Guest: Angelique Mohring, Founder and CEO of GainX

Bio: Angelique Mohring is the founder and CEO of GainX, where she is on a mission to help large enterprises transform and thrive in the face of disruption. With a background in anthropology, innovation, and digital transformation, Angelique recognized the growing challenge companies face in staying competitive and launched GainX to provide AI-driven insights that drive innovation strategy and change management. GainX helps organizations unlock their potential by bridging the gap between innovation and operational efficiency, helping companies navigate the complexities of the 21st-century economy.

Guest: Ben Cox, Founder and CEO of Page

Bio: Ben Cox is the founder and CEO of Page where they are on a mission to make government relations & public affairs effortless. After a decade at Shopify, Ben founded Page after recognizing that government is big, and only getting bigger, while technology has largely ignored the pain companies of all sizes feel when trying to understand how government will affect them.

Guest: Matt Silk, Sessional Instructor, Department of Philosophy, University of Waterloo

Bio: Matthew Silk is a philosopher at the University of Waterloo, news analyst for the Prindle Post out of DePauw University, and founder of the Ethics of AI Society of Waterloo. Raised in Palmerston Ontario, Matt completed his doctorate at the University of Waterloo with a focus in philosophy of science and values in science. He is the co-author of a forthcoming textbook on the ethics of artificial intelligence which examines issues ranging from bias in AI, opacity, AI and democracy, the ethics of generative AI, and the epistemic and psychological issues involved when humans interact with AI. In his spare time, he also works in outer space ethics.

Guest: Jeff Nagge, Clinical Associate Professor, School of Pharmacy, University of Waterloo

Bio: Dr. Jeff Nagge is a seasoned clinical associate professor at the University of Waterloo's School of Pharmacy, where he has been instrumental in shaping the next generation of pharmacists since 2006. Born and raised in Mary Hill, just outside of Kitchener-Waterloo, Jeff's journey to academia began with an undergraduate degree in science at UW, followed by a pharmacy residency at McMaster University Medical Center and a doctorate in pharmacy at the University of Toronto. With a passion for cardiology, Jeff has focused much of his career on innovative ways to enhance patient care, particularly in the realm of anticoagulation therapy. Throughout his tenure at the University of Waterloo, Jeff has spearheaded groundbreaking initiatives at the intersection of pharmacy and artificial intelligence (AI). His pioneering work includes the development of virtual anticoagulation clinics using AI-driven chatbots, revolutionizing the way pharmacists receive experiential clinical training. This innovative approach not only enhances the scalability of training but also ensures standardized and comprehensive learning experiences for pharmacists across Canada. Jeff's dedication to advancing pharmacy education extends beyond the classroom. He actively collaborates on research projects aimed at improving healthcare outcomes, particularly in underserved communities. His recent endeavors include initiatives to train pharmacists in culturally competent care for indigenous patients and to streamline residency training through AI-powered clinical modules. As a respected educator and researcher, Jeff continues to push the boundaries of pharmacy practice, leveraging AI to address critical healthcare challenges and empower pharmacists to deliver high-quality.

PolyML is a dynamic team comprised of data technology innovators and pragmatic business experts dedicated to pioneering new data analytics techniques and applying them to solve complex data challenges for their clients. With a core focus on inventing groundbreaking software for mining insights from data, they blend deep data science expertise with strategic business understanding to deliver previously inaccessible insights to their clients. Their approach is rooted in a relentless drive to innovate and provide value through advanced data analytics solutions. 

Joseph Lafleur, President and Co-Founder of PolyML - joseph.lafleur@polyml.com

Bio: Joseph Lafleur, educated in business at Wilfred Laurier University, has extensive experience in financial services, including private debt, equity, and venture capital. Joseph has been involved with numerous technology companies, assisting them through capital raises and IPO processes.

Mardi Witzel, CEO and Co-Founder of PolyML - mardi.witzel@polyml.com

Bio: Mardi Witzel has an MBA from Wilfrid Laurier University and a Bachelor's in Political Studies from Queen's University. Mardi's expertise is in AI Governance, previously serving as Vice President at NuEnergy.ai and has led various boards and foundations.

For more detailed information, please visit the PolyML website: https://polyml.com/

Guest: Sushanta Mitra

Bio: Sushanta Mitra is a professor in Mechanical & Mechatronics Engineering and the Executive Director of the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology (WIN). He is an elected fellow of several organizations, including the Canadian Academy of Engineering and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, for his contributions to science and engineering.

Guest: Maura R. Grossman, Research Professor, School of Computer Science; Adjunct Professor at the Osgoode Hall Law School

Bio: Dr. Maura R. Grossman is a Research Professor in the School of Computer Science and an Adjunct Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School. Renowned for her work in technology-assisted review in legal proceedings, her research intersects AI, data science, law, and ethics. At the University of Waterloo, she focuses on the ethical implications and societal impacts of AI, contributing significantly to the fields of AI ethics and legal informatics.

Guest: Helen Chen, Professor of Practice; Director, Professional Practice Centre for Health Systems

Bio: Dr. Helen Chen is the Director of Professional Practice Centre n for Health Systems; she is also the faculty lead of the Master of Health Informatics Program at the School of Public Health Sciences. 

Additionally, she is jointly appointed to both Cheriton School of Computer Science and Statistics and Actuarial Science. She is also the President of Canadian Personalized Healthcare Innovation Network, a not-for-profit organizing promoting the access and use of real world health data to enable learning health systems.

Ellyn Winters-Robinson is a recent breast cancer survivor, co-creator of AskEllyn, and author of the bestselling book "Flat Please Hold the Shame," a girlfriend’s companion guide for those on the breast cancer journey. She is also the co-founder and chief marketing officer of Ignition Communications, a boutique marketing communications firm, and a longtime mentor at The Accelerator Centre. Ellyn’s story has been featured in People Magazine, Globe and Mail, and CTV.

Chris Silivestru is a proven Engineering Leader with a background in full stack development across a variety of problem domain and scaling demands.He has experience forming and growing high performing teams, leading technical direction, planning for the long term while still iteratively delivering value, and working across entire orgs to make sure they're solving the right problems at the right time.

Guest: Scott Hopkins carries out research in the area of physical chemistry.

The Hopkins Laboratory for Spectroscopy and Dynamics Research employs experimental spectroscopy and chemical dynamics techniques in conjunction with high level quantum chemical calculations to decipher the nature of nanocluster systems. His research focuses on three key areas: velocity map imaging, structure and reactivities of nanoclusters, and high-resolution spectroscopy.

Guest: Chris Eliasmith is the current director of the Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience and head of the Computational Neuroscience Research Group (CNRG) within the same institution. His interdisciplinary background in engineering, philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience is reflected in his diverse research interests. He primarily focuses on integrating neural and psychological explanations of behavior and constructing large-scale brain models. Additionally, he has contributed to neuromorphic engineering, scientific models and theories, computation theories, dynamical systems, and statistical modeling. His extensive academic biography explores various aspects of the mind, from philosophical critiques of cognitive science to the development of novel theories rooted in neural considerations. Alongside Charles Anderson, he devised a groundbreaking technique for constructing biologically detailed models of neural systems on a large scale. These models have been successfully applied to domains such as rat navigation, working memory, lamprey swimming, hemineglect, and language-based reasoning. His most recent publication, "How to build a brain: A neural architecture for biological cognition," published by Oxford University Press, synthesizes his prior research and showcases his expertise in the field.

Guest: Dr. Victor Cui is Conrad Research Excellence Chair and a tenured professor in Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Global Strategy at the Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business, University of Waterloo. He is an internationally recognized thought leader, award-winning researcher and teacher in innovation strategy, cooperation and competition, intellectual property rights protection, and U.S-China decoupling. His recent research focuses on firms’ Artificial Intelligence (AI) strategies and best practices to optimize business performance. His research has reached a wide audience via media outlets such as Fortune, Canada Broadcast Company (CBC), and Global News. He has consulted extensively in the financial services, health care, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, airline, and brewery industries. He has co-founded technology startups and joint ventures in personalized medicine and chronic disease management. 

Will Zhao is an Assistant Professor at the Stratford School, University of Waterloo, specializing in Organization and Human Behaviour. He earned his PhD from Emlyon Business School in France and completed his postdoctoral research at Stanford University as a SCANCOR scholar. Prior to joining Waterloo, he was a faculty member at a Canadian business school and achieved a promotion to tenured associate professor. Will's research is interdisciplinary and focuses on innovation from various perspectives, including organizational, educational, and engineering. He uses a combination of multimodal methods such as semiotics, rhetoric, and artificial intelligence perspectives. His publications are found in various academic journals ranging from business, education, engineering, and interdisciplinary studies.

Guest: Edith Law is an Associate Professor at David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. She also co-directs the Human Computer Interaction Lab. Her education consists of being a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied sciences. She holds a Ph.D. in Machine Learning from Carnegie Mellon University, a Masters in Computer Science from McGill University and a B.Sc in Computer Science from the University of British Columbia. She is interested in social computing technology that coordinates small groups to large crowds, new models of interactions with machine intelligence, and how technology can be designed to foster and celebrate certain human values.

Guest: Joel Blit is an associate professor of Economics at the University of Waterloo. He completed his bachelor's in Engineering Science at the University of Toronto. He received his MASc in Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo; his MBA at INSEAD; his MA in Economics at Western University and his Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Toronto. Prior to joining Waterloo, Joel was an assistant professor of Economics and International Affairs at George Washington University. He has also been a business consultant to financial services firms in Asia, Australia, and North America. The main research interests of his work are the economics of innovation and innovation policy. He studies the role that multi-location firms play in promoting the flow of knowledge across geographical space and the effect that intellectual property rights (patents) have on innovation. His most recent research focuses on AI and economics.

Guest: Mark Crowley is an assistant professor in the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo and the ECE Machine Learning Lab director. Mark received his Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of British Columbia working in the Laboratory for Computational Intelligence with David Poole. Before coming to Waterloo, he completed a postdoc at Oregon State University working with Tom Dietterich's machine learning group on robust decision-making under uncertainty in simulated Forest Fire domains. His areas of research are reinforcement learning, deep learning and ensemble learning. He has worked on various projects focusing on ecology, sustainable forest management, autonomous driving, medical imaging and physical chemistry. 

Guest: Sirisha Rambhatla, Assistant Professor, University of Waterloo

Bio: Dr. Rambhatla is an Assistant Professor in the Management Sciences Department, Faculty of Engineering with cross appointments with David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science and Systems Design Engineering Department at the University of Waterloo, ON, Canada. Affiliated with Waterloo AI Institute and Waterloo Institute for Sustainable Aeronautics, she leads the CriticalML lab where her research focusses on reliable artificial intelligence (AI) models for real-world decision making for critical applications in healthcare (transplant and surgery), intelligent automation, aviation, and climate change, using deep learning, time-series and spatiotemporal data analysis, blackbox interpretability, and provable algorithms. Her inter-disciplinary work spanning both theory and practice of machine learning (ML), has been published at top ML venues such as NeurIPS, ICLR, KDD, IJCAI, AAAI, and clinical venues such as AMIA, Urology Clinics North America, and Surgery. Recipient of academic awards such as the prestigious 2021 Merit Award for Excellence in Postdoctoral, and E Bruce Lee Memorial Fellowship, among others, Dr. Rambhatla received her Ph.D. and Master's in electrical engineering from the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN, U.S.A. in 2019 and 2012, respectively. She pursued her postdoctoral research (2019-21) in the Computer Science department at the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A. She received her B.Tech with Honors in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering from College of Engineering Roorkee, Roorkee, India in 2010, where she was the university Bronze Medalist for the class of 2010.

Guest: William Melek, Director of RoboHub at the University of Waterloo

Bio: William Melek is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Waterloo. He also serves as the Director of the Laboratory of Computational Intelligence and Automation and the Director of RoboHub.

Guest: Rodney Smith, Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry, University of Waterloo

Bio: Rodney Smith’s research involves the study of electrocatalysts for use in sustainable energy storage systems. His research examines the chemistry of electrode surfaces, measures electron transfer kinetics and probes electrochemical reaction dynamics in an effort to guide the design and fabrication of solid-state electrocatalysts.

Guest: Zhao Pan, Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Mechatronics Engineering, University of Waterloo

Bio: Zhao Pan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Waterloo and the Principal Investigator of the Interdisciplinary Fluid Physics Lab - Pan Lab. Prior to joining Waterloo, he worked at Utah State University and Florida Center for Advanced Aero-propulsion (FCAAP, FSU) as a postdoctoral fellow.