor in the School of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University — presented “Ranking and Representing Hockey Players with Deep Reinforcement Learning" at the AI Seminar.

Abstract:
This talk develops the idea that reinforcement learning can solve the problems of sports analytics. Schulte focuses on ranking player performance. He measures the value of a player’s actions by how much they increase their team’s chance of success (i.e., scoring the next goal). Schulte describes deep reinforcement learning techniques for building success probability models from sports data.  The resulting action values and player rankings are illustrated with data from the National Hockey League comprising over 3M events.

Watch the full presentation below:

Want to learn how you can kick-start your AI career? Find out more about Amii's Career Accelerator to find out more.