Dr. Kevin Heffner, Director of Innovation at Computer Research Institute of Montreal (CRIM)

Talk Title: Enabling Technologies for Future Intelligent Transportation Systems

Bio: Kevin Heffner joined the Computer Research Institute of Montreal (CRIM) in 2017 as Innovation Director. Kevin holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering (1987), a master’s degree in fluid dynamics from the von Karman Institute and a Ph.D in Mechanical Engineering. After starting his career at NASA, Kevin obtained his doctorate in the area of stability and control of space vehicles in the context of research performed for the French National Space Agency. Kevin has more than 30 years of experience in numerical methods, modeling and simulation and systems engineering. His main activity over the last ten years has been in the practical use of artificial intelligence technologies for applications in the aerospace and defence sector. Kevin is specialized in system interoperability and has participated in numerous interoperability standardization activities. In 2013, he received the NATO Scientific Achievement Award for his contribution in the standardization of interoperability between command and control systems and simulations. His recent research activities deal with the development of intelligent systems, including autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles and autonomous ships. 

Dr. Alexandre Le Bouthillier, Co-Founder at Imagia

Talk Title: Impact of AI in Healthcare Industry

After 20 years of experience in IT for hospitals, space agencies, and city-wide storage infrastructure, Alexandre Le Bouthillier transformed his understanding of large systems to tackle the inefficiencies in healthcare. Now, Alexandre is working with world renowned AI experts and physicians to revolutionize the speed, accuracy, and ultimately clinical outcomes of patients. He is Board member at Mila, IVADO, MEDTEQ & Montreal InVivo. With a PhD in Parallel Computing and Optimization from the University of Montreal, Le Bouthillier co-founded Imagia to realize the power of data across all medical organizations, working collaboratively to achieve medical breakthroughs.

Dr. Samira Shabanian, Senior Research Scientist at Microsoft Research Canada

Talk Title: How to Bridge the Gap between AI Research in Academia and Industry

Bio: My two major interests and passions are Computer Science and Mathematics, and I believe that there is a creative fusion between these two disciplines. Mathematics came to be my first chosen field quite naturally and I followed my passion until receiving a PhD in Mathematics. My research field tied with Nonlinear Analysis and Optimization and I did my research activities especially on the generalization of variational relations and fixed point theorems in geodesic and modular spaces.​ As a part of my research interest, I then decided to take the Computer Science path and work on this interesting field. So, I studied Machine Learning at MILA laboratory under Yoshua Bengio’s supervision. My research interests include deep learning, learning from high-dimensional data, training deep generative models and language models. My research project currently concerns the study of deep generative models and especially showcasing the power of these models for different problems.​

Mr. Yoram Perez, Manager, Intact Lab- Data Science in Montreal 

Talk Title: Data Science at Intact Lab

Bio: Mr. Perez studied at Concordia University in Actuarial Mathematics / Finance and started working at Intact (largest Property and Casualty Insurer in Canada) in 2011 as an actuarial analyst. In 2014, he became an expat representing Intact in Brazil, working for a medium-sized start-up who was the first to sell insurance online in Brazil. Over the last year, he's had different management opportunities, and the latest one is working as a manager for Intact Lab, Data Science. He is an avid chess player and welcomes any challengers.

Mr. Phil Rivard, Director of Venture Managers at NEXT AI-Montreal

Talk Title:  NextAI - Start your AI company

Bio: Phil Rivard started his entrepreneurial journey at 19 when he founded ZQuared Media (pronounced "squared media"), a small digital agency helping local SMBs getting on the web in the early '90s. He designed coded and hosted hundreds of websites with ZQuared. He went corporate for a while as a SOX IT Audit & Compliance Consultant for Quebecor World Inc., but then came back to his entrepreneur roots with NUKERN, a SaaS platform that automates needlessly complex and time-consuming tasks for digital agencies and web hosting companies. With 15+ years’ experience in IT and web hosting, Phil graduated from different accelerators such as Founder Institute Montreal and Techstars Austin. Phil is now the Director of Venture Managers @ NextAI - Montreal, and is genuinely passionate about helping entrepreneurs learn from the mistakes he made in the past.