Because I’m a Fellow in Residence at Amii, I got early access to the list of sessions at Upper Bound 2025. I gave it a quick peek and am sharing my favorite picks with you. Imagine that I am covertly sliding you this list across a table at a clandestine location.  See you at Upper Bound!

Startup-related content

I don’t have a startup, but I’ve always thought there’s a fair amount of overlap between running a research lab and running a startup. These startup-related sessions look cool, whether you’re considering a startup, or just want to hear about what startup life is like.

• Turning a Scientist into a CEO. What are the crossover skills that make scientists good CEOs?

• Turning AI Research into a Viable Startup. Similar to the above session, but focusing more on the characteristics of research problems that make them transfer well to industrial applications.

• AI Startup Pitch Competition. I’ve always thought that startup pitches are an interesting challenge, and share a lot in common with research pitches, like one might start a grant with. It’s the challenge of communicating a problem quickly, and making it compelling.  It’s fun to see the different ways that people approach that challenge.

• How to get hired. It’s a tight job market right now, and while I’m not on the job market, I think this is going to be a really popular session amongst students.

Research

There are great research talks planned for UB this year.  Here are a few that caught my eye.

• Contrastive Learning. My research group has used contrastive learning for a few of our neuroimaging datasets and found it to be very useful.  I’m excited to hear Sandra Zilles talk about the theoretical aspects of this newer machine learning approach.

• Understanding Emergent Properties in Neural Networks. Emergent properties are fascinating, and also controversial.  I’m interested to hear the newest research on these sudden explosions in model capabilities.

• Training Large Language Models with the Adam Algorithm. Mark Schmidt is a great communicator who makes even really complex optimization problems approachable.  This is going to be a great talk, and I’m sure the audience will come away with a deeper understanding of ADAM and LLMs.

Applications

AI has the potential to change the world. Here are a few sessions talking about AI in the real world.

• A Day in the Life of Plants: New Insights through Molecular Analyses and Modern AI Tools. I’ve seen Glen Uhrig talk about this project in the past, where they use AI to measure a plant’s appearance and adjust light, water,r and nutrients to grow the healthiest plants possible. It’s fascinating stuff!

• City of Edmonton Data Science Demo. I’m always impressed by the amount of data the city collects, and much of it is open for people to use! It should be fun to see what they have planned for this demo. Maybe it will inspire you to try something new with their open datasets.

• Machine Learning for the Exploration and Scientific Understanding of Solar System Planets. Machine learning goes to Mars, what could be cooler?

Education

AI has fundamentally changed the face of education, and it’s been a big adjustment for students, teachers and professors.  Here are a few sessions talking about that change from a variety of vantage points.

• AI adoption and use by students and instructors in Canadian Post-secondary Institutions. This session will specifically focus on AI adoption by post secondary students, which is of great interest to us professors trying to create useful assessments in the age of AI.

• Empowering Minds Navigating the Future with AI Literacy. Another AI Education session, but this one aimed at using AI in the classroom to improve student outcomes.

• Post Plagiarism: A New Era of Ethics and Integrity. This session will explore collaborative content creation with AI, and the ethical questions raised by copyrighted materials in training data.

Amii's Upper Bound conference, held in May, stands as the premier international gathering for both business and technology executives seeking a comprehensive understanding of artificial intelligence commercialization.

Join an expected 6,000 enthusiastic attendees in an immersive conference experience designed to foster engagement with influential industry pioneers, facilitate the exploration of cutting-edge AI and machine learning advancements, and provide actionable insights that you can adopt to significantly enhance productivity and bolster competitive advantage within your organization.

Our dedicated Amii team meticulously curates and produces the entire conference, ensuring that all of the more than 200 sessions are impactful, relevant, and deliver exceptional value in terms of professional development and meaningful networking opportunities.

This carefully crafted event provides a unique platform to delve deep into the practical applications of AI, connect with peers and experts, and gain a competitive edge in the rapidly evolving technological landscape.