Yoshua Bengio is recognized as one of the world’s leading experts in artificial intelligence and a pioneer in deep learning. Following his studies in Montreal, culminating in a Ph.D. in computer science from McGill University in 1991, Professor Bengio did postdoctoral studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston.

Since 1993, Yoshua Bengio has been a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Operational Research at the Université de Montréal. In addition to holding the Canada Research Chair in Statistical Learning Algorithms, he is also the founder and scientific director of Mila, the Quebec Institute of Artificial Intelligence, the world’s largest university-based research group in deep learning. He is also the Scientific Director of IVADO.

His contribution to research is undeniable. In 2018, Yoshua Bengio is the computer scientist who collected the largest number of new citations in the world, thanks to his three reference works and some 500 publications.

His ultimate goal is to understand the principles that lead to intelligence through learning and his research has earned him multiple awards. In 2017, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, in addition to receiving the Prix Marie-Victorin and being named Scientist of the Year by Radio-Canada. In 2018, he was also awarded the 50th Anniversary Medal by Quebec’s Ministère des Relations internationales et de la Francophonie. These honours reflect the profound influence of his work on the evolution of our society.

Concerned about the social impacts of this new technology, he actively contributed to the development of the Montreal Declaration for Responsible Development of Artificial Intelligence.

Gary Marcus, scientist, bestselling author, and entrepreneur, was CEO and Founder of the machine-learning startup Geometric Intelligence, recently acquired by Uber, and is known for his provocative and bold claims in artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and cognitive science. Trained by Steven Pinker, he received his PhD at MIT at age 23. His professional research, published in leading journals such as Science, Nature, Cognition, and Artificial Intelligence, has focused on the foundations of cognition in humans, animals and machines, spanning fields from developmental psychology to neuroscience to genetics to artificial intelligence. A special interest has been on the challenge of endowing machines with common sense.

He is also well-known for his writing for the general public, including frequent essays and op-eds for The New Yorker and The New York Times. His books include The Algebraic Mind, The Birth of the Mind, Kluge: The Haphazard Evolution of the Human Mind, The New York Times Bestseller, Guitar Zero and The Future of the Brain: Essays By The World’s Leading Neuroscientists.

In a 2012 essay for The New Yorker, he was perhaps the first person to publicly criticize deep learning, drawing on arguments he developed in his 2001 technical book The Algebraic Mind. More recently, in a 2018 arXiv article, Deep Learning: A Critical Appraisal, he asked whether deep learning might be “approaching a wall.” The challenges he laid out there were covered everywhere from The New York Times to Wired to The Financial Times and Wall Street Journal.

In another provocative 2012 essay, Moral Machines, Marcus was the first to adapt “trolley problems” to driverless cars, anticipating much recent research on the ethics of AI. His next book, REBOOT: Getting to AI We Can Trust, to be published by Pantheon in Fall 2019, co-authored with Ernie Davis, calls for a fundamental rethinking of current approaches to artificial intelligence.

Daphne Koller brings to insitro her many years of experience in the areas of machine learning, statistical modeling, computational biology, and computational medicine. She was the Rajeev Motwani Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, where she was hired as the first machine learning professor in 1995 and served on the faculty for 18 years. Her work in machine learning spans a broad range of topics, including probabilistic graphical models, structured prediction, active learning, time series modeling, reinforcement learning, and many more. She was also one of the pioneers in applying machine learning to biomedical data sets and has worked on topics such as reconstruction of regulatory networks, phenotypic effects of genetic variation, and interpretation of microscopy images in cancer. She is the author of over 200 refereed publications appearing in diverse venues such as NIPS, ICML, Science, Cell, and Nature Genetics, and has an h-index of over 120. She is also the author of the leading textbook on Probabilistic Graphical Models.

Daphne co-founded Coursera in 2012, where she served as the company’s Co-CEO until 2014, and then as President until 2016. Coursera is the world’s largest online education platform with over 30 million learners worldwide, and over 150 university partners in six continents. She is currently the Co-Chair of the Coursera Board. Most recently, Daphne served as the Chief Computing Officer at Calico Labs, an Alphabet (Google) company that is using advanced technology to understand aging and design interventions that help people lead longer, healthier lives.

Daphne was recognized as one of TIME Magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2012 and Newsweek’s 10 most important people in 2010. She has been honored with multiple awards and fellowships during her career including the Sloan Foundation Faculty Fellowship in 1996, the ONR Young Investigator Award in 1998, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 1999, the IJCAI Computers and Thought Award in 2001, the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2004, and the ACM Prize in Computing in 2008. Daphne was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in 2011 and elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2014 and of the International Society of Computational Biology in 2017.

Carolina can best be described as an established academic with an entrepreneurial mindset, who also happens to have 25+ years of experience in research, development and broad programming.

After obtaining her PhD in fundamental physics from the Universidad de los Andes, she went on to become an award-winning university professor who worked closely with the government of Venezuela to predict everything from avalanches to life-threatening diseases. After teaching computational physics and astrophysics for nearly a decade, she decided to move to Canada, which ultimately led to her rise as Stradigi AI’s Chief Scientific Officer and Co-Founder in 2017. Since then, she oversees all projects from both a scientific and business perspective, leads her team of 30+ research scientists, works closely with top executives to build relationships with clients and proudly offers guidance and mentoring to students.

Carolina is a member and advocate of the Montreal Artificial Intelligence Ethics group. She is passionate about ensuring that the benefits of AI are democratically available, the prevention of the weaponization and/or malicious use of AI, issues relating to privacy and the quantification and correction of bias in datasets. More recently, her focus has been on interpretability. Her belief in simplifying the way humans can understand the processes in which an algorithm arrives to its predictions is crucial for building trust, gaining executive buy-in and the early adoption of this technology in various industries. Carolina is also actively involved with the Vector Institute which has Dr. Geoffrey Hinton as its Chief Scientific Advisor, a man described as the “Godfather of Deep Learning”. As such, she serves on a panel for the 1000 AIMs initiative reviewing Ontario University programs seeking Vector Institute recognition.

Having conducted extensive AI research since 2002, she is a highly sought-after public speaker and has worked alongside renowned advisors and business pioneers in the industry enabling her to continuously create, innovate and develop new solutions to help organizations with their complex business problems.

Hassan Sawaf has worked in the automatic speech recognition, computer vision, natural language understanding, and machine translation fields for 20+ years. In 1999, he cofounded AIXPLAIN AG, a company offering speech recognition and machine translation services to enterprises, before “cloud” was yet a mainstream concept. His startup was acquired by AppTek in 2004, where he served as COO and Chief Scientist till SAIC acquired AppTek’s assets in 2010. Hassan was then Chief Scientist and Technical Fellow in SAIC with focus on Human Language Technology and Artificial Intelligence. In 2013 he joined eBay as senior director and head of AI, growing the Artificial Intelligence capability that is now enabling a large parts of the business. Since September of 2016 he joined Amazon to lead the Applied Science for Amazon AI, building up the science foundations for various AWS AI services.

Kathryn Hume
oversees the application of research for RBC’s artificial intelligence institute, helps guide company strategy, and assists in supporting Borealis AI’s brand profile among its audience.

She was previously VP of product and strategy at AI-powered software platform integrate.ai, which has raised $50 million to date, including a $39 million Series A round in September 2018. She was also previously the director of sales and marketing at machine-intelligence research company, Cloudera Fast Forward Labs. Hume frequently speaks and writes about AI and teaches courses on enterprise adoption of AI, law and ethics at Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and the University of Calgary.

Naveen Singla leads the Data Science Center of Excellence for Bayer. His team is passionate about driving better decisions using data and analytics. The Center works to develop strategies and solutions for solving real-world issues, such as food security, by delving into how machines learn structure from data.

Singla has more than a decade of experience finding meaning in data for applications in the areas of biometrics, high-frequency stock trading and agriculture. During his tenure at Bayer, he has served as the director of analytics, where he helped grow the value realized from data science and establish a data-driven mindset by developing strategies, influencing leaders, and implementing solutions for improving food security. Prior to that, Singla led Predictive Analytics and was a strategic scientist working to improve decision-making processes in the R&D pipeline. He also established a learning program and culture for Bayer’s data science community of 500 employees.

Singla holds a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Delhi, India, and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis.

Ruslan Salakhutdinov received his PhD in machine learning (computer science) from the University of Toronto in 2009. After spending two post-doctoral years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Artificial Intelligence Lab, he joined the University of Toronto as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Department of Statistics. In February of 2016, he joined the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University as an Associate Professor.

Ruslan’s primary interests lie in deep learning, machine learning, and large-scale optimization. His main research goal is to understand the computational and statistical principles required for discovering structure in large amounts of data. He is an action editor of the Journal of Machine Learning Research and served on the senior programme committee of several learning conferences including NIPS and ICML. He is an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow, Microsoft Research Faculty Fellow, Canada Research Chair in Statistical Machine Learning, a recipient of the Early Researcher Award, Connaught New Researcher Award, Google Faculty Award, Nvidia’s Pioneers of AI award, and is a Senior Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.

Marc G Bellemare is a research scientist at Google Brain in Montreal, Canada; CIFAR Learning in Machines & Brain Fellow; adjunct professor at McGill University; and was recently awarded a Canada CIFAR AI chair, held at the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms (Mila). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Alberta where he studied the concept of domain-independent agents and developed the highly-successful Arcade Learning Environment, the platform for AI research on Atari 2600 games. From 2013 to 2017 he was a research scientist at DeepMind where he made major contributions to the field of deep reinforcement learning. He is known for his work on reinforcement learning, including approximate exploration, representation learning, and the distributional method.

Jacomo Corbo is Chief Scientist and Co-Founder of QuantumBlack, a McKinsey Company. He focuses on the problem of applying AI and other technology to improving the quality and scalability of QuantumBlack’s client delivery. He is passionate about helping organizations adopt AI at scale to radically improve their performance and is responsible for architecting and overseeing work at some of QuantumBlack’s most important clients to ensure they do just that.

Jacomo’s specific focus is on methodological innovations on the most complex challenges that QuantumBlack works on across industries, from manufacturing quality on sparse machine data to price and demand forecasts to pharmacovigilance problems and working capital problems.

Since 2011, Jacomo has served as a Senior Fellow at the Mack Institute for Innovation Management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

For five years previously, he served as the Canada Research Chair in Information and Performance Management (2011 – 2015).  Prior to this, he was a visiting scholar and research fellow in the Operations and Information Management Department at the Wharton School (2008 – 2010). Between 2006 and 2008, Jacomo was the Race Strategist for the Renault F1 Team Ltd. and was subsequently the Chief Race Strategist for the Lotus Renault F1 Team.

Jacomo holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Science at Harvard University, an S.M. in Applied Mathematics from the Harvard Graduate School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and a B.Eng. in Electrical Engineering from McGill University.

Jose established and leads the Analytics Business Unit at Banorte –the second largest financial group in Mexico. His group has been recognized as a success story within the data and analytics industry. The value created with analytics on 2018, the third year of operations of his group, exceeded 700 million USD–during his tenure the value created has exceeded 1.7 billion dollars. This case was published at Harvard Business Review as an example of a company which made its analytics investments pay-off (2018). Also, his team obtained the Lafferty Global Award on Credit Card Excellence for the impact of analytics on customer equity (2016). Jose was named among the top analytics and data professionals in North America by Corinium in its first and second edition. He has been published in several industry and refereed journals, he is a frequent speaker at analytics forums and he is a member of Queen’s University Advisory Board for the Masters in Management Analytics.

Prior to Banorte, Jose was a top-ranking official at Mexico’s Central Bank and participated for more than a decade at the Monetary Policy Committee holding the staff’s view on inflation –a key variable for policy decision. Also, he was an advisor to the International Monetary Fund on statistics and led missions to Ecuador and Chile. At the academia he taught economics at Rice University, ITAM and El Colegio de Mexico. He holds a PhD in economics from Rice University and graduated from ITAM (Cum Laude and received national prizes from the Chamber of Commerce and Tlacalel Prize).

Hallie Benjamin is a Senior Strategist with Google AI, where she had led inclusive product and user testing for fairness. She was also an Assembly Fellow with Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center and the MIT Media Lab. Her applied research with Assembly focused on empowering startups to responsibly and ethically build, procure, and use advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence.

She has spent the last decade working at the intersection of social justice and business, and is currently pushing for the design and development of inclusive technology that works for everyone. Before joining Google, she spent several years in management consulting where she led cross-functional teams using data visualization to envision the future of business.

Originally from Toronto, Canada, Hallie has an MA in Economics and Global Affairs from the Munk School at the University of Toronto, and a BA in Economics and Political Science from McGill University.

Mason Victors earned his MS in Mathematics from BYU, where he focused on developing new approaches to identifying individuals at-risk for chronic kidney disease. After an internship with the NSA, being unable to decide between becoming a spook or pursuing a PhD he chose the obvious route: join a start-up instead. As part of a small team of data scientists at Red Brain Labs and later Savvysherpa, he developed algorithms to mine unstructured medical records, analyze human behavior through cell phone logs, and simulate complex call centers. Apart from work, he loves spending time with his wife and two daughters.

Constanza Gomez Mont is interested in achieving an inclusive Fourth Industrial Revolution in emerging countries. This led her to found and direct C Minds (www.cminds.co), an impact technology agency based in San Francisco and Mexico City. From C Minds, Constanza works with governments and institutions in the development of public policy and programs on issues of digital transformation, seeking to enhance the benefits of new technologies in emerging countries. She also leads initiatives to explore the power of technology to accelerate financial innovation, sustainable mobility, safety, health and education, among other issues. Other initiatives that C Minds coordinates, such as the AI for Good Lab, seek to deepen the ethical debate on the social and labor consequences of the technological transformation we are experiencing, particularly in Mexico. C Minds is also collaborating with the Jalisco Government and Tec de Monterrey University to develop a first AI center in Guadalajara as part of a regional network to be built.

Constanza has been a consultant for the United Nations, the World Bank and national and local governments. Her work has been recognized in international media and she was named Global Shaper by the World Economic Forum, Gifted Citizen by City of Ideas, British Government’s International Leader by the Government of the United Kingdom, winner of the SU Global Impact Challenge in Mexico and a Singularity University GSP graduate, among other recognitions.

Lionel Pimpin: As Senior Vice President – Digital Channels and P&C Strategies, Lionel Pimpin is in charge of the management, performance and transformation of NBC digital channels. This encompasses defining strategic directions, developing and successfully implementing digital and emerging payments strategies and managing multi-year investment portfolio of digital and self-service channels.

From January 2014 to June 2016, Mr. Pimpin held the position of Vice President – Client Experience, Strategy and Performance, with a mandate to structure, oversee and integrate all strategic and financial planning activities, portfolio management of business initiatives, overall performance in the Marketing, Customer Experience Management and Marketing research sectors.

Recognized for his ability to work in changing environments and specialized in the management of major transformation programs, Mr. Pimpin has a solid background in the service sector through the various roles he has held for 15 years as a managing director of the international
consulting firm, Accenture.

Mr. Pimpin holds a Master’s degree in Business from EDHEC Business School in France and an MSc in Marketing Management from the University of Aston in the United Kingdom.

Mina Hanna is the Chair of the IEEE-USA Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems Policy Committee, the current Co-Chair of the Policy Committee of the IEEE Standards Association’s Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems and the current Vice Chair of the IEEE-USA Research and Development Policy Committee. He serves as Editor of the Science Policy Column and member of the editorial board of IEEE Computer magazine. He is also a member of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, the IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology and IEEE TechEthics and is a Global Shaper of the World Economic Forum.

Mina is also a senior software consultant at Synopsys, Inc. Prior to joining Synopsys, he worked for 6 years at Intel Corporation in the Platform Engineering Group on the Intel Atom Processors and SOCs, having contributed to 10+ design tapeouts. Mina received his MSc in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, and his BSc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas, Austin. His research interest lies in evaluating the impact of artificial intelligence, autonomous & intelligent systems and disruptive technologies on public safety, national security, responsible governance and social inclusion, and in exploring the political economy and policies surrounding the development of AI.

Alejandro is currently leading the research and development at the Institute for Ethical AI & Machine Learning as their Chief Scientist. With over 10 years of software development experience Alejandro has held technical leadership positions across hyper-growth scale-ups and tech giants including Eigen Technologies, Bloomberg LP and Hack Partners. Alejandro has a strong track record building departments of machine-learning engineers from scratch, and leading the delivery of large-scale machine learning system across the financial, insurance, legal, transport, manufacturing and construction sectors (in Europe, US and Latin America). Alejandro has given multiple talks at international scientific, technical and business conferences, and has chaired panels & events with government ministers, senior executives and domain experts.

Joleen Liang is a Partner at Squirrel AI Learning, the leading AI+ education innovator at the forefront of K12 AI revolution. Within 4 years, Squirrel AI Learning has established more than 1,800 learning centers in China and hosted the first series of human-vs-AI competitions in the Asia-Pacific region and proved the AI’s success. Squirrel AI Learning is included in the TOP 20 Chinese artificial intelligence Unicorn companies in 2018.

After joining Squirrel AI Learning, Joleen created the “Squirrel AI” brand and successfully put the brand under the spotlight globally. Joleen is also a founding member of Artificial Intelligence + Adaptive Education (AIAED) Conference, an international conference focusing on important trends emerging from AI technology that applied to next-generation education and how these advances can impact adaptive human learning at scale and in various contexts.

Joleen is also a successful serial entrepreneur who built a number of brands and raised over 100 million RMB. She was a main guest for the famous TV programe “Only you” and “Virtual Business School” of CCTV2. She was invited to speak at EdTech and AI conferences, such as ACM Singapore UMAP, IJCAI, KDD, Tsinghua University in Beijing, Tech Crunch and a number of other conferences. Joleen is an Oxford graduate in Business Management.

Mauricio Marcos Mera is the Chief Information Officer of the Ministry of Social Development in Chile and lead the Digital Transformation and Big Data Unit in the Ministry. Previously, he led an Artificial Intelligence Unit for a LATAM consulting firm, developing projects in both the public and private sectors, such as The Ministry of Education, the Tax Office, to name but a few. He holds a Computer Engineer degree and also has a MBA with a specialization in Digital Transformation and Innovation.

Ravin Jesuthasan is a recognized global thought leader and author on the future of work and human capital. He has led numerous research efforts on the global workforce, the emerging digital economy, the rise of artificial intelligence and the transformation of work. Ravin has lead numerous research projects for the World Economic Forum including its ground breaking study; Shaping the Future Implications of Digital Media for Society and the recently launched Creating a Shared Vision for Talent in the 4th Industrial Revolution. He is a regular participant and presenter at the World Economic Forum’s annual meetings in Davos and Dalian/Tianjin and is a member of the forum’s Steering Committee on Work and Employment.

Ravin has been a featured speaker on the aforementioned topics at conferences in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Latin America. He has also been featured and quoted extensively by leading business media including CNN, BBC, The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, CNBC, Fortune, FT, The Nikkei (Japan), Les Echoes (France), Valor Economico (Brazil), Business Times (Malaysia), Globe and Mail (Canada), South China Morning Post, Dubai One TV and The Australian among others.

He has been recognized as one of the top 25 most influential consultants in the world by Consulting Magazine. He is the author of Transformative HR and Lead The Work: Navigating a World Beyond Employment. He is also the lead author of the upcoming book Reinventing Jobs, which will be published by Harvard Business Review Press. Ravin has authored over 50 articles including 7 for HBR and his article in the HR People and Strategy Journal entitled Performance Management as a Business Discipline received the 2014 Walker Award for the most original and valuable contribution to the HR profession.

Will Thompson is Group Vice President and Managing Director of Forbes Insights, the research and technology analyst practice of Forbes Media, and the Publisher of Forbes AI, a new magazine dedicated to the business and technology of artificial intelligence and machine learning. An expert in the ways technology is transforming business strategy, Mr. Thompson came to Forbes from the Economist Intelligence Unit where he helped advise Global 2000 corporations and venture-backed start-ups on using research to position themselves as thought leaders. Prior to joining the Economist, he served as CEO of a boutique hedge fund communications consulting firm and launched two niche publications.  A classically trained operatic singer, Will has a degree in music and a masters of business administration, both from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida.

Joshua Pantony was a Co-Founder and CTO at Maluuba, a machine learning company specializing in natural language processing which powered 50 million devices and was later sold to Microsoft. He was also a Principal Machine Learning Engineer at Bloomberg for 4 years spearheading some of their most important initiatives. Today he is the CEO and founder of Boosted.ai a platform for investment managers to add customized, low-cost, high alpha artificial intelligence to their investment decision making process.

Javier Barreiro is the Chief Technology Officer and leads the design and implementation of the Artificial Intelligence Strategy for Digital Government at AGESIC, the Presidential Agency aimed at promoting the development of e-Government and Information Society in Uruguay. Previously, he led the conceptualization and implementation of the Uruguayan Public Software initiative and was in charge of the evolution of the State Interoperability Platform. He holds a Computer Engineer degree awarded by the University of the Republic in Uruguay, with specialization studies in Technology Management and Innovation.

Ashley Casovan was curious about how new technology has an impact on the delivery of public services and so has worked in progressively challenging positions at all levels of government. Since 2010, she has been actively involved in Canada’s Open Data and Open Government Community both as a community champion and implementer. Her new role as Director of Data Architecture and Innovation at Treasury Board Secretariat, has led her to expand her knowledge and engage others to discover the world of Open. Her passionate and innovative character drives her to help lure in and shine a new light on the world of Digital Government. With ongoing projects relating to GC data strategy, AI policy instruments, AI procurement tools, and Leading Open First initiative, she hopes to bring that same passion to those around the GC.

Dr Hao Liu is currently working as a research scientist at Business Intelligence Lab, Baidu Research. He is the core member of the intelligent transportation
product of Baidu Maps. His research interests are in the areas of large-scale data mining and big data processing. Hao received his BSc degree from the South China University of Technology (SCUT) in 2012 and his PhD degree from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in 2017, respectively.

Dr Freddy Lecue is the Chief Artificial Intelligence (AI) Scientist at Thales’ cortAIx (Centre of Research and Technology in Artificial Intelligence expertise) site in Montreal, Canada. He is also a research associate in the Web-Instrumented Man-Machine Interactions, Communities and Semantics (WIMMICS) team, at the INRIA institute in Sophia Antipolis, France.

His research team is working at the frontier of learning and reasoning systems, with a strong interest in Explainable AI, referring to AI systems, models and results which can be explained to human and business experts.

Prior to joining the new research and technology lab of Thales dedicated to AI, he was AI R&D Lead at Accenture Labs in Ireland from 2016 to 2018. Prior to joining Accenture, he was a research scientist and lead investigator in large-scale reasoning systems at IBM Research from 2011 to 2016, a research fellow at the University of Manchester from 2008 to 2011 and a research engineer at Orange Labs from 2005 to 2008.

Dragos Margineantu is the AI Chief Technologist and a Technical Fellow of Boeing Research & Technology. His research interests include robust machine learning, anomaly detection, reasoning and planning for decision systems, human-in-the-loop learning, validation and testing of decision systems, cost-sensitive, active, and ensemble learning.

Dragos was one of the research pioneers in ensemble learning and cost-sensitive learning. At Boeing, he designed and developed machine learning and AI based solutions for airplane maintenance, autonomous systems, surveillance, and design.

Dragos is the Boeing AI lead for the DARPA “Assured Autonomy” program, focusing on robust machine learning techniques for autonomous systems. He also served as PI of DARPA’s “Learning Applied to Ground Robots” and “Bootstrapped Learning” programs.

Dragos serves as the Editor of the Springer book series on “Applied Machine Learning” and as the Action Editor for Special Issues for the Machine Learning Journal (MLj). He serves on the editorial board of both major machine learning journals (MLj and JMLR) and served as senior program committee member of all major machine learning and AI research conferences. He was the chair of the KDD 2015 Industry and Government Track.

Dragos received a Ph.D. in machine learning in 2001 from Oregon State University where he was advised by Tom Dietterich.

Kyle Tate is a senior data science lead at Shopify. He leads the teams responsible for building the data products that power Shopify Capital, Fraud Protect for Shopify Payments and Shopify’s internal risk management. Kyle is interested in taking the ideas and techniques from the pages of machine learning textbooks and papers and bringing them to life in the real world.

Andy Peart is CMSO of Artificial Solutions, an international business that “Makes Technology Think,” believing that people should be able to interact with technology intelligently, using their own voice, in their own terminology and across whatever channel they choose.  Using a form of AI referred to as ‘Conversational AI’, Artificial Solutions allows people to talk to applications, websites and devices in a human like, intelligent and conversational way. Its Teneo platform enables non-specialists to rapidly build and deploy enterprise strength, conversational applications and deliver customer insight and personalization using conversational data. Andy has over 25 years marketing experience within the IT and natural language industry, successfully helping build innovative, technology driven organizations.

Daniel Monteiro is an Electronic Engineer from UFRJ and has an MSc. in Digital Signal Processing from Coppe / UFRJ, specializing in the area of video compression as a research topic. He has been working in the Research and Development / Innovation area of TV Globo’s technology since 2000, where he currently serves as the sector manager. In 2002 he worked in the research center of Japanese TV NHK conducting research with the H.264 compression standard, at the standardization stage.

Daniel is passionate about emerging technologies, applied innovation and innovation management, with many years of experience in software development and leadership. Today, he leads an innovation laboratory with a multidisciplinary team that mixes the creativity of product design with the research on new technologies, creating innovative products that solve business problems through digital transformation and disruptive innovation.

Damien Tardieu is a machine-learning engineering manager at Spotify. He is working on recommender systems and on ways to improve the Spotify user experience with machine learning. He joined Spotify with the acquisition of Niland, the company he created with Christophe Charbuillet and Johan Pages. Niland was developing and selling a music search and recommendation API based on the analysis of the audio content of music. Before creating the company, Damien was a researcher at IRCAM, a research lab based in Paris, working on machine learning applied to music content analysis. He has a PhD in Music Technology from IRCAM/UPMC in Paris.

Elliot Turner is a serial entrepreneur and early stage investor who has been building companies for the past 20+ years.  Currently CEO of Hologram Communications, Elliot previously founded two other technology companies (both acquired) — one in the artificial intelligence space (AlchemyAPI, acquired by IBM Watson Group, 2015) and the other in the information security space (MimeStar, acquired by ODS Networks, 2000).

As founder and CEO of AlchemyAPI, Elliot created one of the world’s most popular cognitive AI platforms, with over 60,000 developers in 36+ countries and 6 continents using the service, as well as over 200 universities worldwide. AlchemyAPI processed billions of API calls every month, providing natural language understanding, computer vision, and question answering capability to a wide variety of companies across more than one dozen industry verticals. After being acquired by IBM, Elliot ran IBM’s Watson Discovery efforts and was responsible for overseeing product management of the full Watson API portfolio of vision/speech/NLP/translation/conversation products. He also worked with the M&A team to evaluate potential acquisitions and served on IBM’s internal EIR (entrepreneur-in-residence) board.

Jonathan Ward is an innovator, scientist and developer in the fields of complex systems, machine learning and blockchain. He is currently the Head of Research at Fetch.AI where he leads a group of Machine Learning Researchers, Economists, Engineers, Cryptographers and Mathematicians in designing the infrastructure and applications for Fetch’s digital marketplace. These applications include deployment of multi-agent systems in the transportation and energy markets.

Before joining Fetch, Jonathan completed a PhD in Machine Learning at University College London, where he worked on the protein folding problem, which uses techniques from statistical physics, machine learning and sequence evolution to understand how long polymers fold into a well-defined three-dimensional structure. These technologies were successful at international competitions. This was followed by research positions in Academia and industry where he was involved in applying machine learning algorithms to time-series and machine vision problems.

Geoff Benton joined 23andMe in 2010 and leads a team focused on developing the next generation of data-driven health products for 23andMe customers. This team works to keep 23andMe at the forefront of science and technology, driving the development of interventional studies and predictive models for human health that utilize genetics, lifestyle, and environment. Previously, he was a venture capital intern at Burrill and Company. Geoff earned his PhD in Cell Biology from the University of California, San Francisco.

Amir Banifatemi began his career at the European Space Agency, prior to joining XPRIZE, and then held executive positions at Airbus, AP-HP and the European Commission division for information society and media. He managed two venture capital funds and contributed to the formation of more than 10 startups with emphasis on Predictive Technologies, IoT, and Healthcare.

Mr. Banifatemi is a guest lecturer and an adjunct MBA professor at UC Berkeley, Chapman University, Claremont McKenna College, UC Irvine, and HEC Paris.

He holds a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Technology of Compiègne, a Doctorate in System Design and Cognitive Sciences from the University Paris Descartes, as well as an MBA from HEC Paris.

Chris Kakkanatt leads the Data Science Team within Customer Analytics at Pfizer.  At Pfizer, he has led a diverse set of global projects ranging from Real World Evidence to Personalized Marketing.  His focus currently is democratizing data science at scale through reproducible pipelines and analytical products. Prior to joining Pfizer in 2010, he spent 8 years at IBM where he led the design and development of large-scale analytical solutions for life science and retail clients. Chris holds a BA in Computer Science from Cornell University and an MBA from Columbia Business School. His interests lie in augmenting human decision making with machine intelligence to improve health outcomes.

Valentine Goddard is a recognized expert on the ethical and social implications of artificial intelligence (AI) and a lawyer, artist and social impact strategist. She is a member of the United Nation’s Expert Group on the Role of Public Institutions on the Impact of New Technology.  She founded the AI on a Social Mission Conference, an event designed to facilitate a cross sectoral and multidisciplinary dialogue on the ethical and social implications of AI as well as steer its use towards the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals. The recommendations issued at the AI on a Social Mission Conference are shared globally.

She is also the founder of Artificial Intelligence Impact Alliance (AIIA), a non-profit aimed at empowering civil society organizations with AI as well as driving policy towards an inclusive and equitable implementation of AI. AIIA is a member of 3 international organizations on the Governance of AI including a founding member of the International Observatory on the Ethical and Social Impact of AI.

As a lawyer and certified mediator, she has practiced refugee, labour, social and administrative law in addition to lobbying for a better access to justice.  She has taught comparative law in Japan as well as initiated and funded cultural mediation projects aimed at human rights education. In short, human dignity is at the heart of her multidisciplinary approach to nurturing the development of AI for Social Good.

Mehrsan Javan is the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Sportlogiq, the intelligent sports analytics platform. He holds a PhD in computer vision and machine learning with several years of experience in building intelligent systems for different applications, including security and surveillance.

He is an adjunct faculty member at McGill University’s ECE department, has published numerous research articles, and holds several patents and patent pending applications.

Julien Lacheré specializes in advising companies on IP matters relating to software, with a particular interest in artificial intelligence. He is a software and telecommunications engineer who completed is Master of Research in datamining at GERAD, a multi university research center regrouping experts from HEC Montréal, Polytechnique Montréal, McGill University and Université du Québec à Montréal. He is also a registered patent agent in Canada and the United States.

Julien has a vast experience in the building of patent portfolios for companies of various sizes, from start-up ventures looking to attract funding, to multinational organizations preparing to enter new markets, which enables him to develop strategies consistent with his clients’ commercial and corporate objectives.

Gwendal Bihan started his career by advising companies on technological innovation topics and then on strategic marketing, before creating a digital publishing start-up. Then, he joined Accenture to assist major advertisers and European media in the improvement of their performance thanks to digital and data. Gwendal co-founded Axionable to provide a pragmatic end-to-end solution to the data challenges of major brands. He helps several players in the banking, insurance, media and luxury industries to achieve their data objectives. Gwendal is an engineer graduated from EFREI.

Bruno Morency is the Managing Director of the Techstars Montreal AI accelerator program. Before joining Techstars, Bruno was EiR at iNovia Capital which lead to him Poka, which he joined as the team expanded beyond the two co-founders. Working in tech startups is basically what he’s been doing since graduating from McGill Engineering in 2001. His first startup developed a web application for knowledge management and was acquired by ISACSOFT in 2003. He then held development and product management roles in small tech companies before founding DokDok. The work behind DokDok turned into Context.IO which was one of the first investments from Real Ventures. Context.IO was acquired by Return Path in 2012. Bruno has also been an active mentor with both FounderFuel and Founder Institute.

Kurt Busch is the Chief Executive Officer of Syntiant Corp. He has extensive experience in product development, having driven the successful launch of new products, ranging from SAS and semiconductors for telecom and broadcast video to consumer electronics and data center systems. Prior to Syntiant, he was president, chief executive officer and a member of the board of directors at Lantronix (NASDAQ: LTRX), a global provider of secure data access and management solutions for Internet of Things (IoT) and information technology (IT).

He also served as a senior vice president and general manager of high performance analog business unit at Mindspeed Technologies, acquired by MACOM. Prior responsibilities include technical sales and marketing roles at Analog Devices, Intel, Digital Equipment Corporation and two start-ups. Mr. Busch is an engineering hall of fame inductee of the University of California at Irvine, where he earned Bachelor of Science degrees in electrical engineering and biological science.  He holds a Master of Business Administration from Santa Clara University.

Thierry Paul has been in the field of IP for nearly 20 years. He currently leads the Element AI’s IP strategy and focuses on patents, industrial designs, and technology trade secrets as well as diligent reviews of IP assets. Prior to joining Element AI, he led the global intellectual property department of a worldwide leader in simulation and training.

Fiona McEvoy is an AI ethics writer, researcher, and thought leader based in San Francisco, CA. She was named one of the 30 Women Influencing AI in San Francisco by RE•WORK and one of the 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics You Should Follow in 2019 and beyond by Lighthouse3.

Fiona is the founder of tech ethics blog, YouTheData.com, and has had numerous articles published in media outlets including Slate, VentureBeat, All Turtles, Chatbots Life, and Becoming Human.  She is also regularly asked to present her ideas to AI conferences, most recently speaking to the eWear Symposium at Stanford University, the world’s largest business AI Summit, and the 2019 RE•WORK Deep Learning Summit.

Fiona holds a graduate degree in Philosophy, with a special focus on ethics and technology. Her thesis paper, “Decisions, decisions: Big Data and the Future of Autonomy” has been published by the Annals of the University of Bucharest as part of their series on emerging technology. The research was also presented at Stanford University to the International Association of Computing and Philosophy.

Before returning to study, Fiona spent nearly ten years working as a campaigner, PR and Public Affairs specialist in the UK, dealing with a range of agencies, think tanks, charities and trade associations.  She also holds two Bachelors’ degrees in English Lit & Drama and Classical Studies.

Myriam has been with Mila since 2009. She was Executive Director from 2015 to June 2018, and Director of Mila R&D and Tech Transfer team from January 2017 to September 2018. Myriam is now Director of AI for Humanity. Myriam has over 15 years of professional experience in artificial intelligence, project management and software development, in the industrial as well as in the academic research environments. She holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence and a Bachelor’s degree in Physics Engineering.

As Director of AI for Humanity, her goal is to put into actions, Mila’s humanitarian mission in collaboration with both its partners of the local ecosystem and its international allies, by promoting an ethical and socially responsible usage of AI.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau is a philosopher of science and innovation expert with a practice at the intersection of tech, entrepreneurship and ideas. He is the CTO of Cloud Constable, a Toronto-based startup developing AI-powered virtual assistants.

He recently completed two years as the inaugural Technical Advisor in Innovation, Science and Competitiveness to the President of the Republic of Haiti. In this role he launched Alpha Haïti – the country’s first full-feature tech incubator and the largest of its kind in the Caribbean region. He also led the development of a first national innovation policy in support of increasing the competitiveness of key sectors of the economy by more intensive use of technology.

His broad experience includes producing live events, managing performing artists, contributing to the Ontario Innovation Agenda, launching Clinical Trials Ontario, and co-creating Digital Tech by Genius Lab – a pre-employment training program to prepare unemployed youth for a first experience in tech.

Jean-Jacques holds a B.A. in Law and B.A.(High Honours) in Philosophy from Carleton University, MBA from the Schulich School of Business at York University and PhD from the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto.

He is currently Chair of the Board at CARE for Internationally Educated Nurses, Member of the Groupe Média TFO, Member of the World Summit AI Board of International Government and UN Advisors, and Past Chair of the Board of the Obsidian Theatre Company.

Guillaume Salou is the machine-learning services team leader at OVH, where he focuses on extracting high value from specific data science applications in order to make it available to all. Previously, he was a data engineer, where he helped to build OVH’s datalake.

David Masson is Darktrace’s Director of Enterprise Cyber Security and has over two decades of experience working in fast moving security and intelligence environments in the UK, Canada and world-wide. With skills developed in the civilian, military and diplomatic worlds, he has been influential in the efficient and effective resolution of various unique national security issues. Dave is an operational solutions expert and has a solid reputation across the UK and Canada for delivery tailored to customer needs. In recent years he has advised many government institutions on Insider Threat, helping them to reduce their vulnerability and level of risk. He holds a Master’s degree from Edinburgh University.

Milad Alucozai is a neuroscientist, entrepreneur and an inventor, with a unique blend of experiences in academia, research, startups and large organizations that span across fields in artificial intelligence(AI), nanotechnology, enterprise software, life sciences and healthcare. He is a Partner at Good AI Capital, a venture fund with offices in Silicon Valley and Montreal that invests in early-stage AI companies. He is currently serving as VP of Business Development at Mekonos, a portfolio company focused on developing a silicon chip architecture to deliver engineered therapies. Milad also holds the appointment of Visiting Scholar in Healthcare Engineering at the Regenstrief Center. He is an Associate at Creative Destruction Labs, mentor for TechStars AI, advisor for Holt Accelerator and on the board of advisors for Living On One, the LA-based film production company. He recently served as the Chief Business Officer at Corstem, a machine learning and AI software developer specialized in cardiac imaging analysis that was acquired by Circle Cardiovascular Imaging. Prior to this, he was a leader in Accenture’s Global R&D and Incubation Hub where he helped launch new global products and innovative services for some of the leading pharmaceutical companies by combining design thinking methodologies with emerging technologies such as AI, Advanced Analytics and IoT. Milad has multiple publications from his time as a researcher at Purdue’s Birck Nanotechnology Center and Interfacial Multiphysics Laboratory. As a National Science Foundation Scholar and Macklin Fellow at Johns Hopkins Medicine, Milad graduated Phi Beta Kappa with his BS (distinction) in Neuroscience from Purdue University’s Honors Program. As a George J. Mitchell Scholar, he completed his Masters of Science in Immunology & Public Health.

Jocelyn Auger advises technology companies and start-ups on commercialization, intellectual property protection, and financing. With over twenty years of experience as a business executive and lawyer, he combines a detailed knowledge of law with a deep understanding of the realities, challenges, and dreams of innovative companies.

A member of BCF from the early days, Jocelyn spent nearly five years as Vice President, Legal for a fast-growing energy technology company. There, he gained a different perspective and new experience in practising law. Since returning to BCF, he assists clients with licensing, joint ventures, corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, and various business transactions.

Jocelyn has spoken and written at multiple occasions on the topics of licensing and open source and his expertise and experience also are a valuable asset in the deployment and success of BCF Imagine, a support program for innovative start-ups of which he is co-manager, and BCF Ventures, a venture capital fund aimed at financing start-ups at the pre-seed stage.

Dan Belcher was a Co-Founder at mabl, a venture-backed startup that is using machine intelligence to make software testing easy.  Prior to mabl, Dan worked in the Cloud Platform team at Google, which he joined through its acquisition of Stackdriver, a company that he also-co-founded. Dan spent his early career in product and technical leadership roles at VMware, Sonian, and Microsoft. He lives in Boston with his wife and three children.

Elsa Agostinho is a member of BCF’s Business Immigration group and specializes in Canadian immigration. She is recognized for her professionalism, broad expertise and ability to respond to the changing and growing needs of enterprises operating internationally.

Since 1997, Elsa has practiced exclusively in the field of professional mobility, work permits and global immigration. Elsa’s clients primarily include SMEs and multinational companies based in Canada and internationally. She advises and counsels many enterprises on all matters pertaining to immigration during mergers and acquisitions or any other major transaction. She also counsels individuals and their families through various stages of their establishment in Canada, either on a temporary or a permanent basis.

Christoph Auer-Welsbach is an experienced founder, investor, product manager, venture community builder, and speaker on Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Infrastructure & Cloud and Internet of Things. He focuses on Deep Technology as a partner at IBM Ventures, and applied Artificial Intelligence as the initiator of City.AI.

Christina Karadimos is a member of BCF’s Business Immigration group and specializes in Canadian immigration. She is recognized for her professionalism, broad expertise and ability to respond to the changing and growing needs of enterprises operating internationally.

Since 2004, Christina has practiced exclusively in the field of professional mobility, work permits and global immigration. Christina’s clients primarily include SMEs and multinational companies based in Canada and internationally. She advises and counsels many enterprises on all matters pertaining to immigration during mergers and acquisitions or any other major transaction. She also counsels individuals and their families through various stages of their establishment in Canada, either on a temporary or a permanent basis.

Nimish Radia is an experienced executive in the IT, mobile, telecom, and finance industry with a strong combination of technology expertise and business acumen. He has proven leadership in transforming technology into multi-million dollar profitable vertical and horizontal solutions spanning Web Scale Service and Architecture, Service Delivery Platforms (SDPs) for next generation communication and collaboration services, Identity and Context-Aware Services, Mobile Computing, Targeted Advertising, Big Data, and Cloud computing.

Dr. Radia is currently North America Head of Global Artificial Intelligence (AI) Accelerator (GAIA). He is leading Ericsson’s R&D and innovation efforts in Silicon Valley for next generation 5G and AI-driven Products, Services and Software for telecommunication and other industry verticals. He is also responsible for Global Ecosystem Strategy and Execution for GAIA. Before this role, he was responsible for 5G for Industries – an ecosystem centric approach to crate 5G based value for Media, IIoT and other industries and leading various groups within Ericsson Research including AI and Service Computing.

Before joining Ericsson, he was Advanced Technology Executive at Sun for US Communications, Media, and Entertainment Sales. In this role, he led cross company virtual R&D team accountable for creating revenue-generating solutions using Open Source Software stack (LAMP, OpenID/Liberty, Open Social, etc.) for mobile broadband providers ecosystem. Prior to Sun, Nimish was senior member of IBM Research and Advanced Software Technology Group driving R&D projects with customers globally.

Nimish has been recognized several times for his technology and sales achievements. He holds 8 patents and 15+ invention disclosures and industry publications.

Bahman Bahmani is a Director of Data Science at Rakuten (7th largest internet company in the world), managing an AI organization with engineering and data science managers, data scientists, machine learning engineers, and data engineers, globally distributed across 3 continents and in charge of the end-to-end AI systems behind the Rakuten Intelligence suite of products. Bahman has built and managed engineering and data science teams across industry, academia, and the public sector in areas including digital advertising, consumer web, cybersecurity, and non-profit fundraising, where he has consistently delivered substantial business value. He has also designed and taught courses, led an interdisciplinary research lab, and advised several theses in the Computer Science department at Stanford University, where he also did his own PhD focused on large-scale algorithms and machine learning, topics on which he is a well-published author.

Erkin Adylov is Founder and CEO of Behavox, a pioneering AI data analytics firm, which he founded in 2014. Mr. Adylov held leadership positions at Man GLG and Goldman Sachs early in his career and is a graduate of the London School of Economics.

Founder and CEO of Behavox, a pioneering AI data analytics firm, which he founded in 2014. Mr. Adylov held leadership positions at Man GLG and Goldman Sachs early in his career and is a graduate of the London School of Economics.

CEO of Behavox, a pioneering AI data analytics firm, which he founded in 2014. Mr. Adylov held leadership positions at Man GLG and Goldman Sachs early in his career and is a graduate of the London School of Economics.

Marc Michel has had a long career as both a venture investor and founder of a successful technology company. Marc started his career as a tech banker at Merrill Lynch before moving into Merrill’s middle market buyout business. After Merrill exited the business, Marc returned to his first passion and founded Eos Partners’ venture fund. He then built and ran TD Capital USA, TD Bank’s venture and growth equity arm in NYC. In 1999, Marc became co-founder and visionary of Precyse Solutions, now one of the country’s leading clinical health data capture and management companies that serves over 4,000 health facilities. In 2008, Marc co-founded Metamorphic Ventures (renamed Compound) as one of NYC’s first Seed venture funds. Marc has backed many successful companies such as Peapod, Brooks Fiber, Mountain Union Telecom, Insite, Coinstar, IndieGoGo, MovableInk, Appboy, Transactis, Thrive Market, Tap Commerce, Tapad, and many others.

Marc is originally a Canadian citizen who moved to Cleveland, Ohio as a boy and calls himself a Clevelander at heart. Marc is an avid tennis player and fan and anyone who knows him, knows he will be at the US Open come the end of August!

Sophie Forest – Prior to joining Brightspark Ventures, Sophie was a partner at CDP Capital Technology Ventures, a subsidiary of la Caisse de Dépôt et Placement du Québec. Sophie met Mark in 1997 when she became the lead investor in his start-up, Balisoft. They ended up collaborating on this exciting venture for three years and sold the company to Kana Software in 2000.

Since joining Brightspark in 2003 as a managing partner, Sophie has led and overseen more than 50 investments in technology companies. Notably, she has played a pivotal role in the investment, growth and exit of Radian6, leading to a 23x multiple on capital invested, and becoming one of the most successful technology exits in Canadian history.

Sophie was involved in the creation and growth of Jewlr.com and iStopOver.com. She is still an active board member of Jewlr inc., a leading online personalized jewelry company.

She sits on the Board of Directors of a number of companies, including Hopper, nGUVU and Jewlr. Sophie works closely with the startups she invests in and is known for her nurturing and listening qualities. In October 2017, Sophie was awarded the NACO Angel of the Year Award.

Sophie is a member of the Science and Technology Council of Canada, which provides external advice to the federal government in the domain of science, technology and innovation.

She is the proud mother of three teenage daughters and is passionate about opening up doors for women to the VC and tech world. Through her career, she has often been the “only woman in the room” and wants to continue to facilitate the entry for other women.

Jean Sebastien (JS) Cournoyer has been an entrepreneur, investor and builder of innovation ecosystems since 1999. JS is co-founder of Real Ventures, the venture capital firm behind projects like Founderfuel, Canada’s leading accelerator and not-for-profit startup hub Notman House. He is also a co-founder and board member of Element AI, a company incubated by Real Ventures and the world’s fastest growing artificial intelligence (AI) company that provides the Global 2000 an AI platform to redesign their business with AI at the core.

Some of JS’s active investments include Element AI, Blockstream (turning the bitcoin blockchain into the platform for digital commerce and society), Tenstorrent (next-gen AI semiconductors), Xanadu (full stack Quantum Computer powered by light) Integrate.ai (AI first customer journey platform),  and Insight Engines (AI first network security).

JS is passionate about helping mission-driven entrepreneurs use deep technologies to improve the level of human consciousness.

Mahdi Amri is the National AI Services Leader of Omnia AI, Deloitte Canada’s AI Practice. He has 17-plus years of consulting and industry experience in financial markets, possessing specializations in financial instrument valuation and risk management implementation. Mahdi supports external and internal audit teams in valuing complex derivatives and structured products for Deloitte’s largest financial institution clients and multinational clients in Canada. He also provides financial risk management advisory services to a wide range of clients, including banks, insurance companies and multinational corporations. M. Amri has significant regulatory experience and led several commitments related to compliance with the new IFRS9 standard. Before joining Deloitte, Mahdi held several treasury and risk management positions with financial institutions and multinational corporations in Canada.

Phil Mitsopoulos is Head of Partnerships at Stradigi AI, a company that transforms businesses with an industry-leading artificial intelligence platform. Since 2016, Phil has held a number of high-level operational and marketing positions within the company, playing a key role in its growth from a 25-employee startup to a rapidly-scaling company with over 120 employees. He is responsible for managing a portfolio of partnerships that promote the company’s strategic and business objectives, including brand awareness, business development, scientific research and recruitment. Prior to joining Stradigi AI, Phil’s work experience included 15 years at Bell and TELUS, two of Canada’s largest telecommunications providers where he held a wide array of management positions. Powered by this wealth of experience, he focuses on driving business development and marketing initiatives that reinforce the value proposition of Stradigi AI. Phil promotes the company’s core beliefs as a speaker and panellist in Canada and abroad.

Shagun Maheshwari is a 16-year-old machine-learning developer passionate about leveraging artificial intelligence for use in a multitude of applications. She recently spoke at BETT, a British education and technology conference, about how her innovative use of AI helped her to calculate the probability of a person being diagnosed with cancer as well as improved cancer detection through the use of human genome data. Shagun’s use of AI isn’t limited to the medical field, as it has also helped her create artificial neural networks that can accurately predict churn rates at financial institutions as well as develop AI models that improve object detection in computer vision systems. She has recently delved deeper into the field of computational biology as she hopes to leverage her programming and AI knowledge to make waves in that space!

Jaime Camacaro is a mathematical Physicist by profession and now Stradigi AI’s Chief Innovation Officer. He is passionate about the development of new technology. Not only does he generate new ideas in the fields of big data, machine learning, artificial intelligence and recommender systems, he also successfully recognizes and guides Stradigi’s research scientists to do the same. Launching his professional career as an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the Universidad Simón Bolívar in Venezuela, Jaime quickly reapplied his skills into programming. Upon his arrival in Montreal, Jaime accepted the position at Stradigi as a Web Developer. Eight years later, Jaime now leads the company in all innovation initiatives.

Michel Dubois is Vice President of Artificial Intelligence at Newtrax, a company that integrates the latest IoT technologies to provide insights on hard rock underground mining operations, creating a unique detailed dataset about people, machines and the environment.

A startup in 2008, Newtrax quickly became a multi-national success story, achieving an 80% yearly average revenue growth and inaugurating offices in Santiago, Perth, Moscow and London, with its HQ in Montreal.

Michel leads his team to deliver fast and impactful Artificial Intelligence solutions to customers by leveraging his experience in the technological, academical, business, Intellectual Property and partnership dimensions of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. He is the author of a patent on mathematical optimization of high bandwidth signal switching.

In the last 25 years, Michel built his versatility in high growth global business environments such as Banking, IT services, Urban Transit Optimization, Telecommunications, the Energy sector and the Underground Mining industry through a rich blend of positions such as research analyst in mathematics, embedded and server software programmer, software process improvement consultant, followed by managerial roles in IT security, quality assurance, electronics manufacturing and Vice President of Artificial Intelligence.

Motivated by multidisciplinary environments, Michel is active in fostering collaboration across industries, across roles, and more, which can also explain his implications in numerous volunteer work in the community for the past 30 years.

Michel holds a Master’s degree in Mathematics and he’s a PhD candidate in Engineering (Machine Learning).

Younes Zerouali is currently an applied research scientist at Stradigi AI. He’s passionate about all forms of cognition, from human neurobiology to machine learning. He’s currently developing algorithms to allow machines to learn how to make better decisions in sports and marketing.

Shane Black is a seasoned sales professional with over 8 years’ experience developing new business and managing a winning sales team in the B2B space. His desire to help organizations solve complex problems coupled with his passion for relationship building has enabled him to excel in the field.

His 4 years prior to joining Stradigi AI were spent growing a sales team in the digital marketing space where he worked with numerous eCommerce brands across North America.

Marc-Antoine Dilhac is professor of philosophy at the Université de Montréal and holds the Canada Research Chair in Public Ethics and Political Theory. In 2017, he instigated the project of the Montreal Declaration for a Responsible Development of AI and chaired its scientific committee.

Since 2013, he has been Director of Ethics and Politics at the Centre de recherche en éthique (Center for Ethics, Montréal). He specialized I  theories of democracy and social justice, as well as in questions of applied ethics. His current research focuses on the ethical and social impacts of AI and issues of governance and institutional design, with a particular focus on how new technologies are changing public relations and political structures. Marc-Antoine Dilhac has recently joined Mila as associate member and is director of Deliberation at the Observatory on the social impacts of AI and digital technologies. He holds a PhD in political philosophy from the Université de Paris  Panthéon-Sorbonne.

Sarah Porter has launched 21 b2b and b2c technology products in 11 countries since 1996 and has a renowned reputation for taking ideas from concept to market with subsequent significant growth globally. 

Emerging tech / AI / Medtech / Singularity / existentialism is where her core experience lies and she has over 20 years of commercial experience.

As a board executive for i2i events (parent company The Guardian Media Group / Apax – Ascential – previously Top Right Group) with the specific remit to rapidly grow the business whilst leveraging operational costs and prepare pre IPO. She sat on the i2i mergers and acquisitions committee identifying, analysing and approaching target businesses and accelerated growth by 22% within 12 months.

Achievements include the launch and acquisition of Money2020 – a leading fintech product. This included negotiation, 3 stage due diligence, its subsequent integration, and the long term geo-adaption into a global portfolio worth over $40m. The launch of World Retail Congress in 10 countries, the re-launch of Cannes Lions festival.

Sarah is a regular keynote speaker on start-ups, business and women / equality related issues and is an ambassador for the Royal Marsden where she champions the use of AI tech in oncology advances.

Sara Conejo Cervantes, born in London of spanish origins is an enthusiast in the advancement of technology. Having graduated from Coloma Convent Girls’ School with GCSEs in the core subjects, Computer Science and Economics, Sara is currently studying for her A Levels in Maths, Further Maths, Physics and Computer Science, continuing on from GCSE, at King’s College London Mathematics School. With two years of experience in coding, Sara regularly takes part in Hackathons and has she won a number of them. She recently took part in Alexa Bootcamp where she led her team to develop and publish an Alexa skill called Optimus Maths. She did a two-week placement at Codex, a city-based data analytics firm where she wrote a piece of code used now in the platform. As well as this, Sara has accreditations from the Royal Institution in both Maths and Engineering. She has taken part in many MUN conferences and debates in and out of school. Her background of coding in Python and other languages has helped her to complete the task of building an AI with the ability to play smartphone games. Despite her strong background in Computer Science, Sara is currently undecided on what her path will be post-KCLMS, however she has indicated an interest in possibly studying Maths and Computer Science at university. She is currently part of Artificial Intelligence Task Force at Teens in AI and has recently written her response to Lord Clement Jones AI Report.

Bobby Prévost is a well-respected Research Scientist at Stradigi AI, who graduated with a Ph.D. in Physics. Driven by his interest in the technology industry, he quickly gravitated towards artificial intelligence. Rapidly moving into his second year at Stradigi AI, Bobby is one of the company’s most valued researchers. As a researcher, he currently works at developing innovative ideas and algorithms, particularly in the field of recommender systems. Having participated as lead researcher at Stradigi AI’s presence at SXSW and spokesman with all Franco-Canadian news, Bobby has brought much-added value to the Stradigi AI family.

Tuba Yamaç: A
registered patent agent in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Europe, Tuba Yamaç manages the intellectual property strategies of technology clients ranging from start-ups to larger corporations and research institutions. Tuba’s industry experience and international outlook make her a highly valued advisor to many businesses.

Tuba holds a Ph. D. in biomedical materials and a M.Sc in intellectual property management, both from the University of London. She is recognized for her technical expertise in medical technologies including biomaterials, medical devices and connected health technologies, as well as cleantech. Tuba advises clients in relation to building intellectual property portfolios including international filing and procurement strategies, IP partnering support, preparing for investment, commercial transaction support, patentability landscaping, freedom to operate, and due diligence particularly for investors. Before joining BCF, she was intellectual property director of a medical device company in Montréal building their IP portfolio and supporting the business through a number of strategic business liaisons.

Tuba is trilingual, and regularly represents the Québec life sciences business ecosystem in the United Kingdom, the United States, France, and Scandinavia. She also teaches patent law, and is an invited speaker at the annual LifeSciences UK Patent attorney conference (CIPA), the McGill/IPIC patent course in Montreal, and has contributed to a book chapter in “Life Sciences Law in Canada”, Carswell.

Nathalie de Marcellis-Warin holds a doctorate in Management Science (specialized in risk management and insurance) from the École Normale Supérieure in Cachan (France) and is a full professor at Polytechnique Montréal in the Department of Mathematics and Industrial Engineering and Visiting Scientist at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, Department of Environmental Health at Harvard Chan School of Public Health.

In 2008, she created the RISQ + H network, a network for raising awareness and sharing experiences on risk management, patient safety and the quality of care in health facilities (www.risqh.net).

Since 2011, she has been leading the CIRANO Barometer project on risk perception in Quebec, which annually collects data on Quebeckers’ concerns.

Hubert Bolduc holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Université du Québec à Montréal, a Master’s degree in Communication from the University of Stirling in Scotland, and an MBA from HEC Montréal.

In January 2016, Hubert Bolduc was appointed President and CEO of Montréal International, Greater Montréal’s economic development agency whose mission is to attract and retain foreign investment (companies and startups), international organizations, skilled workers and international students.

Before becoming the head of Montréal International, Mr. Bolduc worked as Deputy Secretary General, Government Communications, ministère du Conseil exécutif, and as an international affairs manager for Investissement Québec.

From 2004 to 2012, he was Vice-President, Communications and Public Affairs, at Cascades. He also worked as a Press attaché to the Québec Premier from 2001 to 2003, as an Advisor for public relations firm NATIONAL from 1998 to 2000, and as a communication lecturer at UQAM. Mr. Bolduc has served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Jour de la Terre and of Manufacturiers et Exportateurs du Québec, and Vice-Chairman of the Board of the Fondation de l’Entrepreneurship du Québec. He also sat on the Board of Directors of the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montréal, Fondation de l’UQAM and Forces Avenir.

He has been presented with the Prix Reconnaissance award by Université du Québec à Montréal and the Prix Relève d’excellence award, Large Business category, by Réseau HEC Montréal. Mr. Bolduc also made Marketing Magazine’s 30 Under 30 list in 2001.

Charles Roberts: A clinician by training, Charlie is Freenome’s Chief Partnership Officer, focusing on mid- and longer-term relationships that will help define the company’s future directions and revenues and works closely with the business development team in managing corporate client accounts and institutional collaborations.Prior to co-founding Freenome, Charlie co-founded a company that uses circulating cell-free (cf)DNA from maternal blood samples to diagnose chromosomal abnormalities during pregnancy. The resulting in-vitro diagnostic, IONA, has been marketed successfully across Europe and the Middle East. Charlie studied medicine and neuropsychology in the UK, earning a Masters degree from Oxford with a focus on immunotherapy. He has worked in some of the UK’s leading oncology centers, including the Royal Marsden.

Pavlos Papachristopoulos is a seasoned sales executive with over 9 years of Sales and Business Development experience. As a Business Development Director. he is tasked with meeting new clientele, explaining the Stradigi AI methodology and growing Stradigi’s reach across the world.