December @ Amii | Roche AI Centre of Excellence, AI Pathways Partnership & We're Hiring!

Hi there,

The entire team at Amii wishes you and yours a wonderful holiday season! Our team is looking forward to taking some time off to connect with friends and family, even if it looks a lot different this year.

As we start to reflect on the past year, I am continually impressed by how our team and our clients embraced challenges and found new ways to move their AI adoption journey forward. 

This is our last newsletter of the year, and I’m thrilled to share four exciting updates since we last connected: 

• Hoffmann-La Roche Limited (Roche Canada) launched the Roche AI Centre of Excellence, the first such collaborative centre to combine the expertise of all three national AI institutes under the CIFAR Pan-Canadian AI Strategy - Amii, Mila and the Vector Institute.
• The AI Pathways Partnership (AIPP), a consortium made up of NorQuest College, Athabasca University, Concordia University of Edmonton, and Bow Valley College, made possible through funding provided by Western Economic Diversification Canada, have joined together with industry partners to train learners and retain graduates for Alberta’s dynamic AI and ML industry. Amii is proud to support these post-secondary institutes as subject matter experts as they plan for learner pathways in AI.
• Two online Coursera Specializations presented by the University of Alberta and Amii have reached over 110,000 enrollments! Read about the MOOCs, including thoughts from myself and the University of Alberta Faculty of Science dean Matina Kalcounis-Rueppell.
• Amii is proud to share the efforts and achievements of our researchers in the 34th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS). NeurIPS is one of the highest-ranked ML & AI conferences in the world, with only 20.1% of papers submitted accepted; 20 of those papers were co-authored by Amii researchers. Read more about all of the Amii participation in NeurIPS. 

We’re also hiring! Scroll to the bottom to see our open positions. We’re planning on posting more roles in the coming weeks, stay tuned.

See you over video chat soon, 

Cam

December Highlights: Research, Industry and Training 

Industry & Community Updates:

• Amii ML Scientist Shazan Jabbar presented the ML Project Lifecycle last week at the Virtual AI Summit New York, one of the world’s foremost AI events for business.
• Our November Virtual AI Meetup featured Nirav Raiyani of NTWIST on emissions reduction in plant operation & Jasmine Wong of Copysmith on AI-driven copywriting -- if you missed it, catch it here!

Research Updates:

• The AI Seminar on November 13, featured Masaf Dawood & Sindhu Adini of SpringML and Chloe Tottem of Google Cloud; they shared how researchers can automate the data harmonization process by using a central platform. 
• Emilie Kaufmann delivered the AI Seminar on November 20 the complexity of learning good policies with and without rewards.

Training Updates:

• Congratulations to all of the graduates of our Fall 2020 AI Strategy and Management and ML Technician Certification programs! 
• ML Foundations 1 and 2 return in January. Join us for facilitated workshops, supplemented with additional self-directed online learning. 
  • ML Foundations 1: January 7, 2021
  • ML Foundations 2: January 14, 2021

AI Strategy & Management - Next Course Begins on January 20, 2021

Secure your future with the knowledge, tools and confidence to launch AI projects and manage technical teams.

Our eight-week online course combines synchronous (collaborative) and asynchronous (independent) lectures, readings and discussions, as well as practical assignments and a final capstone project. In the final project, you will work in a group to complete a Machine Learning Project Charter for a specific ML project, and pitch your project to a panel of ML and business experts.

You’ll graduate from the course with the:

• Skills to draft AI adoption strategy for your organization
• Ability to identify ML projects, assemble teams, and execute related business tactics
• Confidence to manage and interact with technical teams

Download the Program Guide and apply today!

Upcoming Event

December 17: Virtual AI Meetup

Gather with the brightest minds in the AI community from Edmonton and beyond at Amii’s Virtual AI Meetup! Learn about the latest tools and techniques in machine learning, and explore topics that researchers and industry professionals are thinking about or working on. December features Rajiur Rahman & Craig McKeown from the City of Edmonton and Payam Mousavi from MDA.

RSVP today!

See a full list of Amii and partner events on our Events page.

Career Opportunities

• Amii is seeking a Machine Learning Scientist to direct the research and development efforts of Amii Industry Partners and clients; view the job posting.

Recommended Readings 

• The 7 Most Promising Government Led AI Solutions: Canadian AI leadership was featured in a recent Forbes article
• Playing the long game with AI: CIFAR has profiled Kevin Leyton-Brown (Canada CIFAR Chair in AI at Amii), exploring how he is using AI technologies to solve important challenges to humanity.
• Applying Artificial Intelligence Intelligently: Amii Managing Director of Applied Science Anna Koop recently spoke to Digital Think Tank by ICTC about creating valuable and ethical applications from core research.

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