Monthly Archives: May 2021

US Army researchers’ vision for artificial intelligence and ethics

The US Army peeks into a near future where humans and some forms of artificial intelligence (AI) work together in battle and elsewhere. From a February 3, 2021 U.S. Army Research Laboratory news release (also on EurekAlert but published on February 16, 2021),

The Army of the future will involve humans and autonomous machines working together to accomplish the mission. According to Army researchers, this vision will only succeed if artificial intelligence is perceived to be ethical.
Researchers, based at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, now known as DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory, Northeastern University and the University of Southern California, expanded existing research to cover moral dilemmas and decision making that has not been pursued elsewhere.
This research, featured in Frontiers in Robotics and AI, tackles the fundamental challenge of developing ethical artificial intelligence, which, according to the researchers, is still mostly understudied.
“Autonomous machines, such as automated vehicles and robots, are poised to become pervasive in the Army,” said DEVCOM ARL researcher Dr. Celso de Melo, who is located at the laboratory’s ARL West regional site in Playa Vista, California. “These machines will inevitably face moral dilemmas where they must make decisions that could very well injure humans.”
For example, de Melo said, imagine that an automated vehicle is driving in a tunnel and suddenly five pedestrians cross the street; the vehicle must decide whether to continue moving forward injuring the pedestrians or swerve towards the wall risking the driver.
What should the automated vehicle do in this situation?
Prior work has framed these dilemmas in starkly simple terms, framing decisions as life and death, de Melo said, neglecting the influence of risk of injury to the involved parties on the outcome.
“By expanding the study of moral dilemmas to consider the risk profile of the situation, we significantly expanded the space of acceptable solutions for these dilemmas,” de Melo said. “In so doing, we contributed to the development of autonomous technology that abides to acceptable moral norms and thus is more likely to be adopted in practice and accepted by the general public.”
The researchers focused on this gap and presented experimental evidence that, in a moral dilemma with automated vehicles, the likelihood of making the utilitarian choice – which minimizes the overall injury risk to humans and, in this case, saves the pedestrians – was moderated by the perceived risk of injury to pedestrians and drivers.
In their study, participants were found more likely to make the utilitarian choice with decreasing risk to the driver and with increasing risk to the pedestrians. However, interestingly, most were willing to risk the driver (i.e., self-sacrifice), even if the risk to the pedestrians was lower than to the driver.
As a second contribution, the researchers also demonstrated that participants’ moral decisions were influenced by what other decision makers do – for instance, participants were less likely to make the utilitarian choice, if others often chose the non-utilitarian choice.
“This research advances the state-of-the-art in the study of moral dilemmas involving autonomous machines by shedding light on the role of risk on moral choices,” de Melo said. “Further, both of these mechanisms introduce opportunities to develop AI that will be perceived to make decisions that meet moral standards, as well as introduce an opportunity to use technology to shape human behavior and promote a more moral society.”
For the Army, this research is particularly relevant to Army modernization, de Melo said.
“As these vehicles become increasingly autonomous and operate in complex and dynamic environments, they are bound to face situations where injury to humans is unavoidable,” de Melo said. “This research informs how to navigate these moral dilemmas and make decisions that will be perceived as optimal given the circumstances; for example, minimizing overall risk to human life.”
Moving in to the future, researchers will study this type of risk-benefit analysis in Army moral dilemmas and articulate the corresponding practical implications for the development of AI systems.
“When deployed at scale, the decisions made by AI systems can be very consequential, in particular for situations involving risk to human life,” de Melo said. “It is critical that AI is able to make decisions that reflect society’s ethical standards to facilitate adoption by the Army and acceptance by the general public. This research contributes to realizing this vision by clarifying some of the key factors shaping these standards. This research is personally important because AI is expected to have considerable impact to the Army of the future; however, what kind of impact will be defined by the values reflected in that AI.”

The last time I had an item on a similar topic from the US Army Research Laboratory (ARL) it was in a March 26, 2018 posting; scroll down to the subhead, US Army (about 50% of the way down),

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“As machine agents become more sophisticated and independent, it is critical for their human counterparts to understand their intent, behaviors, reasoning process behind those behaviors, and expected outcomes so the humans can properly calibrate their trust [emphasis mine] in the systems and make appropriate decisions,” explained ARL’s Dr. Jessie Chen, senior research psychologist.
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This latest work also revolves around the issue of trust according to the last sentence in the 2021 study paper (link and citation to follow),

… Overall, these questions emphasize the importance of the kind of experimental work presented here, as it has the potential to shed light on people’s preferences about moral behavior in machines, inform the design of autonomous machines people are likely to trust and adopt, and, perhaps, even introduce an opportunity to promote a more moral society. [emphases mine]

From trust to adoption to a more moral society—that’s an interesting progression. For another more optimistic view of how robots and AI can have positive impacts there’s my March 29, 2021 posting, Little Lost Robot and humane visions of our technological future

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Risk of Injury in Moral Dilemmas With Autonomous Vehicles by Celso M. de Melo, Stacy Marsella, and Jonathan Gratch. Front. Robot. AI [Frontiers in Robotics and AI], 20 January 2021 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2020.572529

This paper is in an open access journal.

Not a pretty picture: Canada and a patent rights waiver for COVID-19 vaccines

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At about 7:15 am PT this morning , May 13, 2021, I saw Dr. Mona Nemer’s (Canada’s Chief Science Advisor) tweet (Note: I’m sorry the formatting isn’t better,

Maryse de la Giroday@frogheart Does this mean Canada will support a waiver on patent rights for COVID-19 vaccines?
7:18 AM · May 13, 2021
Dr. Mona Nemer@ChiefSciCanThe global health crisis of the past year has underscored the critical importance of openly sharing scientific information. We are one step closer to making #openscience a reality around the world. So pleased that my office was part of these discussions. http://webcast.unesco.org/events/2021-05-OS-IGM/ Quote Tweet
Canada at UNESCO@Canada2UNESCO · May 6@Canada2UNESCO is partaking in negotiations today on the draft recommendation on #OpenScience The benefits of #science and #technology to health, the #economy and #development should be available to all.6:40 AM · May 13, 2021·Twitter Web App

No reply. No surprise

Brief summary of Canada’s COVID-19 patent rights nonwaiver

You’ll find more about the UNESCO meeting on open science in last week’s May 7, 2021 posting (Listen in on a UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) meeting [about Open Science]).

At the time, I noted a disparity in Canada’s policies centering on open science and patents; scroll down to the “Comments on open science and intellectual property in Canada” subsection for a more nuanced analysis. For those who don’t have the patience and/or the time, it boils down to this:

Canada is happily participating in a UNESCO meeting on open science,
the 2021 Canadian federal budget just dedicated a big chunk of money to augmenting Canada’s national patent strategy, and
Canada is “willing to discuss” a waiver at the World Trade Organization (WTO) meetings.

I predicted UNESCO would see our representative’s enthusiastic participation while our representative at the WTO meeting would dance around the topic without committing. to anything. Sadly, it’s starting to look like I was right.

Leigh Beadon in a May 12, 2021 posting on Techdirt reveals the situation is worse than I thought (Note: Links have been removed),

Few things illustrate the broken state of our global intellectual property system better than the fact that, well over a year into this devastating pandemic and in the face of a strong IP waiver push by some of the hardest hit countries, patents are still holding back the production of life-saving vaccines. And of all the countries opposing a waiver at the WTO (or withholding support for it, which is functionally the same thing), Canada might be the most frustrating [emphasis mine].
Canada is the biggest hoarder [emphasis mine] of vaccine pre-orders, having secured enough to vaccinate the population five times over. Despite this, it has constantly run into supply problems and lagged behind comparable countries when it comes to administering the vaccines on a per capita basis. In response to criticism of its hoarding, the government continues to focus on its plans to donate all surplus doses to the COVAX vaccine sharing program — but these promises were somewhat more convincing before Canada became the only G7 country to withdraw doses from COVAX. Despite all this, and despite pressure from experts who explain how vaccine hoarding will prolong the pandemic for everyone, the country has continually refused to voice its support for a TRIPS patent waiver at the WTO.
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Momentum for changing Canada’s position on a COVID-19 vaccine patent right waivers?

Maclean’s magazine has a May 10, 2021 open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau,

Dear Prime Minister Trudeau,
…
The only way to combat this pandemic successfully is through a massive global vaccination campaign on a scale and timeline never before undertaken. This requires the production of effective tools and technologies to fight COVID-19 at scale and coordinated global distribution efforts.
The Trade-Related Aspect of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement at the World Trade Organization (WTO) is leading to the opposite outcome. Vaccine production is hindered by granting pharmaceutical companies monopoly power through protection of intellectual property rights, industrial designs and trade secrets. Pharmaceutical companies’ refusal to engage in health technology knowledge transfer makes large-scale, global vaccine production in (and for) low- and middle-income countries all but impossible. The current distribution of vaccines globally speaks to these obstacles.
Hundreds of civil society groups, the World Health Organization (WHO), and the elected governments of over 100 countries, including India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have come together and stated that current intellectual property protections reduce the availability of vaccines for protecting their people. On May 5, 2021 the United States also announced its intention to support a temporary waiver for vaccines at the WTO.
We are writing to ask our Canadian government to demonstrate its commitment to an equitable global pandemic response by supporting a temporary waiver of the TRIPS agreement. But clearly that is a necessary but not a sufficient first step. We recognize that scaling up vaccine production requires more than just a waiver of intellectual property rights, so we further request that our government support the WHO’s COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) to facilitate knowledge sharing and work with the WTO to address the supply chain and export constraints currently impeding vaccine production. Finally, because vaccines must be rolled out as part of an integrated strategy to end the acute phase of the epidemic, we request that Canada support the full scope of the TRIPS waiver, which extends to all essential COVID-19 products and technologies, including vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics.
The status quo is clearly not working fast enough to end the acute phase of the pandemic globally. This waiver respects global intellectual property frameworks and takes advantage of existing provisions for exceptions during emergencies, as enshrined in the TRIPS agreement. Empowering countries to take measures to protect their own people is fundamental to bringing this pandemic to an end.
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Anand Giridharadas (author of the 2018 book, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World) also makes the case for a patent rights waiver in his May 11, 2021 posting on The Ink, Note: A link has been removed,

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Patents are temporary monopolies granted to inventors, to reward invention and thus encourage more of it. But what happens when you invent a drug that people around the world require to stay alive? What happens when, furthermore, that drug was built in part on technology the public paid for? Are there limits to intellectual property?
For years, activists have pressured the United States government to break or suspend patents in particular cases, as with HIV/Aids. They have had little luck. Indeed, the United States has often fought developing countries when they try to break patents to do right by their citizens, choosing American drug companies over dying people.
So it was a dramatic swerve when, last week, the Biden administration announced that it supported a waiver of the patents for Covid vaccines.
Not long afterward, I reached out to several leading activists for vaccine access to understand the significance of the announcement and where we go from here.
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in all this talk about patents and social justice and, whether it’s directly referenced or not, money, the only numbers of I’ve seen,until recently, have been numbers of doses and aggregate costs.

How much does a single vaccine dose cost?

A Sunday, April 11, 2021 article by Krassen Nikolov for EURACTIV provides an answer about the cost in one region, the European Union,

“Pfizer cost €12, then €15.50. The Commission now signs contracts for €19,50”, Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov revealed on Sunday [April 11, 2021].
The European Commission is in talks with Pfizer for the supply of COVID-19 vaccines in 2022 and 2023. Borissov said the contracts provide for €19.50 per dose.
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Under an agreement with the vaccine producing companies, the European Commission has so far refused to reveal the price of vaccines. However, last December Belgian Secretary of State Eva De Bleeker shared on Twitter the vaccine prices negotiated by the Commission, as well as the number of doses purchased by her government. Then, it became known that the AstraZeneca jab costs €1.78 compared to €12 for Pfizer-BioNTech.
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€12 to €19,50, that’s an increase of over 50%. I wonder how Pfizer is justifying such a hefty increase?

According to a March 16, 2021 article by Swikar Oli for the National Post (a Canadian newspaper), these prices are a cheap pandemic special prices,

A top Pfizer executive told shareholders the company is looking at a “significant opportunity” to raise the price of its Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.
While addressing investors at the virtual Barclays Global Healthcare Conference last week, Pfizer CFO Frank D’Amelio noted they could raise prices when the virus becomes endemic, meaning it’s regularly found in clusters around the globe, according to a transcript of the conference posted on Pfizer’s website.
Current vaccine pricing models are pandemic-related, D’Amelio explained. After the pandemic is defeated and “normal market conditions” arrive, he noted the window would open for a “significant opportunity…from a pricing perspective.”
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“So the one price that we published is the price with the U.S. of $19.50 per dose. Obviously, that’s not a normal price like we typically get for a vaccine, $150, $175 [emphasis mine] per dose,” he said, “So pandemic pricing.”

If I remember it rightly, as you increase production, you lower costs per unit. In other words, it’s cheaper to produce one dozen than one, which is why your bakery charges you less money per bun or cake if you purchase by the dozen.

During this pandemic, Pfizer has been producing huge amounts of vaccine, which they would not expect to do should the disease become endemic. As Pfizer has increased production, I would think the price should be dropping but according to the Bulgarian prime minister, it’s not.

They don’t seem to be changing the vaccine as new variants arrive. So, raising the prices doesn’t seem to be linked to research issues and as for the new production facilities, surely those didn’t cost billions.

Canada and COVID-19 money

Talking about money, Canada has a COVDI-19 billionaire according to a December 23, 2020 article (Meet The 50 Doctors, Scientists And Healthcare Entrepreneurs Who Became Pandemic Billionaires In 2020) by Giacomo Tognini for Forbes.

I have a bit more about Carl Hansen (COVID-19 billionaire) and his company, AbCellera, in my December 30, 2020 posting.

I wonder how much the Canadian life sciences community has to do with Canada’s hesitancy over a COVID-19 vaccine patent rights waiver.

TRIUMF (Canada’s national particle accelerator centre) welcomes Nigel Smith as its new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) on May 17, 2021and some Hollywood news

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I have two bits of news as noted in the headline. There’s news about TRIUMF located on the University of British Columbia (UBC) endowment lands and news about Dr. Suzanne Simard (UBC Forestry) and her memoir, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Fores.

Nigel Smith and TRIUMF (Canada’s national particle accelerator centre)

As soon as I saw his first name, Nigel, I bet myself he’d be from the UK (more about that later in this posting). This is TRIUMF’s third CEO since I started science blogging in May 2008. When I first started it was called TRIUMF (Canada’s National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics) but these days it’s TRIUMF (Canada’s national particle accelerator centre).

As for the organization’s latest CEO, here’s more from a TRIUMF February 12, 2021 announcement page ( the text is identical to TRIUMF’s February 12, 2021 press release),

Dr. Nigel Smith, Executive Director of SNOLAB, has been selected to serve as the next Director of TRIUMF.
Succeeding Dr. Jonathan Bagger, who departed TRIUMF in January 2021 to become CEO of the American Physical Society, Dr. Smith’s appointment comes as the result of a highly competitive, six-month international search. Dr. Smith will begin his 5-year term as TRIUMF Director on May 17, 2021.
“I am truly honoured to have been selected as the next Director of TRIUMF”, said Dr. Smith. “I have long been engaged with TRIUMF’s vibrant community and have been really impressed with the excellence of its science, capabilities and people. TRIUMF plays a unique and vital role in Canada’s research ecosystem and I look forward to help continue the legacy of excellence upheld by Dr. Jonathan Bagger and the previous TRIUMF Directors”.
Describing what interested him in the position, Smith spoke to the breadth and impact of TRIUMF’s diverse science programs, stating “TRIUMF has an amazing portfolio of research covering fundamental and applied science that also delivers tangible societal impact through its range of medical and commercialisation initiatives. I am extremely excited to have the opportunity to lead a laboratory with such a broad and world-leading science program.”
“Nigel brings all the necessary skills and background to the role of Director,” said Dr. Digvir Jayas, Interim Director of TRIUMF, Chair of the TRIUMF Board of Management, and Vice-President, Research and International at the University of Manitoba. “As Executive Director of SNOLAB, Dr. Smith is both a renowned researcher and experienced laboratory leader who offers a tremendous track record of success spanning the local, national, and international spheres. The Board of Management is thrilled to bring Nigel’s expertise to TRIUMF so he may help guide the laboratory through many of the exciting developments on the horizon.
Dr. Smith joins TRIUMF at an important period in the laboratory’s history, moving into the second year of our current Five-Year Plan (2020-2025) and preparing to usher in a new era of science and innovation that will include the completion of the Advance Rare Isotope Laboratory (ARIEL) and the Institute for Advanced Medical Isotopes (IAMI) [not to be confused with Amii {Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute}]. This new infrastructure, alongside TRIUMF’s existing facilities and world-class research programs, will solidify Canada’s position as a global leader in both fundamental and applied research.
Dr. Smith expressed his optimism for TRIUMF, saying “I am delighted to have this opportunity, and it will be a pleasure to lead the laboratory through this next exciting phase of our growth and evolution.”

Smith is leaving what is probably one of the more unusual laboratories, at a depth of 2km, SNOLAB is the deepest, cleanest laboratory in the world. (more information either at SNOLAB or its Wikipedia entry.)

Is Smith from the UK? Some clues

I found my subsequent clues on SNOLAB’s ‘bio’ page for Dr. Nigel Smith,

Nigel Smith joined SNOLAB as Director during July 2009. He currently holds a full Professorship at Laurentian University, adjunct Professor status at Queen’s University, and a visiting Professorial chair at Imperial College, London. He received his Bachelor of Science in physics from Leeds University in the U.K. in 1985 and his Ph. D. in astrophysics from Leeds in 1991. He has served as a lecturer at Leeds University, a research associate at Imperial College London, group leader (dark matter) and deputy division head at the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, before relocating to Canada to oversee the SNOLAB deep underground facility.

The answer would seem to be yes, Nigel James Telfer Smith is originally from the UK.

I don’t know if this is going to be a trend but this is the second ‘Nigel” to lead TRIUMF. (The Nigels are now tied with the Johns and the Alans. Of course, the letter ‘j’ seems the most popular with four names, John, John, Jack, and Jonathan.) Here’s a list of TRIUMF’s previous CEOs (from the TRIUMF Wikipedia entry),

Since its inception, TRIUMF has had eight directors [now nine] overseeing its operations.

John Warren – 1968–1971
John Reginald Richardson – 1971–1976
Jack Sample – 1976–1981
Erich Vogt – 1981–1994
Alan Astbury – 1994–2001
Alan Shotter – 2001–2007
Nigel S Lockyer – 2007–2013
Jonathan A Bagger – 2014–present [Bagger’s appointment as the CEO for the American Physical Society was announced on August 13, 2020]

The first Nigel (Lockyer) is described as an American in his Wikipedia entry. He was born in Scotland and raised in Canada. However, he has spent the majority of his adult life in the US, other than the five or six years at TRIUMF. So, previous Nigel also started life in the UK.

Good luck to the new Nigel.

UBC forestry professor, Suzanne Simard’s memoir going to the movies?

Given that Simard’s memoir, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, was published last week on May 4, 2021, this is very heady news,. From a May 12, 2021 article by Cassandra Gill for the Daily Hive (Note: Links have been removed),

Jake Gyllenhaal is bringing the story of a UBC professor to the big screen.
The Oscar nominee’s production company, Nine Stories, is producing a film based on Suzanne Simard’s memoir, Finding the Mother Tree.
Amy Adams is set to play Simard, who is a forest ecology expert renowned for her research on plants and fungi.
Adams is also co-producing the film with Gyllenhaal through her own company, Bond Group Entertainment.
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The BC native [Simard] developed an interest in trees and the outdoors through her close relationship with her grandfather, who was a horse logger.
Her 30 year career and early life is documented in the memoir, which was released last week on May 4 [2021]. Simard explores how trees have evolved, have memories, and are the foundation of our planet’s ecosystem — along with her own personal experiences with grief.
The scientists’ [sic] influence has had influence in popular culture, notably in James Cameron’s 2009 film Avatar. The giant willow-like “Tree of Souls” was specifically inspired by Simard’s work.
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No mention of a script and no mention of financing, so, it could be a while before we see the movie on Netflix, Apple+, HBO, or maybe a movie house (if they’re open by then).

I think the script may prove to the more challenging aspect of this project. Here’s the description of Simard’s memoir (from the Finding the Mother Tree webpage on suzannesimard.com)

From the world’s leading forest ecologist who forever changed how people view trees and their connections to one another and to other living things in the forest–a moving, deeply personal journey of discovery.
About the Book
In her first book, Simard brings us into her world, the intimate world of the trees, in which she brilliantly illuminates the fascinating and vital truths – that trees are not simply the source of timber or pulp, but are a complex, interdependent circle of life; that forests are social, cooperative creatures connected through underground networks by which trees communicate their vitality and vulnerabilities with communal lives not that different from our own.
Simard writes – in inspiring, illuminating, and accessible ways – how trees, living side by side for hundreds of years, have evolved, how they perceive one another, learn and adapt their behaviors, recognize neighbors, and remember the past; how they have agency about the future; elicit warnings and mount defenses, compete and cooperate with one another with sophistication, characteristics ascribed to human intelligence, traits that are the essence of civil societies – and at the center of it all, the Mother Trees: the mysterious, powerful forces that connect and sustain the others that surround them.

How does Simard’s process of understanding trees and conceptualizing a ‘mother tree’ get put into a script for a movie that’s not a documentary or an animation?

Movies are moving pictures, yes? How do you introduce movement and action in a script heavily focused on trees, which operate on a timescale that’s vastly different.

It’s an interesting problem and I look forward to seeing how it’s resolved. I wish them good luck.

Exotic magnetism: a quantum simulation from D-Wave Sytems

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Vancouver (Canada) area company, D-Wave Systems is trumpeting itself (with good reason) again. This 2021 ‘milestone’ achievement builds on work from 2018 (see my August 23, 2018 posting for the earlier work). For me, the big excitement was finding the best explanation for quantum annealing and D-Wave’s quantum computers that I’ve seen yet (that explanation and a link to more is at the end of this posting).

A February 18, 2021 news item on phys.org announces the latest achievement,

D-Wave Systems Inc. today [February 18, 2021] published a milestone study in collaboration with scientists at Google, demonstrating a computational performance advantage, increasing with both simulation size and problem hardness, to over 3 million times that of corresponding classical methods. Notably, this work was achieved on a practical application with real-world implications, simulating the topological phenomena behind the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics. This performance advantage, exhibited in a complex quantum simulation of materials, is a meaningful step in the journey toward applications advantage in quantum computing.
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A February 18, 2021 D-Wave Systems press release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, describes the work in more detail,

The work by scientists at D-Wave and Google also demonstrates that quantum effects can be harnessed to provide a computational advantage in D-Wave processors, at problem scale that requires thousands of qubits. Recent experiments performed on multiple D-Wave processors represent by far the largest quantum simulations carried out by existing quantum computers to date.
The paper, entitled “Scaling advantage over path-integral Monte Carlo in quantum simulation of geometrically frustrated magnets”, was published in the journal Nature Communications (DOI 10.1038/s41467-021-20901-5, February 18, 2021). D-Wave researchers programmed the D-Wave 2000Q™ system to model a two-dimensional frustrated quantum magnet using artificial spins. The behavior of the magnet was described by the Nobel-prize winning work of theoretical physicists Vadim Berezinskii, J. Michael Kosterlitz and David Thouless. They predicted a new state of matter in the 1970s characterized by nontrivial topological properties. This new research is a continuation of previous breakthrough work published by D-Wave’s team in a 2018 Nature paper entitled “Observation of topological phenomena in a programmable lattice of 1,800 qubits” (Vol. 560, Issue 7719, August 22, 2018). In this latest paper, researchers from D-Wave, alongside contributors from Google, utilize D-Wave’s lower noise processor to achieve superior performance and glean insights into the dynamics of the processor never observed before.
“This work is the clearest evidence yet that quantum effects provide a computational advantage in D-Wave processors,” said Dr. Andrew King, principal investigator for this work at D-Wave. “Tying the magnet up into a topological knot and watching it escape has given us the first detailed look at dynamics that are normally too fast to observe. What we see is a huge benefit in absolute terms, with the scaling advantage in temperature and size that we would hope for. This simulation is a real problem that scientists have already attacked using the algorithms we compared against, marking a significant milestone and an important foundation for future development. This wouldn’t have been possible today without D-Wave’s lower noise processor.”
“The search for quantum advantage in computations is becoming increasingly lively because there are special problems where genuine progress is being made. These problems may appear somewhat contrived even to physicists, but in this paper from a collaboration between D-Wave Systems, Google, and Simon Fraser University [SFU], it appears that there is an advantage for quantum annealing using a special purpose processor over classical simulations for the more ‘practical’ problem of finding the equilibrium state of a particular quantum magnet,” said Prof. Dr. Gabriel Aeppli, professor of physics at ETH Zürich and EPF Lausanne, and head of the Photon Science Division of the Paul Scherrer Institute. “This comes as a surprise given the belief of many that quantum annealing has no intrinsic advantage over path integral Monte Carlo programs implemented on classical processors.”
“Nascent quantum technologies mature into practical tools only when they leave classical counterparts in the dust in solving real-world problems,” said Hidetoshi Nishimori, Professor, Institute of Innovative Research, Tokyo Institute of Technology. “A key step in this direction has been achieved in this paper by providing clear evidence of a scaling advantage of the quantum annealer over an impregnable classical computing competitor in simulating dynamical properties of a complex material. I send sincere applause to the team.”
“Successfully demonstrating such complex phenomena is, on its own, further proof of the programmability and flexibility of D-Wave’s quantum computer,” said D-Wave CEO Alan Baratz. “But perhaps even more important is the fact that this was not demonstrated on a synthetic or ‘trick’ problem. This was achieved on a real problem in physics against an industry-standard tool for simulation–a demonstration of the practical value of the D-Wave processor. We must always be doing two things: furthering the science and increasing the performance of our systems and technologies to help customers develop applications with real-world business value. This kind of scientific breakthrough from our team is in line with that mission and speaks to the emerging value that it’s possible to derive from quantum computing today.”
The scientific achievements presented in Nature Communications further underpin D-Wave’s ongoing work with world-class customers to develop over 250 early quantum computing applications, with a number piloting in production applications, in diverse industries such as manufacturing, logistics, pharmaceutical, life sciences, retail and financial services. In September 2020, D-Wave brought its next-generation Advantage™ quantum system to market via the Leap™ quantum cloud service. The system includes more than 5,000 qubits and 15-way qubit connectivity, as well as an expanded hybrid solver service capable of running business problems with up to one million variables. The combination of Advantage’s computing power and scale with the hybrid solver service gives businesses the ability to run performant, real-world quantum applications for the first time.

That last paragraph seems more sales pitch than research oriented. It’s not unexpected in a company’s press release but I was surprised that the editors at EurekAlert didn’t remove it.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the latest paper,

Scaling advantage over path-integral Monte Carlo in quantum simulation of geometrically frustrated magnets by Andrew D. King, Jack Raymond, Trevor Lanting, Sergei V. Isakov, Masoud Mohseni, Gabriel Poulin-Lamarre, Sara Ejtemaee, William Bernoudy, Isil Ozfidan, Anatoly Yu. Smirnov, Mauricio Reis, Fabio Altomare, Michael Babcock, Catia Baron, Andrew J. Berkley, Kelly Boothby, Paul I. Bunyk, Holly Christiani, Colin Enderud, Bram Evert, Richard Harris, Emile Hoskinson, Shuiyuan Huang, Kais Jooya, Ali Khodabandelou, Nicolas Ladizinsky, Ryan Li, P. Aaron Lott, Allison J. R. MacDonald, Danica Marsden, Gaelen Marsden, Teresa Medina, Reza Molavi, Richard Neufeld, Mana Norouzpour, Travis Oh, Igor Pavlov, Ilya Perminov, Thomas Prescott, Chris Rich, Yuki Sato, Benjamin Sheldan, George Sterling, Loren J. Swenson, Nicholas Tsai, Mark H. Volkmann, Jed D. Whittaker, Warren Wilkinson, Jason Yao, Hartmut Neven, Jeremy P. Hilton, Eric Ladizinsky, Mark W. Johnson, Mohammad H. Amin. Nature Communications volume 12, Article number: 1113 (2021) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-20901-5 Published: 18 February 2021

This paper is open access.

Quantum annealing and more

Dr. Andrew King, one of the D-Wave researchers, has written a February 18, 2021 article on Medium explaining some of the work. I’ve excerpted one of King’s points,

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Insight #1: We observed what actually goes on under the hood in the processor for the first time
Quantum annealing — the approach adopted by D-Wave from the beginning — involves setting up a simple but purely quantum initial state, and gradually reducing the “quantumness” until the system is purely classical. This takes on the order of a microsecond. If you do it right, the classical system represents a hard (NP-complete) computational problem, and the state has evolved to an optimal, or at least near-optimal, solution to that problem.
What happens at the beginning and end of the computation are about as simple as quantum computing gets. But the action in the middle is hard to get a handle on, both theoretically and experimentally. That’s one reason these experiments are so important: they provide high-fidelity measurements of the physical processes at the core of quantum annealing. Our 2018 Nature article introduced the same simulation, but without measuring computation time. To benchmark the experiment this time around, we needed lower-noise hardware (in this case, we used the D-Wave 2000Q lower noise quantum computer), and we needed, strangely, to slow the simulation down. Since the quantum simulation happens so fast, we actually had to make things harder. And we had to find a way to slow down both quantum and classical simulation in an equitable way. The solution? Topological obstruction.
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If you have time and the inclination, I encourage you to read King’s piece.

May 12, 2021 webcast: a solution to the ‘matchmaker’s dilemma’ (a mathematical problem)

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Canada’s Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI) is hosting a May 12, 2021 webcast according to their May 7, 2021 announcement (received via email),

A Solution to the Stable Marriage Problem
WEDNESDAY, MAY 12 [2021] at 7 pm ET
Imagine a matchmaker who wishes to arrange opposite-sex marriages in a dating pool of single men and single women (there’s a mathematical reason for the heteronormative framework, which will be explained).
The matchmaker’s goal is to pair every man and woman off into couples that will form happy, stable marriages – so perfectly matched that nobody would rather run off with someone from a different pairing.
In the real world, things don’t work out so nicely. But could they work out like that if the matchmaker had a computer algorithm to calculate every single factor of compatibility?
In her Perimeter Public Lecture, mathematician Emily Riehl (Johns Hopkins University) will examine that question, its sexist implications, an algorithmic solution, and real-world applications.

There is a bit more about Emily Riehl on the event page for ‘A Solution to the Stable Marriage Problem’,

An associate professor of mathematics at Johns Hopkins University, Riehl has published more than 20 papers and two books on higher category theory and homotopy theory. She studied at Harvard and Cambridge and earned her PhD at the University of Chicago.
In addition to her research, Riehl is active in promoting access to the world of mathematics. She is a co-founder of Spectra: the Association for LGBT Mathematicians, and has presented on mathematical proof and queer epistemology as part of several conferences and lecture series.
Tune in on Wednesday, May 12 [2021] at 7 pm ET for the premiere of Riehl’s lecture, and subscribe to Perimeter’s YouTube channel for more fascinating science videos.

Listen in on a UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) meeting (about Open Science)

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If you are intrigued* by the idea of sitting in on a UNESCO meeting, in this case, the Intergovernmental special committee meeting (Category II) related to the draft UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, there is an opportunity.

Before getting to the opportunity, I want to comment on how smart the UNESCO communications/press office has been. Interest in relaxing COVID-19 vaccine patent rules is gaining momentum (May 6, 2021 Associated Press news item on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation [CBC]) and a decision was made in the press office (?) to capitalize on this momentum as a series of UNESCO meetings about open science are taking place. Well done!

Later in this post, I have a few comments about the intellectual property scene and open science in Canada.

UNESCO’s open meeting

According to the May 7, 2021 UNESCO press release no. 42 (received via email),

UNESCO welcomes move to lift the patent on the vaccines and pushes for
Open Science
Paris, 7 May [2021] -“The decision of the United States and many other
countries to call for the lifting of patent protection for coronavirus
vaccines could save millions of lives and serve as a blueprint for the
future of scientific cooperation. COVID-19 does not respect borders. No
country will be safe until the people of every country have access to
the vaccine,” said UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay.
This growing momentum comes in response to the joint appeal made by
UNESCO, the WHO [World Health Organization] and the UNHCR [United Nations Commission on Human Rights] to open up science and boost scientific
cooperation in October 2020. Early in the pandemic last spring, UNESCO
mobilized over 122 countries to promote Open Science and reinforced
international cooperation.
The pandemic triggered strong support for Open Science among Member
States for this agenda. Chinese scientists sequenced the genome of the
new coronavirus on 11 January 2020 and posted it online, enabling German
scientists to develop a screening test, which was then shared by the
World Health Organization with governments everywhere. 
Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the world has embarked on a new era of
scientific research, forcing all countries to construct the shared rules
and common norms we need to work more effectively in these changing
times.
The recent announcements of countries in favor of lifting patents show
the growing support for open scientific cooperation. They also coincide
with the five-day meeting of UNESCO Member States to define a global
standard-setting framework on Open Science, which aims to develop new
models for the circulation of scientific knowledge and its benefits,
including global commons.
The outcomes of the meeting will lead to a Global Recommendation on Open
Science to be adopted by UNESCO’s 193 Member States at the
Organization’s General Conference in November 2021. This
Recommendation aims to be a driver for shared global access to data,
publications, patents, software, educational resources and technological
innovations and to reengage all of society in science.
More Information on UNESCO’s Open Science meeting:
https://events.unesco.org/event?id=1907937890&lang=1033 [1]

After clicking on UNESCO’s events link (in the above), you’ll be sent to a page where you’ll be invited to link to a live webcast (it’s live if there’s a session taking place and there will be on May 10, May 11, and May 12, 2021). If you’re on the West Coast of Canada or the US, add nine hours since the meeting is likely taking place on Paris (France) time (so at 2 pm PT, you’re not likely to hear anything), where UNESCO is headquartered. When you get to the page hosting the live webcast, click on the tab listing the current day’s date.

I managed to listen to some of the meeting this morning (May 7, 2021) at about 8 am my time; for the participants, it was a meeting that ran late. The thrill is being able to attend or listen in. From a content perspective, you probably need to be serious about open science and the language used to define it and make recommendations about it.

Comments on open science and intellectual property in Canada

Mentioned earlier was the rising momentum for relaxing COVID-19 vaccine patent rules, I looked carefully at the May 6, 2021 Associated Press news item on CBC] and couldn’t find any evidence that Canada is actively supporting the idea. However, the Canadian government has indicated a willingness to discuss relaxing the rules,

France joined the United States on Thursday [May 6, 2021] in supporting an easing of patent protections on COVID-19 vaccines that could help poorer countries get more doses and speed the end of the pandemic. While the backing from two countries with major drugmakers is important, many obstacles remain.
The United States’ support for waiving the protections marked a dramatic shift in its position. Still, even just one country voting against such a waiver would be enough to block efforts at the World Trade Organization [WTO].
With the Biden administration’s announcement on Wednesday [May 5, 2021], the U.S. became the first country in the developed world with big vaccine manufacturing to publicly support the waiver idea floated by India and South Africa last October at the WTO.
“I completely favour this opening up of the intellectual property,” French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday [May 6, 2021] on a visit to a vaccine centre.
…
Many other leaders chimed in — though few expressed direct support. Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio wrote on Facebook that the U.S. announcement was “a very important signal” and that the world needs “free access” to patents for the vaccines.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison called the U.S. position “great news” but did not directly respond to a question about whether his country would support a waiver.
Canada’s International Trade Minister Mary Ng told the House of Commons on Thursday that the federal government will “actively participate” in talks to waive the global rules that protect vaccine trade secrets. [emphases mine]
[Canada’s] International Development Minister Karina Gould said the U.S. support for waiving patents is “a really important step in this conversation.” [emphases mine]

Big difference between supporting something and talking about it, eh?

Open science in Canada

Back in 2016, the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI or Montreal Neuro) in Québec, Canada was the first academic institution in the world to embrace an open science policy. Here’s the relevant excerpt from my January 22, 2016 posting (the posting describes the place that Montreal Neuro occupies historically in Canada and on the global stage),

.. David Bruggeman tells the story in a Jan. 21, 2016 posting on his Pasco Phronesis blog (Note: Links have been removed),
The Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) at McGill University announced that it will be the first academic research institute to become what it calls ‘Open Science.’ As Science is reporting, the MNI will make available all research results and research data at the time of publication. Additionally it will not seek patents on any of the discoveries made on research at the Institute. [emphasis mine]
…
Will this catch on? I have no idea if this particular combination of open access research data and results with no patents will spread to other university research institutes. But I do believe that those elements will continue to spread. More universities and federal agencies are pursuing open access options for research they support. Elon Musk has opted to not pursue patent litigation for any of Tesla Motors’ patents, and has not pursued patents for SpaceX technology (though it has pursued litigation over patents in rocket technology). …

What about intellectual property (IP) and the 2021 federal budget?

Interestingly, the 2021 Canadian federal budget, released April 19, 2021, (see my May 4, 2021 posting) has announced more investments in intellectual property initiatives,

“Promoting Canadian Intellectual Property

As the most highly educated country in the OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development], Canada is full of innovative and entrepreneurial people with great ideas. Those ideas are valuable intellectual property that are the seeds of huge growth opportunities. Building on the National Intellectual Property Strategy announced in Budget 2018, the government proposes to further support Canadian innovators, start-ups, and technology-intensive businesses. Budget 2021 proposes:

$90 million, over two years, starting in 2022-23, to create ElevateIP, a program to help accelerators and incubators provide start-ups with access to expert intellectual property services.
$75 million over three years, starting in 2021-22, for the National Research Council’s Industrial Research Assistance Program to provide high-growth client firms with access to expert intellectual property services.

These direct investments would be complemented by a Strategic Intellectual Property Program Review that will be launched. It is intended as a broad assessment of intellectual property provisions in Canada’s innovation and science programming, from basic research to near-commercial projects. This work will make sure Canada and Canadians fully benefit from innovations and intellectual property.”

Now, it’s back to me and the usual formatting for an upcoming excerpt. As for Canada’s National Intellectual Property Strategy, here’s more from the April 26, 2018 Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada news release,

…
Canada’s IP Strategy will help Canadian entrepreneurs better understand and protect intellectual property and also get better access to shared intellectual property. Canada is a leader in research, science, creation and invention, but it can do more when it comes to commercializing innovations.
The IP Strategy will help give businesses the information and confidence they need to grow their business and take risks.
The IP Strategy will make changes in three key areas:
LEGISLATION
The IP Strategy will amend key IP laws to ensure that we remove barriers to innovation, particularly any loopholes that allow those seeking to use IP in bad faith to stall innovation for their own gain.
The IP Strategy will create an independent body to oversee patent and trademark agents, which will ensure that professional and ethical standards are maintained, and will support the provision of quality advice from IP professionals.
LITERACY AND ADVICE
As part of the IP Strategy, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office will launch a suite of programs to help improve IP literacy among Canadians.
The IP Strategy includes support for domestic and international engagement between Indigenous people and decision makers as well as for research activities and capacity building.
The IP Strategy will also support training for federal employees who deal with IP governance.
TOOLS
The IP Strategy will provide tools to support Canadian businesses as they learn about IP and pursue their own IP strategies.
The government is creating a patent collective to bring together businesses to facilitate better IP outcomes for members. The patent collective is the coming together of firms to share in IP expertise and strategy, including gaining access to a larger collection of patents and IP.

I’m guessing what the government wants is more patents; at the same time, it does not want to get caught up in patent thickets and the patent troll wars often seen in the US. The desire for more patents isn’t simply ‘protection’ for Canadian businesses, it’s born also from a desire to brag (from “A few final comments subsection” in my May 4, 2021 posting on the Canadian federal budget),

…
The inclusion of a section on intellectual property in the budget could seem peculiar. I would have thought that years ago before I learned that governments measure and compare with other government the success of their science and technology efforts by the number of patents that have been filed. [new emphasis mine] There are other measures but intellectual property is very important, as far as governments are concerned. My “Billions lost to patent trolls; US White House asks for comments on intellectual property (IP) enforcement; and more on IP” June 28, 2012 posting points to some of the shortcomings, with which we still grapple.
…

Not just a Canadian conundrum

IP (patents, trademarks, and copyright) has a long history and my understanding of patents and copyright (not sure about trademarks) is that they were initially intended to guarantee inventors and creators a fixed period of time in which to make money from their inventions and/or creations. IP was intended to encourage competition not stifle it as happens so often these days. Here’s more about patents from the Origin of Patents: Everything You Need to Know webpage on the upcounsel.com website (Note: Links have been removed),

Origins of Patent Law and the Incentive Theory
It is possible to trace the idea of patent law as far back as the 9th century B.C. in ancient Greece. However, one of the most vital pieces of legislation in the history of patents is the English Statute of Monopolies. The Parliament passed the Statute of Monopolies to end monopolies, which stifled competition.
However, for about a decade, the Statute issued “letters patent” to allow for limited monopolies. This measure was seen as a way of balancing the importance of providing incentives for inventions with the distaste for monopolies. [emphasis mine] While monopolies usually don’t offer any innovative benefits, inventors need to have an incentive to create innovations that benefit society.
…

Changes?

As you can see in the ‘Origins of Patent Law’ excerpt , there’s a tension between ensuring profitability and spurring innovation. It certainly seems that our current approach to the problem is no longer successful.

There has been an appetite for change in how science is pursued, shared, and commercialized. Listening in on UNESCO’s Open Science meeting:
https://events.unesco.org/event?id=1907937890&lang=1033 [1] (May 10 -12, 2021) is an opportunity to see how this movement could develop. Sadly, I don’t think the World Trade Organization is going to afford anyone the opportunity to tune in to discussions about relaxing COVDI-19 vaccine patent rules. (sigh)

As for the Canadian government’s ‘willingness to talk’ I expect the Canadian representative at the UNESCO will be very happy to adopt open science while the Canadian representative at the WTO will dance around without committing.

If you are inclined, please do share your thoughts on either of the meetings or on the move towards open science.

*’intrigues’ changed to ‘intrigued’ on May 13, 2021.

Canada’s 2021 budget and science

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As more than one observer has noted, this April 19, 2021 budget is the first in two years. Predictably, there has been some distress over the copious amounts of money being spent to stimulate/restart the economy whether it needs it or not. Some have described this as a pre-election budget. Overall, there seems to be more satisfaction than criticism.

Maybe a little prescient?

After mentioning some of the government’s issues with money (Phoenix Payroll System debacle and WE Charity scandal) in my April 13, 2021 posting about the then upcoming Canadian Science Policy Centre’s post-budget symposium, I had these comments (which surprise even me),

…
None of this has anything to do with science funding (as far as I know) but it does set the stage for questions about how science funding is determined and who will be getting it. There are already systems in place for science funding through various agencies but the federal budget often sets special priorities such as the 2017 Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy [emphasis added April 29, 2021] with its attendant $125M. As well,Prime Minister Justin Trudeau likes to use science as a means of enhancing his appeal. [emphasis mine] See my March 16, 2018 posting for a sample of this, scroll down to the “Sunny ways: a discussion between Justin Trudeau and Bill Nye” subhead.
…

Budget 2021 introduced two new strategies, the first ones since the 2017 budget: the Pan-Canadian Genomics Strategy and the National Quantum Strategy. As for whether this ploy will help enhance Trudeau’s appeal, that seems doubtful given his current plight (see an April 27, 2021 CBC online news item “PM says his office didn’t know Vance allegations were about sexual misconduct” for a description of some of Trudeau’s latest political scandal).

Science in the 2021 budget (a few highlights)

For anyone who wants to take a look at the 2021 Canadian Federal Budget, Chapters Four and Five (in Part Two) seems to contain the bulk of the science funding announcements. Here are the highlights, given my perspective, from Chapter Four (Note: I don’t chime in again until the “A full list …. subhead):

4.6 Investing in World-leading Research and Innovation

A plan for a long-term recovery must look to challenges and opportunities that lie ahead in the years and decades to come. It must be led by a growth strategy that builds on the unique competitive advantages of the Canadian economy, and make sure that Canada is well-positioned to meet the demands of the next century. This work begins with innovation.

To drive growth and create good, well-paying jobs, entrepreneurs and businesses need to be able to translate Canada’s world-class leadership in research into innovative products and services for Canadians, and for the world.

These investments will help cement Canada’s position as a world leader in research and innovation, building a global brand that will attract talent and capital for years to come.

Supporting Innovation and Industrial Transformation

Since its launch in 2017, the Strategic Innovation Fund has been helping businesses invest, grow, and innovate in Canada. Through its efforts to help businesses make the investments they need to succeed, the fund is well-placed to support growth and the creation of good jobs across the Canadian economy—both now and in the future.

Budget 2021 proposes to provide the Strategic Innovation Fund with an incremental $7.2 billion over seven years on a cash basis, starting in 2021-22, and $511.4 million ongoing. This funding will be directed as follows:

$2.2 billion over seven years, and $511.4 million ongoing to support innovative projects across the economy—including in the life sciences, automotive, aerospace, and agriculture sectors.
$5 billion over seven years to increase funding for the Strategic Innovation Fund’s Net Zero Accelerator, as detailed in Chapter 5. Through the Net Zero Accelerator the fund would scale up its support for projects that will help decarbonize heavy industry, support clean technologies and help meaningfully accelerate domestic greenhouse gas emissions reductions by 2030.

The funding proposed in Budget 2021 will build on the Strategic Innovation Fund’s existing resources, including the $3 billion over five years announced in December 2020 for the Net Zero Accelerator. With this additional support, the Strategic Innovation Fund will target investments in important areas of future growth over the coming years to advance multiple strategic objectives for the Canadian economy:

$1.75 billion in support over seven years would be targeted toward aerospace in recognition of the longer-lasting impacts to this sector following COVID-19. This is in addition to the $250 million Aerospace Regional Recovery Initiative, outlined in section 4.2, providing a combined support of $2 billion to help this innovative sector recover and grow out of the crisis.
$1 billion of support over seven years would be targeted toward growing Canada’s life sciences and bio-manufacturing sector, restoring capabilities that have been lost and supporting the innovative Canadian firms and jobs in this sector. This is an important component of Canada’s plan to build domestic resilience and improve long-term pandemic preparedness proposed in Chapter 1, providing a combined $2.2 billion over seven years.
$8 billion over seven years for the Net Zero Accelerator to support projects that will help reduce Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions by expediting decarbonization projects, scaling-up clean technology, and accelerating Canada’s industrial transformation. More details are in Chapter 5.

Renewing the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy

Artificial intelligence is one of the greatest technological transformations of our age. Canada has communities of research, homegrown talent, and a diverse ecosystem of start-ups and scale-ups. But these Canadian innovators need investment in order to ensure our economy takes advantage of the enormous growth opportunities ahead in this sector. By leveraging our position of strength, we can also ensure that Canadian values are embedded across widely used, global platforms.

Budget 2021 proposes to provide up to $443.8 million over ten years, starting in 2021-22, in support of the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy, including:

$185 million over five years, starting in 2021-22, to support the commercialization of artificial intelligence innovations and research in Canada.
$162.2 million over ten years, starting in 2021-22, to help retain and attract top academic talent across Canada—including in Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec. This programming will be delivered by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.
$48 million over five years, starting in 2021-22, for the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research to renew and enhance its research, training, and knowledge mobilization programs.
$40 million over five years, starting in 2022-23, to provide dedicated computing capacity for researchers at the national artificial intelligence institutes in Edmonton, Toronto, and Montréal.
$8.6 million over five years, starting in 2021-22, to advance the development and adoption of standards related to artificial intelligence.

Launching a National Quantum Strategy

Quantum technology is at the very leading edge of science and innovation today, with enormous potential for commercialization. This emerging field will transform how we develop and design everything from life-saving drugs to next generation batteries, and Canadian scientists and entrepreneurs are well-positioned to take advantage of these opportunities. But they need investments to be competitive in this fast growing global market.

Budget 2021 proposes to provide $360 million over seven years, starting in 2021-22, to launch a National Quantum Strategy. The strategy will amplify Canada’s significant strength in quantum research; grow our quantum-ready technologies, companies, and talent; and solidify Canada’s global leadership in this area. This funding will also establish a secretariat at the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development to coordinate this work.

The government will provide further details on the rollout of the strategy in the coming months.

Revitalizing the Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre

Canada is a world leader in photonics, the technology of generating and harnessing the power of light. This is the science behind fibre optics, advanced semi-conductors, and other cutting-edge technologies, and there is a strong history of Canadian companies bringing this expertise to the world. The National Research Council’s Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre supplies photonics research, testing, prototyping, and pilot-scale manufacturing services to academics and large, small and medium-sized photonics businesses in Canada. But its aging facility puts this critical research and development at risk.

Budget 2021 proposes to provide $90 million over five years on a cash basis, starting in 2021-22, to the National Research Council to retool and modernize the Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre. This would allow the centre to continue helping Canadian researchers and companies grow and support highly skilled jobs.

Launching a Pan-Canadian Genomics Strategy

Genomics research is developing cutting-edge therapeutics and is helping Canada track and fight COVID-19. Canada was an early mover in advancing genomics science and is now a global leader in the field. A national approach to support genomics research can lead to breakthroughs that have real world applications. There is an opportunity to improve Canadians’ health and well-being while also creating good jobs and economic growth. Leveraging and commercializing this advantage will give Canadian companies, researchers, and workers a competitive edge in this growing field.

Budget 2021 proposes to provide $400 million over six years, starting in 2021-22, in support of a Pan-Canadian Genomics Strategy. This funding would provide $136.7 million over five years, starting in 2022-23, for mission-driven programming delivered by Genome Canada to kick-start the new Strategy and complement the government’s existing genomics research and innovation programming.

Further investments to grow Canada’s strengths in genomics under the Strategy will be announced in the future.

Conducting Clinical Trials

Canadian scientists are among the best in the world at conducting high-quality clinical trials. Clinical trials lead to the development of new scientifically proven treatments and cures, and improved health outcomes for Canadians. They also create good jobs in the health research sector, including the pharmaceutical sector, and support the creation of new companies, drugs, medical devices, and other health products.

Budget 2021 proposes to provide $250 million over three years, starting in 2021-22, to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to implement a new Clinical Trials Fund.

Supporting the Innovation Superclusters Initiative

Since it was launched in 2017, the Innovation Superclusters Initiative has helped Canada build successful innovation ecosystems in important areas of the economy. Drawing on the strength and breadth of their networks, the superclusters were able to quickly pivot their operations and played an important role in Canada’s COVID-19 response. For example, the Digital Technology Supercluster allocated resources to projects that used digital technologies and artificial intelligence to help facilitate faster, more accurate diagnosis, treatment, and care of COVID-19 patients.

To help ensure those superclusters that made emergency investments to support Canada’s COVID-19 response and others can continue supporting innovative Canadian projects:

Budget 2021 proposes to provide $60 million over two years, starting in 2021-22, to the Innovation Superclusters Initiative.

Promoting Canadian Intellectual Property

As the most highly educated country in the OECD, Canada is full of innovative and entrepreneurial people with great ideas. Those ideas are valuable intellectual property that are the seeds of huge growth opportunities. Building on the National Intellectual Property Strategy announced in Budget 2018, the government proposes to further support Canadian innovators, start-ups, and technology-intensive businesses. Budget 2021 proposes:

$90 million, over two years, starting in 2022-23, to create ElevateIP, a program to help accelerators and incubators provide start-ups with access to expert intellectual property services.
$75 million over three years, starting in 2021-22, for the National Research Council’s Industrial Research Assistance Program to provide high-growth client firms with access to expert intellectual property services.

Capitalizing on Space-based Earth Observation

Earth observation satellites support critical services that Canadians rely on. They provide reliable weather forecasts, support military and transport logistics, help us monitor and fight climate change, and support innovation across sectors, including energy and agriculture. They also create high-quality jobs in Canada and the government will continue to explore opportunities to support Canadian capacity, innovation, and jobs in this sector. To maintain Canada’s capacity to collect and use important data from these satellites, Budget 2021 proposes to provide:

$80.2 million over eleven years, starting in 2021-22, with $14.9 million in remaining amortization and $6.2 million per year ongoing, to Natural Resources Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada to replace and expand critical but aging ground-based infrastructure to receive satellite data.
$9.9 million over two years, starting in 2021-22, to the Canadian Space Agency to plan for the next generation of Earth observation satellites.

Science and Technology Collaboration with Israeli Firms

Collaborating with global innovation leaders allows Canadian companies to leverage expertise to create new products and services, support good jobs, and reach new export markets.

Budget 2021 proposes to provide additional funding of $10 million over five years, starting in 2021-2022, and $2 million per year ongoing, to expand opportunities for Canadian SMEs to engage in research and development partnerships with Israeli SMEs as part of the Canadian International Innovation Program. This will be sourced from existing Global Affairs Canada resources. The government also intends to implement an enhanced delivery model for this program, including possible legislation.

4.7 Supporting a Digital Economy

More and more of our lives are happening online—from socializing, to our jobs, to commerce. Recognizing the fundamental shifts underway in our society, the government introduced a new Digital Charter in 2020 that seeks to better protect the privacy, security, and personal data of Canadians, building trust and confidence in the digital economy.

To make sure that Canadian businesses can keep pace with this digital transformation and that they are part of this growth, Budget 2021 includes measures to ensure businesses and workers in every region of the country have access to fast, reliable internet. It also has measures to make sure that the digital economy is fair and well reported on.

A digital economy that serves and protects Canadians and Canadian businesses is vital for long-term growth.

Accelerating Broadband for Everyone

The COVID-19 pandemic has shifted much of our lives online and transformed how we live, work, learn, and do business. This makes it more important than ever that Canadians, including Canadian small businesses in every corner of this country, have access to fast and reliable high-speed internet. Canadians and Canadian businesses in many rural and remote communities who still do not have access to high-speed internet face a barrier to equal participation in the economy. Building on the $6.2 billion the federal government and federal agencies have made available for universal broadband since 2015:

Budget 2021 proposes to provide an additional $1 billion over six years, starting in 2021-22, to the Universal Broadband Fund to support a more rapid rollout of broadband projects in collaboration with provinces and territories and other partners. This would mean thousands more Canadians and small businesses will have faster, more reliable internet connections.

In total, including proposed Budget 2021 funding, $2.75 billion will be made available through the Universal Broadband Fund to support Canadians in rural and remote communities. Recently, the Universal Broadband Fund provided funding to ensure Quebec could launch Operation High Speed, connecting nearly 150,000 Quebecers to high-speed internet. These continuing investments will help Canada accelerate work to reach its goal of 98 per cent of the country having high-speed broadband by 2026 and 100 per cent by 2030.

Establishing a New Data Commissioner

Digital and data-driven technologies open up new markets for products and services that allow innovative Canadians to create new business opportunities—and high-value jobs. But as the digital and data economy grows, Canadians must be able to trust that their data are protected and being used responsibly.

Budget 2021 proposes to provide $17.6 million over five years, starting in 2021-22, and $3.4 million per year ongoing, to create a Data Commissioner. The Data Commissioner would inform government and business approaches to data-driven issues to help protect people’s personal data and to encourage innovation in the digital marketplace.
Budget 2021 also proposes to provide $8.4 million over five years, starting in 2021-22, and $2.3 million ongoing, to the Standards Council of Canada to continue its work to advance industry-wide data governance standards.
…

A full list of science funding highlights from the 2021 federal budget

If you don’t have the time or patience to comb through the budget for all of the science funding announcements, you can find an excellent list in an April 19, 2021posting on Evidence for Democracy (Note: Links have been removed; h/t Science Media Centre of Canada newsletter),

Previously, we saw a landmark budget for science in 2018, which made historic investments in fundamental research totaling more than $1.7 billion. This was followed by additional commitments in 2019 that included expanded support for research trainees and access to post-secondary education. While no federal budget was tabled in 2020, there have been ongoing investments in Canadian science throughout the pandemic.
Budget 2021 attempts to balance the pressing challenges of the pandemic with a long-term view towards recovery and growth. We are pleased to see strategic investments across the Canadian science ecosystem, including targeted research funding in artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, and bioinnovation. There is also a focus on climate action, which outlines a $17.6 billion investment towards green recovery and conservation. There are also noteworthy investments in research and development partnerships, and data capacity. Beyond research, Budget 2021 includes investments in childcare, mental health, Indigenous communities, post-secondary education, and support for gender-based and Black-led initiatives.
We note that this budget does not include significant increases to the federal granting agencies, or legislation to safeguard the Office of the Chief Science Advisor.
Below, we highlight key research-related investments in Budget 2021.
…

The list is here in the April 19, 2021posting.

Is it magic or how does the federal budget get developed?

I believe most of the priorities are set by power players behind the scenes. We glimpsed some of the dynamics courtesy of the WE Charity scandal 2020/21 and the SNC-Lavalin scandal in 2019.

Access to special meetings and encounters are not likely to be given to any member of the ‘great unwashed’ but we do get to see the briefs that are submitted in anticipation of a new budget. These briefs and meetings with witnesses are available on the Parliament of Canada website (Standing Committee on Finance (FINA) webpage for pre-budget consultations.

For the 2021 federal budget, there are 792 briefs and transcripts of meeting with 52 witnesses. Whoever designed the page decided to make looking at more than one or two briefs onerous. Just click on a brief that interests you and try to get back to the list.

National Quantum Strategy

There is a search function but ‘quantum’ finds only Xanadu Quantum Technologies (more about their brief in a minute) and not D-Wave Systems, which is arguably a more important player in the field. Regardless, both companies presented briefs although the one from Xanadu was of the most interest as it seems to be recommending a national strategy without actually using the term (from the Xanadu Quantum Technologies budget 2021 brief),

Recommendation 1: Quantum Advisory Board
The world is at the beginning of the second Quantum Revolution, which will result in the development and deployment of revolutionary quantum technologies, based upon the scientific discoveries of the past century. Major economies of the world, including the USA, China, Japan, EU, UK and South Korea, have all identified quantum technologies as strategically important, and have adopted national strategies or frameworks. Many of them have dedicated billions of dollars of funding to quantum technology R&D and commercialization. We urge the government to create a Quantum Advisory Board or Task Force, to ensure a coherent national strategy which involves all areas of government:research, education, industry, trade, digital government, transportation, health, defence,etc.
Recommendation 2: Continue Supporting Existing Research Centres
Canada has a long history of nurturing world-class academic research in quantum science at our universities. The CFREF [Canada First Research Excellence Fund {CFREF}] program was a welcome catalyst which solidified the international stature of the quantum research programs at UBC [University of British Columbia], Waterloo [University of Waterloo; Ontario] and Sherbrooke [University of Sherbrooke; Québec]. Many of our highly qualified team members have graduated from these programs and other Canadian universities. We urge the government to continue funding these research centers past the expiration of the CFREF program, to ensure the scientific critical mass is not dissipated, and the highly sought-after talent is not pulled away to other centers around the world.
Recommendation 3: National Quantum Computing Access Centre
Our Canadian competitor, D-Wave Systems, was started in Canada nearly 20 years ago,and has yet to make significant sales or build a strong user base within Canada. At Xanadu we also find that the most ready customers for our computers are researchers in the USA,rather than in Canada, despite the strong interest from many individual professors we speak with at a number of Canadian universities. We urge the government to create a National Quantum Computing Access Centre, through Compute Canada or another similar national organization, which can centralize and coordinate the provision of quantum computing access for the Canadian academic research community. Without access to these new machines, Canadian researchers will lose their ability to innovate new algorithms and applications of this groundbreaking technology. It will be impossible to train the future workforce of quantum programmers, without access to the machines like those of D-Wave and Xanadu.
Recommendation 4: National Quantum Technology Roundtable
Traditional, resource-based Canadian industries are not historically known for the ir innovative adoption of new technology, and the government has created many programs to encourage digitalization of manufacturing and resource industries, and also newer,cleaner technology adoption in the energy and other heavy industries. Quantum technologies in computing, communications and sensing have the potential to make exponential improvements in many industries, including: chemicals, materials, logistics,transportation, electricity grids, transit systems, wireless networks, financial portfolio analysis and optimization, remote sensing, exploration, border security, and improved communication security. We urge the government to convene national roundtable discussions, perhaps led by the NRC, to bring together the Canadian researchers and companies developing these new technologies, along with the traditional industries and government bodies of Canada who stand to benefit from adopting them, for mutual education and information sharing, roadmapping, benchmarking and strategic planning.
Recommendation 5: New Quantum Computing Institute in Toronto
The University of Toronto is the leading research institution in Canada, and one of the top research universities in the world. Many world-class scientists in quantum physics,chemistry, computer science, and electrical engineering are currently part of the Centre for Quantum Information and Quantum Control (CQIQC) at the university [University of Toronto]. British Columbia has recently announced the creation of a new institute dedicated to the study of Quantum Algorithms, and we encourage the government to build upon the existing strengths of the quantum research programs at the CQIQC, through the funding of a new,world-class research institute, focussed on quantum computing. Such an institute will leverage not only the existing quantum expertise, but also the world-class artificial intelligence and machine learning research communities in the city. The tech industry in Toronto is also the fastest growing in North America, hiring more than San Francisco or Boston. We request the government fund the establishment of a new quantum computing institute built on Toronto’s 3 pillars of quantum research, artificial intelligence, and a thriving tech industry, to create a center of excellence with global impact.
Recommendation 6: Dedicated BDC [Business Development Bank of Canada] Quantum Venture Fund
Although there is no major international firm developing and selling quantum-based technology from Canada, a number of the world’s most promising start-ups are based here. Xanadu and our peer firms are now actively shaping our business models; refining our products and services; undertaking research and development; and developing networks of customers.To date, Canadian firms like Xanadu have been successful at raising risk capital from primarily domestic funds like BDC, OMERS, Georgian Partners and Real Ventures,without having to leave the country. In order to ensure a strong “Quantum Startup”ecosystem in Canada, we request that the BDC be mandated to establish a specialist quantum technology venture capital fund. Such a fund will help ensure the ongoing creation of a whole cluster of Canadian startups in all areas of Quantum Technology, and help to keep the technologies and talent coming from our research universities within the country.

Christian Weedbrook, Xanadu Chief Executive Officer, has taken the time to dismiss his chief competitor and managed to ignore the University of Calgary in his Canadian quantum future. (See my September 21, 2016 posting “Teleporting photons in Calgary (Canada) is a step towards a quantum internet,” where that team set a record for distance.)

The D-Wave Systems budget 2021 brief does have some overlapping interests but is largely standalone and more focused on business initiatives and on the US. Both briefs mention the Quantum Algorithms Institute (QAI), which is being established at Simon Fraser University (SFU) with an investment from the government of British Columbia (see this Oct. 2, 2019 SFU press release).

Where Weedbrook is passionately Canadian and signed the Xanadu brief himself, the D-Wave brief is impersonal and anonymous.

Pan-Canadian Genomics Strategy

The Genome Canada brief doesn’t mention a pan-Canadian strategy,

List of Recommendations:
•Recommendation 1: That the government invest in mission-driven research —with line-of-sight to application —to mobilize genomics to drive Canada’s recovery in key sectors.
•Recommendation 2: That the government invest in a national genomics data strategy to drive data generation, analysis, standards, tools, access and usage to derive maximum value and impact from Canada’s genomics data assets.
•Recommendation 3: That the government invest in training of the next generation of genomics researchers, innovators and entrepreneurs to support the development of a genomics-enabled Canadian bioeconomy.
•Recommendation 4: That the government invest in long-term and predictable research and research infrastructure through the federal granting agencies and the Canada Foundation forInnovation to ensure a strong and vibrant knowledge base for recovery.
…

It’s not an exciting start but if you continue you’ll find a well written and compelling brief.

A happy April 19, 2021 GenomeCanada news release provides an overview of how this affects the Canadian life sciences research effort,

“The federal government announced $400 million for a new Pan-Canadian Genomics Strategy, including $136.7 million for Genome Canada to kickstart the Strategy, with further investments to be announced in the future. The budget recognized the key role genomics plays in developing cutting-edge therapeutics and in helping Canada track and fight COVID-19. It recognizes that Canada is a global leader in the field and that genomics can improve Canadians’ health and wellbeing while also creating good jobs and economic growth. Leveraging and commercializing this advantage will give Canadian companies, researchers, and workers a competitive edge in this growing field.
… Today’s announcement included excellent news for Canada’s long-term sustainable economic growth in biomanufacturing and the life sciences, with a total of $2.2 billion over seven years going toward growing life sciences, building up Canada’s talent pipeline and research systems, and supporting life sciences organizations.

Genome Canada welcomes other investments that will strengthen Canada’s research, innovation and talent ecosystem and drive economic growth in sectors of the future, including:

$500 million over four years, starting in 2021-22, for the Canada Foundation for Innovation to support the bio-science capital and infrastructure needs of post-secondary institutions and research hospitals;
$250 million over four years, starting in 2021-22, for the federal research granting councils to create a new tri-council biomedical research fund;
$250 million over three years, starting in 2021-22, to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to implement a new Clinical Trials Fund;
$92 million over four years, starting in 2021-22, for adMare to support company creation, scale up, and training activities in the life sciences sector;
$59.2 million over three years, starting in 2021-22, for the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization to support the development of its vaccine candidates and expand its facility in Saskatoon;
$45 million over three years, starting in 2022-23, to the Stem Cell Network to support stem cell and regenerative medicine research; and
$708 million over five years, starting in 2021-22, to Mitacs to create at least 85,000 work-integrated learning placements that provide on-the-job learning and provide businesses with support to develop talent and grow.

The visionary support announced in Budget 2021 puts Canada on competitive footing with other G7 nations that have made major investments in research and innovation to drive high-value growth sectors, while placing bio-innovation at the heart of their COVID-19 recoveries. Genome Canada looks forward to leading the new Pan-Canadian Genomics Strategy and to working with Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada and other partners on the strategic investments announced today.
“To solve complex global problems, such as a worldwide pandemic and climate change, we need transdisciplinary approaches. The life sciences will play significant roles within such an approach. The funding announced today will be instrumental in driving Genome Canada’s mission to be Canada’s genomics platform for future pandemic preparedness, its capacity for biomanufacturing, and its bio-economy overall.”
– Dr. Rob Annan, President and CEO, Genome Canada

Canadian business innovation, science, and innovation—oxymoron?

Navdeep Bains was Canada’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry (2015-January 12, 2021) and he had a few things to say as he stepped away (from an April 16, 2021 article by Kevin Carmichael for PostMedia on the SaltWire; Atlantic Canada website),

Navdeep Bains earlier this spring [2021] spoke to me about his tenure as industry minister, which inevitably led to questions about Canada’s eroding competitiveness. He said that he thought he’d done a pretty good job of creating the conditions for a more innovative economy. But the corporate elite? Not so much.
“The ball is back in business’s court,” Bains said. “Frankly, if businesses don’t do this, I think in the long run they will struggle. They have to start changing their behaviour significantly.”
How’s that for a parting shot?
Bains wasn’t the first Canadian policy-maker to get frustrated by Corporate Canada’s aversion to risky bets on research and cutting-edge technology [emphasis mine]. But it’s been a long time since anyone in Ottawa tried to coax them to keep up with the times by dangling big sacks of cash in their faces. All they had to do was demonstrate some ambition and be willing to complement the federal government’s contribution with an investment of their own.
…
“He [Bains] was a great cheerleader,” said Mike Wessinger, chief executive of PointClickCare Technologies Inc., a Mississauga-based developer of software that helps long-term care homes manage data. “He would always proactively reach out. It was great that he cared.”
It’s easy to dismiss the importance of cheerleading. Canada’s digitally native companies were struggling to be taken seriously in Ottawa a decade ago. Former prime minister Stephen Harper pitched in with the Obama administration to save General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC in 2009, but he let Nortel Networks Corp. fail. The technology industry needed a champion, and it found one in Bains.
…
Bains argued that his programs [legacy assessment] deserve more time. Industrial policy was still derided when he took over the industry department. It’s now mainstream. For now, that’s his legacy. It’s up to his former colleagues to write the final chapter.

I haven’t seen any OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) figures recently but Canada’s industrial R&D (research development) has been on a downward slide for several years compared to many ‘developed’ countries.

A few final comments

I am intrigued by the inclusion of science and technology collaboration with Israeli firms (through the Canadian International Innovation Program) in the 2021 budget. It’s the only country to be specifically identified in this budget’s science funding announcements.

In fact, I can’t recall seeing any other budget of the last 10 years or so with mention of a specific country as a focus for Canadian science and technology collaboration. Perhaps Israeli companies are especially focused on industrial R&D and risk taking and they hope some of that will rub off on Canadians?

For anyone who might be curious as to the name difference between the new Pan-Canadian Genomic Strategy and the National Quantum Strategy, it may be due to the maturity (age) associated with the research field and its business efforts.

GenomeCanada (a Canadian government-funded not-for-profit agency founded in 2000) and its regional centres are the outcome of some national strategizing in the 1990s, from the GenomeCanada 20th anniversary webpage,

In the 1990s, the Human Genome Project captivates the world. But Canada doesn’t have a coordinated national approach. A group of determined Canadian scientists convinces the federal government to make a bold investment in genomics to ensure Canada doesn’t miss out on the benefits of this breakthrough science. Genome Canada is established on February 8, 2000.

While the folks in the quantum world are more obviously competitive (if the two briefs are indicative), there is the Quantum Industry Canada consortium, which was announced on October 6, 2020 on the Cision website,

Industry Association will accelerate the commercialization of Canada’s quantum sector – a $142.4B opportunity for Canadians.
TORONTO, Oct. 6, 2020 /CNW/ – A consortium of Canada’s leading quantum technology companies announced today that they are launching Quantum Industry Canada (QIC), an industry association with a mission to ensure that Canadian quantum innovation and talent is translated into Canadian business success and economic prosperity.
The twenty-four founding members represent Canada’s most commercial-ready quantum technologies, covering applications in quantum computing, quantum sensing, quantum communications, and quantum-safe cryptography.
…

It’s quite possible this National Quantum Strategy will result in a national not-for-profit agency and, eventually, a pan-Canadian strategy of its own. My impression is that competition in the life sciences research and business concerns is just as intense as in the quantum research and business concerns; the difference (as suggested earlier) lies in the maturity of, as well as, cultural differences between the communities.

If you have the time, the briefs offer an fascinating albeit truncated view into the machinations behind a federal budget: Parliament of Canada website (Standing Committee on Finance; FINA) webpage for pre-budget consultations.

The inclusion of a section on intellectual property in the budget could seem peculiar. I would have thought that years ago before I learned that governments measure and compare with other government the success of their science and technology efforts by the number of patents that have been filed. There are other measures but intellectual property is very important, as far as governments are concerned. My “Billions lost to patent trolls; US White House asks for comments on intellectual property (IP) enforcement; and more on IP” June 28, 2012 posting points to some of the shortcomings, with which we still grapple.

To finally finish this off, Canadian Science Policy Centre has a call for 2021 Budget Editorial Call. (600-800 words)

ETA May 6, 2021: Ooops! This is the end: The Canadian Science Policy Centre has posted recordings of their 2021 federal budget symposium here (according to a May 6, 2021 announcement received via email).

ETA May 19, 2021: Well … here’s one more thing. If you’re interested in how basic funding for the sciences fared, check out Jim R. Woodgett’s May 8, 2021 posting on the Piece of Mind blog.

Science and art/sci events during May 2021

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First off, there’s Canada’s annual Science Odyssey (see my April 26, 2021 posting for more about the government initiative or you can go directly to the Science Odyssey website for a listing of the events).

Since posting about Science Odyssey, I have received a number of emails announcing event and not all of them are part of the Odyssey experience.

From the looks of things, May 2021 is going to be a very busy month. Given how early it is in the month I expect to receive another batch of notices and most likely will post another May 2021 events roundup.

At this point, there’s a heavy emphasis on architecture (human and other) and design.

Proximal Spaces on May 3, 2021

This is one of those event within an event notices. There’s a festival: FACTT 20/21 – Improbable Times. Trans-disciplinary & Trans-national Festival of Art & Science in Portugal and within the festival there is Proximal Spaces in Toronto, Canada. Here’s more from the ArtScience Salon (ArtSci Salon) May 1, 2021 announcement (received via email),

Proximal Spaces
May 3, 2021 – 3.00 PM (EST) [12 pm PST]
Join us at this poetry reading by six Canadian artists responding to the work of eight bioartists. Event with be streamed on Facebook Live.
Please note that you don’t need to sign up in order to access the streaming as it is public.
[T]une in at https://fb.me/e/48nPFuRIG
About Proximal Space:
Proximal Spaces’ is a multi-modal exhibition that explores the environment at multiple scales in concentric circles of proximity to the body. Inspired by Edward Hall’s [Edward Twitchell Hall or E. T. Hall] 1961 notation of intimate (1.5ft), personal (4ft), social (12ft) and public (25ft) spaces in his “Proxemics” diagrams, the installation portion presents similar diagrams of his concentric circles affixed to the wall of the gallery space, as well as developed in Augmented Reality around the venue. Each of these diagrams is a montage of microscopic and sub-microscopic images of the everyday environment as experienced by a collaborative team of international bioartists, and arrayed in a fractal form. In addition, an AR-enabled application explores the invisible environments of computer generated bioaerosols suspended in the air of virtual space.
This work visualizes the variegated response of the biological environment to unprecedented levels of physical distancing and self-isolation and recent developments in vaccine design that impact our understanding of interpersonal and interspecies ‘messaging’. What continues to thrive in the 6ft ‘dead spaces’ between us? What invisible particles linger on and create a biological archive through our movements through space? The artwork presents an interesting mode of interspecies engagement through hybrid virtual and physical interaction.
In the spring of 2021, six Canadian poets – Kelley Aitken, nancy viva davis halifax, Maureen Hynes, Anita Lahey, Dilys Leman, & Sheila Stewart – came together to pursue a lyric response to Proximal Spaces. They were challenged and inspired by the virtual exhibition with its combination of art, science, and proxemics. The focus of the artworks – what inhabits and thrives in the spaces and environments where we live, work, and breathe—generated six distinctive poems.
Proximal Spaces can be experienced at: http://www.proximalspaces.com/
Artistic Directors: Joel Ong, Elaine Whittaker
Graphic Designer: Natalie Plociennik Bhavesh Kakwani
AR development: Sachin Khargie, Ryan Martin
Poets: Kelley Aitken, nancy viva davis halifax, Maureen Hynes, Anita Lahey, Dilys Leman, & Sheila Stewart
Bioartists: Roberta Buiani, Nathalie Dubois Calero, Sarah Choukah, Nicole Clouston, Jess Holtz, Mick Lorusso, Maro Pebo, Felipe Shibuya
This project is part of FACTT-Improbable Times (http://factt.arteinstitute.org/), a project spearheaded and promoted by the Arte Institute we are in or production and conception partners with Cultivamos Cultura and Ectopia (Portugal), InArts Lab@Ionian University (Greece), ArtSci Salon@The Fields Institute and Sensorium@York University (Canada), School of Visual Arts (USA), UNAM [National Autonomous University of Mexico], Arte+Ciência and Bioscénica (Mexico), and Central Academy of Fine Arts (China). Together we will work and bring into being our ideas and actions for this during the year of 2021!

Morphogenesis: Geometry, Physics, and Biology on May 5, 2021

i love this image, he seems so delighted to show off the bug (?),

Here’s more from the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI) April 30, 2021 announcement (received via email),

Morphogenesis: Geometry, Physics, and Biology
WEDNESDAY, MAY 5 [2021] at 7 pm ET [4 pm PT]
Earth is home to millions of different species – from simple plants and unicellular organisms to trees and whales and humans. The incredible diversity of life on Earth led Charles Darwin to lament that it is “enough to drive the sanest man mad.”
How can we make sense of this diversity of form, which arises from the process of morphogenesis that links molecular- and cellular-level processes to conspire and lead to the emergence of “endless forms most beautiful,” as Darwin said?
In his May 5 [2021] lecture webcast, Harvard professor L. Mahadevan [Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan] will take viewers on a journey into the mathematical, physical, and biological workings of morphogenesis to demonstrate how scientists are beginning to unlock many of the secrets that have vexed scientists since Darwin.

Possible Worlds: “How Will We Live Together?” on May 6, 2021

For those who are interested in human architecture, there’s this from a May 3, 3021 Berggruen institute announcement (received via email) about a talk by Chilean architect and 2016 Pritzker Prize winner, Alejandro Gastón Aravena Mori (Alejandro Aravena),

Possible Worlds: How Will We Live Together
May 6, 2021
11am — Virtual
Possible Worlds: The UCLA [University of California at Los Angeles] – Berggruen Institute Speaker Series is a new partnership between the UCLA Division of Humanities and the Berggruen Institute.
Please click here to register.
Please click here to submit a question to Alejandro Aravena
About Alejandro Aravena
Alejandro Aravena is an architect, founder and executive director of the firm Elemental. His works include the “Siamese Towers” at the Catholic University of Chile and the Novartis office campus in Shanghai. In 2016, the New York Times named Aravena one of the world’s “creative geniuses” who had helped define culture. He and Elemental have received numerous honors, including the 2016 Pritzker Architecture Prize, the 2015 London Design Museum’s Design of the Year award and the 2011 Index Award. Aravena currently serves as the president of the Pritzker Prize jury. Aravena’s lecture title, “How Will We Live Together?” echoes the theme of the upcoming international architecture exhibition, Biennale Architettura, in which Elemental will be participating.
Featuring a discussion with moderator Dana Cuff
Dana Cuff is Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA, where she is also Director of cityLAB, an award-winning think tank that advances goals of spatial justice through experimental urbanism and architecture (www.cityLAB.aud.ucla.edu). Since receiving her Ph.D. in Architecture from Berkeley, Cuff has published and lectured widely about affordable housing, the architectural profession, and Los Angeles’ urban history. She is author of several books, including The Provisional City about postwar housing in L.A., and a co-authored book called Urban Humanities: New Practices for Reimagining the City, documenting her collaborative, crossdisciplinary research and teaching at UCLA funded by the Mellon Foundation. Based on cityLAB’s design research, Cuff co-authored landmark legislation that permits “backyard homes” on some 8.1 million single-family properties, doubling the density of suburbs across California (AB 2299, Bloom-2016). In 2019, cityLAB opened a satellite center in the MacArthur Park/Westlake neighborhood where a deep, multi-year exchange with community organizations is already demonstrating ways that humanistic design of the public realm can create more compassionate cities. Cuff recently received three awards that describe her career: Women in Architecture Activist of the Year (2019, Architectural Record); Distinguished Leadership in Architectural Research (2020, ARCC); and Educator of the Year (2021, American Institute of Architects Los Angeles).
About the Series
Possible Worlds: The UCLA – Berggruen Institute Speaker Series is a new partnership between the UCLA Division of Humanities and the Berggruen Institute. This semiannual series will bring some of today’s most imaginative intellectual leaders and creators to deliver public talks on the future of humanity. Through the lens of their singular achievements and experiences, these trailblazers in creativity, innovation, philosophy and politics will lecture on provocative topics that explore current challenges and transformations in human progress.
UCLA faculty and students have long been at the forefront of interpreting the world’s legacy of language, literature, art and science. UCLA Humanities serves a vital role in readying future leaders to articulate their thoughts with clarity and imagination, to interpret the world of ideas, and to live as informed citizens in an increasingly complex world. We are proud to be partnering in this lecture series with the Berggruen Institute, whose work addresses the “Great Transformations” taking place in technology and culture, politics and economics, global power arrangements, and even how we perceive ourselves as humans. The Institute seeks to connect deep thought in the human sciences — philosophy and culture — to the pursuit of practical improvements in governance.
A selection committee comprising representatives of UCLA and the Berggruen Institute has been formed to make recommendations for lecturers. The committee includes:
• Ursula Heise, Professor and Chair, Department of English; Professor, UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability; Marcia H. Howard Term Chair in Literary Studies
• Pamela Hieronymi, Professor of Philosophy
• Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Professor of Urban Planning; Associate Provost for Academic Planning
• Todd Presner, Associate Dean, Digital Initiatives; Chair of the Digital Humanities Program; Michael and Irene Ross Endowed Chair of Yiddish Studies; Professor of Germanic Languages and Comparative Literature
• Lynn Vavreck, Professor, Department of Political Science; Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics and Public Policy
• David Schaberg, Senior Dean of the UCLA College; Dean of Humanities; Professor, Asian Languages & Cultures
• Nils Gilman, Vice President of Programs, the Berggruen Institute

Generative Art and Computational Creativity starts May 7, 2021

A Spring 2021 MetaCreation Lab (Simon Fraser University; SFU) newsletter (received via email on April 23, 2021) highlights a number of festival submissions and papers along with some news about a free introductory course. First, the video introduction to the course,

The Kadenze learning platform delivered through a partnership with Simon Fraser Universit offers more information about the Generative Art and Computational Creativity free introductory course webpage,

This first course in the two-part program, Generative Art and Computational Creativity [there’s a fee for part two], proposes an introduction and overview of the history and practice of generative arts and computational creativity with an emphasis on the formal paradigms and algorithms used for generation. The full program will be taught by Associate Professor from the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University and multi-disciplinary researcher, Philippe Pasquier.
On the technical side, we will study core techniques from mathematics, artificial intelligence, and artificial life that are used by artists, designers and musicians across the creative industry. We will start with processes involving chance operations, chaos theory and fractals and move on to see how stochastic processes, and rule-based approaches can be used to explore creative spaces. We will study agents and multi-agent systems and delve into cellular automata, and virtual ecosystems to explore their potential to create novel and valuable artifacts and aesthetic experiences.
The presentation is illustrated by numerous examples from past and current productions across creative practices such as visual art, new media, music, poetry, literature, performing arts, design, architecture, games, robot-art, bio-art and net-art. Students get to practice these algorithms first hand and develop new generative pieces through assignments and projects in MAX. Finally, the course addresses relevant philosophical, and societal debates associated with the automation of creative tasks.
Music for this course was composed with the StyleMachineLite Max for Live engine of Metacreative Inc.
Artistic direction: Philippe Pasquier, Programmation: Arne Eigenfeldt, Sound Production: Philippe Bertrand
Schedule
This course is in adaptive mode and is open for enrollment. Learn more about adaptive courses here.
Session 1: Introduction and Typology of Generative Art (May 7, 2021) To start off this course, we define generative art and computational creativity and discuss how these relate through the study of prominent examples. We establish a typology of generative systems based on levels of autonomy and agency.
Session 2: History Of Generative Art, Chance Operations, and Chaos Theory (May 14, 2021) Generative art is nothing new, and this session goes through the history of the field from pre-history to the popularization of computers. We study chance, noise, fractals, chaos theory, and their applications in visual art and music.
Session 3: Rule-Based Systems, Grammars and Markov Chains (May 21, 2021) This session introduces and illustrate the generative potential of rule-based and expert systems. We study generative grammars through the Chomsky hierarchy, and introduce L-systems, shape grammars, and Markov chains. We discuss how these have been applied in visual art, music, design, architecture, and electronic literature.
Session 4: Cognitive Agents And Multiagent Systems (May 28, 2021) This session introduces the concepts underlying the notion of artificial agents. We study the belief, desire, and intention (BDI) cognitive architecture, and message based agent communication resting on the speech act theory. We discuss musical agents, conversational agents, chat bots and twitter bots and their artistic potential.
Session 5: Reactive Agents And Multiagent Systems (June 4, 2021) In this session, we introduce reactive agents and the subsumption architecture. We study boids, and detail how complex behaviors can emerge from a distributed population of simple artificial agents. We look at a myriad of applications from ant painting to swarm music and we discuss artistic approaches to virtual ecosystems.
Session 6: A-Life And Cellular Automaton (June 11, 2021) In this concluding session, we introduce artificial life (A-life). We study cellular automaton, multi-agent ecosystems for music, visual art, non-photorealistic rendering, and gaming. The session also concludes the class by reflecting on the state of the art in the field and its consequences on creative practices.

If you go to the Generative Art and Computational Creativity free introductory course webpage, you’ll find each session is broken down into learning modules or what they used to call a lesson plan. The breakdowns are quite informative.

If you’re interested in the lab and its other projects, go to metacreationlab.net.

Architectural Portraits on May 13, 2021

From the May 2021 Dante Alighieri Society of British Columbia’s newsletter,

ARCHITECTURAL PORTRAITS:
EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BODY, DESIGN & THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
A talk by architect & photographer Oliviero Godi
(Politecnico di Milano)

Oliviero Godi-frantoio ipogeo nel Salent — Photo by Oliviero Godi – Frantoio Ipogeo nel Salento

THURSDAY, May 13, 2021
IN ENGLISH – ON ZOOM
at 5:00 pm (PST)
Admission:
FREE for the Dante Society’s members
$5 MINIMUM DONATION for non-members
Become a member! Annual membership $30.00 – See membership benefits here
RSVP
The human being – so fragile, so ethereal, speaking a sweet language. A piece of architecture – so physically imminent, so solid, speaking a language of hardness.
Photo by Oliviero Godi – Frantoio Ipogeo nel Salento
Join photographer & architect Oliviero Godi as he explores the relationship between the body & the material, the transient & the permanent, in search of the correct balance where neither element prevails.
Oliviero Godi’s Bio
To make your donation, please send an e-transfer to info@dantesocietybc.ca. Thank you!
Learn More [about this other upcoming Cultural Events]

Respiration and the Brain on May 25, 2021

Before getting to the April 29, 2021 BrainTalks announcement, here’s a little bit about BrainTalks from their webspace on the University of British Columbia (UBC) website,

BrainTalks is a series of talks inviting you to contemplate emerging research about the brain. Researchers studying the brain, from various disciplines including psychiatry, neuroscience, neuroimaging, and neurology, gather to discuss current leading edge topics on the mind.
As an audience member, you join the discussion at the end of the talk, both in the presence of the entire audience, and with an opportunity afterwards to talk with the speaker more informally in a catered networking session. The talks also serve as a connecting place for those interested in similar topics, potentially launching new endeavours or simply connecting people in discussions on how to approach their research, their knowledge, or their clinical practice.
For the general public, these talks serve as a channel where by knowledge usually sequestered in inaccessible journals or university classrooms, is now available, potentially allowing people to better understand their brains and minds, how they work, and how to optimize brain health.
[UBC School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry]

Onto the April 29, 2021 BrainTalks announcement (received via email),

BrainTalks: Respiration and the Brain
Tuesday, May 25th, 2021 from 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM [PT]
Join us for a series of online talks exploring questions of respiration and the brain. Emerging empirical research will be presented on ventilation-associated brain injury and breathing-based interventions for the treatment of stress and anxiety disorders. We presenters will include Dr. Thiago Bassi, Dr. Lloyd Lalande and Taylor Willi, MSc.
Dr. Thiago Bassi will address the biological connection between the brain and lungs, exploring the potential adverse effects of mechanical ventilation on the brain. Dr. Bassi is a neurosurgeon and neuroscientist, who worked clinically for more than ten years in Brazil. He joined the Lungpacer Medical team and C2B2 lab in 2017, and is currently completing his doctorate in Biomedicine Physiology at Simon Fraser University.
Dr. Lloyd Lalande will describe Guided Respiration Mindfulness Therapy (GRMT), as an emerging clinical breathwork intervention for its effectiveness in reducing depression, anxiety and stress, and in increasing mindfulness and sense of wellbeing. Dr. Lalonde is an Assistant Professor teaching psychology at the Buddhist TzuChi University of Science and Technology, and the developer of GRMT. His current research is based out of the TzuChi Buddhist General Hospital, investigating GRMT as an evidence-based treatment for a variety of outcomes.
Mr. Taylor Willi will present the findings of his dissertation research comparing the effect of performing daily brief relaxation techniques on measures of stress and anxiety. Mr. Willi completed a Masters Degree of Neuroscience at the University of British Columbia, and is currently completing his doctorate in Clinical Psychology at Simon Fraser University.
Each of the speakers will present an overview of their research findings investigating respiration in three unique ways. Following their presentations, the speakers will be available for an audience-drive panel discussion.
We look forward to seeing you there~*
Get Tickets

They don’t mention COVID-19 but given that seriously ill patients with the disease are routinely placed on ventilators, it is almost certainly going to be mentioned in the presentations.

That’s all folks (at least for now).