Latest Past Events

Overview of Blockchain Technology

Room: ENG 288, George Vari Centre for Computing and Engineering

Omid Sadeghi, serial entrepreneur and technology advisor, will be presenting “Overview of Blockchain Technology”. Day & Time: Monday November 13th, 2017 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. Speaker: Omid Sadeghi Director of BlockchainHub at York University Location: Room: ENG 288, George Vari Centre for Computing and Engineering 245 Church Street Toronto, Ontario M5B 2K3 Contact: Dr. Maryam Davoudpour Organizer: WIE IEEE Toronto, Instrumentation-Measurement/Robotics-Automation, Magnetics, and Computer Science Department of Ryerson University. Abstract: Blockchain protocol and technology are said by many to be among the greatest accomplishments of human intellect since the Internet. Blockchain is the software technology underlying what is commonly known as Bitcoin, however, the technology is not exclusive to Bitcoin. Swarms of innovators are working feverishly to design and deploy new business platforms that incorporate blockchain technology. In this session, we learn about the concepts of cryptocurrency and blockchain, what are the potential for this technology and when a blockchain solution would be applicable to an enterprise. Biography: Omid Sadeghi is a serial entrepreneur and technology advisor with domain expertise in commercialization and developing customer-centric products. Omid holds an undergraduate degree in Design Engineering and an MBA degree from Schulich School of business (Winner of more than $40,000 student awards). He is the director of BlockchainHub at York University to connect Research, education, and commercialization in Blockchain space. BlockchainHub currently run numerous educational programs and run various projects including setting up a state of the art Blockchain-based certification system for York University. Omid is active in building and supporting technology and engineering communities, especially in Toronto. He is on the advisory board of different blockchain initiatives and a board member of Professional Engineers of Ontario-ETC.

Fingerprints of Black-Box Optimization in Science and Engineering

Room ENG 210, George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre, 245 Church Street, Toronto, ON M5B 2K3

Monday November 13, 2017 at 3:00 p.m. Dr. Shahryar Rahnamayan will be presenting “Fingerprints of Black-Box Optimization in Science and Engineering”. Day & Time: Monday November 13, 2017 3:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. Speaker: Dr. Shahryar Rahnamayan Location: Room ENG 210 George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre 245 Church Street, Toronto, ON M5B 1Z4 Contact: Mehrdad Tirandazian Organizers: IEEE Toronto Systems Chapter Abstract: In this research seminar, the speaker will discuss his recent optimization research works and accomplishments, categorized in the following two main groups of contributions: theoretical/developmental and practical. The first group will cover his contributions in large-scale optimization, opposition-based computation, many-objective optimization, image-based large-scale visualization and interaction, incremental cooperative coevolution, micro-differential evolution, 3D visualization of many-objective Pareto-front, innovation, preserving constraint handling, decision making in high-dimensional objective space, and multi-modal optimization. In the practical category, the speaker will explain several real-world applications to demonstrate contributions of optimization in medical image processing, renewable energy systems, forensic science, vibration, scheduling, and wireless sensors network. In this talk, the essential role of complex black-box optimization in since and engineering will be highlighted. This seminar would be beneficial for faculty members and students who conduct “research in optimization” or “optimization in research”. Biography: Dr. Shahryar Rahnamayan received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees both with honors in software engineering. In 2007, he received his Ph.D. degree in the field of evolutionary computation from the University of Waterloo (UW), Canada. Since 2008, he is an associate professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Software Engineering, University of Ontario Institute of Technology. He is a faculty member of the BEACON Center (an NSF center for study of evolution in action) since 2014; and also adjunct professor at the Systems Design Engineering, University of Waterloo, since 2009. Dr. Rahnamayan was a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Engineering, Simon Fraser University, in 2008. His research is mainly focused on evolutionary computation and its real-world applications. Dr. Rahnamayan has 139 peer-reviewed publications mostly in evolutionary optimization areas, which received 3700 citations (h-index: 24); one of his high-impact journal papers in optimization ranked 23rd out of 194,000 in term of number of citations, 2008-2017. Dr. Rahnamayan co-founded Segasist Technologies Inc., which develops segmentation solutions for medical image analysis and radiation planning; the company raised over $2M and secured the FDA approval. Dr. Rahnamayan has been awarded several prestigious research grants, including, NSERC Discovery Grant and Applied Research and Commercialization Initiative Fund. He recently conducted research as a visiting associate professor at Michigan State University (MI, USA) for two years (2014-2016). Dr. Rahnamayan is an active reviewer for more than thirty international conference and journal papers. He has been awarded the UOIT Research Excellence Award in 2017.

Women in Robotics: Roboticist Dr. AJung Moon, Open Roboethics Institute

Normative (2nd Floor), 91 Oxford Street, Toronto, ON

Join us on November 7 to hear about the work of Dr. AJung Moon, founder and CEO of Generation R, and founder and Director of the Open Roboethics Institute (ORI). Dr. Moon has been speaking and advising internationally on roboethics issues since 2012. Her company, Generation R is the first consulting firm in the world to deliver ethics assessments of predictive algorithms for today’s businesses. Come and hear about her experiences working with the private sector, helping them assess their ethical risk as they implement these advanced technologies. Day & Time: Tuesday, November 7th, 2017 6:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Speaker: Dr. AJung Moon Founder and CEO of Generation R Founder and Director of the Open Roboethics Institute (ORI) Location: Normative (2nd Floor) 91 Oxford Street, Toronto, ON RVSP: https://www.meetup.com/Get-Your-Bot-On-Robotics-Hackathon/events/244379955/?_cookie-check=httj7lc1eoP6sV0S Contact: Dr. Maryam Davoudpour Organizer: IEEE Women in Engineering, Instrumentation/Robotics, Get Your Bot On! and more. Abstract: Ethics is increasingly becoming a buzz word in AI and robotics. Machine learning algorithms and robotics systems have been developed and used for years, but never before has the discussion about ethics of the technologies been getting so much attention. What is all this AI ethics and roboethics discussion all about? What ethical risks do you and your organization end up (often unknowingly) taking on as you increasingly implement machine autonomy into your organization? Most importantly, what can you do about them? Small and large companies today are struggling to innovate their operations with data-driven, predictive algorithms without the full understanding of what undesirable effects these algorithms can have on their organization and our society. As applications of robotics extend to areas outside of industrial environments, roboticists are increasingly noticing the importance for designers and policy makers to address the question of “What should a robot do?” It turns out that discussions about ethics becomes quite sexy when mixed with autonomous, intelligent technologies. Dr. Moon will share relevant studies and examples (from right here in Canada!) to paint a broad landscape of the fascinating world of AI ethics and roboethics. Note: Dr. Moon will also give an academic talk at the University of Toronto Institute for Robotics and Mechatronics on Nov 7 at 5pm where she will present technical and non-technical approaches to integrating ethics in the design of technological systems. Agenda: 6:30 pm – Networking 7:00 pm – Speaker and Q & A 8:00 pm – Networking 9:00 pm – Close Biography: Dr. AJung Moon is a roboticist on a mission to make ethics a core part of AI and robotics technologies. She is a founder and CEO of Generation R, the first consulting firm in the world to deliver ethics assessment of predictive algorithms for today’s businesses. She is also a founder and Director of the Open Roboethics Institute (ORI), an international think tank that has been spearheading open discussions on roboethics topics since 2012. She holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering (Vanier Scholar) from the University of British Columbia with a specialization in the design of human-inspired interactive robot behaviours and roboethics. She advises numerous national and international organizations on ethical and societal implications of AI and robotics, including the OECD, ICRC, and the United Nations Convention on Conventional Weapons. She serves on the Executive Committee of The IEEE Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations in AI and Autonomous Systems and served as a founder and co-chair of the IEEE Global Initiative’s committee on embedding values into autonomous intelligent systems. She is a co-chair of the Canadian Robotics Strategy, and a panelist of the International Panel on the Regulation of Autonomous Weapons (IPRAW). Now she is excited to be on the program committee of the new, AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society.