February News: AI Week Talent Bursaries & Microsoft AI Skills Gap Whitepaper

Hi there,

With the bustle of January behind us and the promise of longer days ahead, now is the perfect time to think deeply about how your business can take your operations to new levels this year. Amii’s teams are ready to support your growth goals and empower you with the knowledge and skills you need to accelerate your digital transformation.

One of the ways we work to grow AI capabilities in industry is to ensure businesses have access to the world’s most talented technical individuals and to help businesses gain the key skills they need to launch and manage AI projects. This month, we’re excited to share with you just a couple of the ways we’re supporting the development of top-quality talent:

• Amii is thrilled to announce our first $100,000 in Talent Bursaries to empower technical professionals in AI to travel to Edmonton for AI Week, May 24 - 27, 2022. Learn more and apply today!
• We’ve just published The AI Skills Gap, in collaboration with Microsoft Canada. The white paper dives deep into areas where businesses are experiencing skills gaps and provides insights from AI leaders on how to bridge those gaps. Download your copy now.

We look forward to seeing you in Edmonton at AI Week presented by Amii this May to celebrate 20 years of AI excellence in Alberta. In the meantime, when you’re ready to start your AI adoption journey, I invite you to reach out!

See you over video chat soon,

February Highlights: Research, Industry, Community and Training

Industry & Community Updates:

• Our CEO Cam Linke was profiled in a recent Edmonton Journal article, speaking on the rapidly growing field of AI and how the technology can benefit regions and companies.
• In an article in The Logic, Murad Hemmadi looks into the impact of Canada’s national AI strategy and the future of AI research in Canada.
• Our colleagues at CDL Rockies are celebrating over $1.3 billion in equity value generated by participating ventures! We are proud to have lent our expertise to provide AI insights to the companies.
• Our friends at Attabotics were named a winner of the 2022 BIG Innovation Awards for their patented ant colony-inspired storage structure and robotic shuttles.
• Read up on the people and collaborations of CIFAR's global research community in the latest edition of REACH, their annual magazine.
• Registration is now open for StrikeUP Canada, a free virtual conference dedicated to supporting women entrepreneurs and providing a forum for growth, mentorship and financing.

Research Updates:

• Machine translation, multiagent reinforcement learning: learn what Amii researchers are presenting at the 36th annual AAAI Conference, held online from February 22 - March 1, 2022.
• We’re pleased to have been part of the development of My Health Data Path, an interactive tool that aims to help make the value of health data easier to understand. The tool was developed through the collaborative efforts of AI with Roche (AIR) and the Canadian health and data ecosystems.
• Watch Amii Fellow Ross Mitchell’s presentation on some of the opportunities, and challenges, that come with implementing AI in medicine.
• In his AI Seminar, Geoffrey Shmigelsky (co-founder of OneCupAI) talks about the unique challenges and opportunities working on AI in the ranching industry.
• In Richard S. Sutton's (Fellow, Canada CIFAR AI Chair & Chief Scientific Advisor at Amii) AI Seminar, he presents on sensorimotor experience – the sensations and actions of an agent’s ordinary interaction with the world.
• Learn the role Amii researchers have in the development of poker-playing AI and what it means for the future of machine learning in our Recommended Reading post: How AI changed the game of poker.

Training Updates:

• Are you ready to take the first step in your AI & ML learning journey? ML Foundations 1 will give you a crash course on the basics, building foundational knowledge using real-world examples. Register for the March 3 class.
• Continue to build foundational knowledge about AI & ML at ML Foundations 2! This live online class takes a closer look at technical concepts introduced in ML Foundations 1. Learn more and register now for the March 10 class.

Alberta AI Ecosystems Project: Case Studies

The Ecosystems Project is an Alberta Artificial Intelligence Ecosystem Initiative supported by Amii and funded in part by Prairies Canada. The initiative brought together nine organizations from non-profit, business and academia to establish viable uses for artificial intelligence and machine learning in health and data analytics.

Get to know program participants -- read (and watch!) this month’s case studies:

• Edmonton-based health company Nanospeed Diagnostics is using AI to develop faster, cheaper diagnostic tests using just a single drop of blood.
• Edmonton-based health and fitness company Karmalife is using AI to develop personalized nutrition plans from DNA data.
• Calgary’s CardiAI uses AI to look for anomalies in heart data. By picking up on the warning signs of potential heart diseases, machine learning can help cardiologists diagnose patients earlier.
• Edmonton’s NorQuest College has developed its ML Analyst program, the first two-year machine learning diploma in Canada.

Events

February 18: AI Seminar – Stream ML
AI Seminar is a weekly meeting where researchers interested in AI can share their current research. The seminars discuss a wide range of topics related in any way to Artificial Intelligence, from foundational theoretical work to innovative applications of AI techniques to new fields and problems of interest. This week features Edmonton-based machine learning company Stream.ML.

RSVP

February 22: Amii's Virtual AI Meetup

Amii's Mara Cairo hosts this month’s AI Meetup, which is all about the AI Ecosystems Project, an Alberta Artificial Intelligence Ecosystem Initiative supported by Amii and funded in part by Prairies Canada. The event will feature one of the Ecosystem Project participants: Mehadi Sayed, President & CEO at Clinisys – an Edmonton-based software and analytics company offering a variety of secure, scalable and user-friendly e-Healthcare solutions and data services to the healthcare industry.

Register now

February 23: Four Directions to Sail Your Ship - Internships, Scholarships, Entrepreneurship, and Mentorship

How do you tell a compelling story about your experiences and qualifications? Whether you are writing grants, scholarships or preparing for job/internship interviews, it is important to communicate your value and be captivating! Join Amii alum Kory Mathewson in this session designed to equip you with key principles for writing world-class applications.

Sign up now

Register now

March 4-6: Artificial Intelligence in Health Care Symposium (AIMSS)
AIMSS works to inform and educate students on the applications of AI and machine learning in the medical field. From AI-controlled robotic surgery and intelligent prosthetics to health outcome prediction and precision medicine, this interdisciplinary effort fosters a collaborative community between computing sciences, engineering and medicine. The 3rd annual AIMSS Symposium features talks, workshops and social events.

Register now

Career Opportunities

• Work with Amii Fellow Jacob Jaremko! NIDUS Lab is recruiting for multiple positions under the Department of Radiology & Diagnostic Imaging at the University of Alberta.
• AI4Good Lab, a summer training program for women and gender minorities across Canada, is looking to hire graduate students for TA positions.

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