KEYNOTE

Speakers

University of Toronto Associate Professor, University of Toronto | Co-founder Affiliated faculty at Vector Institute | VP of AI Research, NVIDIA

Full Name
Sanja Fidler
Job Title
Associate Professor, University of Toronto | Co-founder Affiliated faculty at Vector Institute | VP of AI Research, NVIDIA
Company
University of Toronto
Speaker Bio
I am an Associate Professor at University of Toronto, affiliated faculty at the Vector Institute (and was one of the co-founding members) and VP of AI Research at NVIDIA, leading a research lab in Toronto. Prior coming to Toronto, in 2012/2013, I was a Research Assistant Professor at Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago, an academic institute located in the campus of University of Chicago. My work is in the area of Computer Vision and Machine Learning. My main research interests are in the intersection of computer vision and graphics, 3D vision, 3D reconstruction and synthesis; and interactive methods for image annotation.

Nick Frosst

Cohere
Co-founder, Cohere

Full Name
Nick Frosst
Job Title
Co-founder
Company
Cohere
Speaker Bio
I co-founded Cohere with Aidan Gomez and Ivan Zhang. We are an enterprise focused foundational model company. I was the first employee of Geoffrey Hinton‘s Google Brain lab in Toronto. I worked on machine learning research there for 3 years, focusing on capsule networks, adversarial examples, and explainability.

I did my undergrad in Computer Science and Cognitive Science at U of T. During this time I had the chance to work with John Tsotsos, Sanja Fidler, Jimmy Ba, John Vervaeke, Orion Buske, and Gary Baumgartner.

Orion Buske

PhenoTips
CTO, PhenoTips

Full Name
Orion Buske
Job Title
CTO
Company
PhenoTips
Speaker Bio
I'm CTO at PhenoTips, the first Genomic Health Record company. PhenoTips is building a future in which specialists provide patient-centered care based on the genetics of individuals and families.

I moonlight as Co-founder/CTO at Tandem Experiences, where we're addressing loneliness and building community with a discovery platform for local experiences.

I received a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Toronto, with a fellowship at SickKids Hospital. My research focused on software and algorithms to help specialists solve rare genetic diseases and help patients and families affected by these diseases.

Inmar Givoni

Writer

Full Name
Inmar Givoni
Job Title
Writer
Speaker Bio
Inmar Givoni writes fiction.
She is also a start-up mentor, AI consultant, advisory board member, and a public speaker on AI, tech leadership and other topics. She volunteers her time mentoring women in tech and AI in Toronto and elsewhere.
Before turning to writing, she was a Director of Engineering at Uber Advanced Technology Group, Toronto, where she led a team who brought from research and into production cutting-edge deep-learning models for self-driving vehicles. She received her PhD (Computer Science) in 2011 from the University of Toronto, specializing in machine learning, and was a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge. She worked at Microsoft Research, Altera (now Intel), Kobo, and Kindred at roles ranging from research scientist to VP, Big Data, applying machine learning techniques to various problem domains and taking concepts from research to production systems. She is an inventor of several patents and has authored numerous top-tier academic publications in the areas of machine learning, computer vision, and computational biology. She is a regular speaker at AI events, and is particularly interested in outreach activities for young women, encouraging them to choose technical career paths. For her volunteering efforts, she has received the Arbor Award from UofT. She has been recognized as one of Canada’s 50 inspiring women in STEM (2018), one of Canada’s Tech Titans: Top 19 of 2019, and one of Forbes Magazine’s Women in AI to watch (2020). She was featured in Marie Claire, Toronto Life, The Globe and Mail, TWIML & AI podcast, ReWork’s list of 30 influential women in Canadian AI, UofT’s News, and other media venues, as well as the 2021 “See It Be It Stem It” calendar.