Tag Archives: Canada Science and Technology Museum (CSTM)

The Art of Science (Juan Geuer) on May 18, 2019 at Canada’s Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa

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If you’re in Ottawa on May 18, 2019 and available from 1 – 1:30 pm and have paid your entry fee to the Canada Science and Technology Museum, there’s a special talk. From a ‘Curiosity on Stage’ event page,

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to work in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math? Curiosity on Stage is a series of short, interactive presentations that brings you face-to-face with researchers and innovators. Each week, a featured speaker delivers an engaging presentation followed by an interactive Q-and-A session. Curiosity on Stage invites you to learn directly from people working in the science and technology-related fields. Find out what they do and why it matters – and leave inspired by their stories of curiosity, overcoming obstacles, and innovation.

While everyone is welcome on the Demo Stage, this program is recommended for ages 10+.

This week: Juan Geuer: The Science of Art

Courtesy Canada Science and Technology Museum

[Speaker:] Wendy Moir, Ottawa Art Gallery

Wendy Moir earned her Master’s degree in art history from Carleton University and a Bachelor of Arts in art history and English literature at Queen’s University. She is passionate about art education and has taught visual literacy at galleries in Kingston, Halifax, and Ottawa since 2003.  Wendy currently teaches Canadian art history in the diploma program at the Ottawa School of Art and is an educator at the Ottawa Art Gallery.

This week, Wendy will be showcasing the work of Juan Geuer. Juan Geuer’s art, along with seven other artists he either collaborated with, influenced, or worked with in parallel, is showcased in the Ottawa Art Gallery exhibition Carbon + Light: Juan Geuer’s Luminous Precision. This presentation discusses his life in the National Capital Region and his ground-breaking artwork that sits at the threshold between science and art.

I’d never heard of Juan Geuer before but the title for the current exhibition of his work at the Ottawa Art Gallery immediately caught my attention, CARBON + LIGHT
JUAN GEUER’S LUMINOUS PRECISION. Here’s the description from the exhibition webpage,

March 9 – August 18, 2019

Canadian artist Juan Geuer’s groundbreaking work sits in the threshold between science and art.

It bridges the human condition, in all its various states, and the carbon-based ecosystems and oxygenated atmospheres upon which we depend.

The exhibition Carbon + Light celebrates this artist’s significant legacy as a fearless truth seeker. Through his inventive approach to installation, he pointed out the onset of the Anthropocene long before the term emerged to denote the geological period in which we now find ourselves embedded. Here, Geuer’s work will be in dialogue with artists with whom he either collaborated, influenced, or worked with in parallel, from Michael Snow to Catherine Richards.

The exhibition will also showcase the importance of Ottawa as the site within which Geuer’s surprising practice emerged, suggesting that time and location were instrumental to his ability to develop his unique investigation.

CURATOR
Caroline Seck Langill

Here’s one of the images and my favourite of those featured on the gallery’s Juan Geuer exhibition page,

Juan Geuer (1917-2009), Et Amor Fati (For the Love of Canada), 2007, aluminium frame, adjustment mechanisms and Mylar map. Collection of the Ottawa Art Gallery. Gift of Else Geuer-Vermeij, 2013
Juan Geuer (1917 – 2009) Et Amor Fati (For the Love of Canada), 2007 aluminum frame, adjustment mechanisms, and Mylar map. Courtesy: Ottawa Gallery of Art

It’s free and you can find out more about the Ottawa Art Gallery here.

The National Gallery of Canada (also in Ottawa) Has collected some of Geuer’s work and has a biography,

Juan Geuer’s goal is “to study our perception beyond science and art and to investigate our creative ability for adapting new visions”.

For Juan Geuer science is an activity as creative, inspired, and dependent upon perception as art. He is interested in the parallels between scientists and artists and their respective involvements with observation — their attempts to view nature in ways ever more complete, the scientist with apparatus, formulae and statistics, the artist by attention and understanding of the filters that colour perception.

Juan Geuer was brought up in a family of Dutch artists and became himself an artist, working first in glass in the 1940s and later turning to easel painting and murals. He left Holland with his family just before the beginning of World War II and immigrated to Bolivia.

By the time he came to Canada in 1954, he had traveled widely and tried his hand at several professions. In Canada, he worked as a draftsman at the Dominion Observatory of the National Research Council through the late 50s, the 60s and the70s, where he was exposed daily to the beauties and intricacies of science. Having only a little academic background in science, he learned from the scientists and, always an independent thinker, drew his own conclusions. Geuer maintains that both science and art are creative endeavours requiring of their practitioners an open-mindedness and a willingness to accept nature’s surprises.

By the 1960s, Geuer had become disenchanted with the idea of producing art as a commodity for sale to a limited public; he began to seek alternatives that might better reflect the creativity in everyday life. Eventually he began to view his scientific activity as inseparable from his art. He turned from painting to making more conceptual work in the early 1970s. Juan Geuer’s interest in finding a meeting ground between science and art is clearly stated as a mission of his company, The Truth-Seeker Company, formed in 1973. Geuer sees science as a theoretical network of systems that can only be verified by referral to the real world, or nature. But that which we know as nature is still only a concept based on the perceptions of our senses. Science can extend sensory perception by instruments that enable us to observe and analyze nature, thereby enriching our understanding of it.

Conversely, art for Geuer requires an open attitude to nature, a willingness to accept what is given, if the artist is to act “as the mirror which transmutes itself into as many colours as exist in the things placed before it,” (Leonardo da Vinci’s quote on an artist’s purpose). Geuer reaffirms in his art the necessity of humanity maintaining an honest dialogue with nature.

Some of Geuer’s works incorporate scientific apparatus. Other works use or analyze natural phenomena, like the colours of polarized light or earthquake activity. For Geuer, the equipment and methods of science can be useful to the artist who cares to understand them and to use them to allow the ordinary person entry into the universes that science can reveal.

In Karonhia, 1990, a work owned by the National Gallery, a simple scientific device is at work in aid of the observation of nature – mirrors. The mirrors are positioned with precision to reflect the sky, providing an opportunity for observation of its changing colours and weather conditions. Designed in response to the conditions of the architecture, Karonhia which means “sky” in the Mohawk language, frames and reflects the sky in four directions from four observation points, providing a constant daytime show of natural visual phenomena that draws visitors’ attention to an aspect of nature that is sometimes taken for granted.

H20, another work in the Gallery’s collection incorporates sophisticated and original equipment used for the observation of another natural phenomenon, water. Laser light is passed through a drop of water as it forms, swells and falls from a controlled source. The water drop acts as both lens and image. Its image is projected onto a wall by the laser light passing through it, where the viewer can watch it, large-scale. The magnification is itself fascinating – one can see the surface tension of the drop, a force that for Geuer is a dynamic and mysterious force, believed to be based on hydrogen bonding, that permeates all biological processes. One might also see bacteria and other matter if they are present – each drop becomes a unique microcosm, observable for the duration of its existence. In H​20, Geuer brings the unimaginable into a form that can be perceived and contemplated.

Geuer has extensively exhibited his work both within Canada and internationally, in solo and group exhibitions. Key among his exhibitions were his showing of several pieces at the List Visual Arts Centre of MIT in 1986 and his solo exhibition in Rotterdam at the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen in 1985.

I’m going to end this post with a link to a film made by Ed Folger about one of Geuer’s most seminal works, WIS (Water in Suspense) but first, there’s this excerpt from a May 7, 2009 obituary on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) online news,

…

Ed Folger, who is finishing a video that documents one of Geuer’s pieces, said Geuer was intent on showing people the underlying rhythms of the earth and making the imperceptible visible.

Geuer saw art in lasers and swinging pendulums and used them, along with mirrors, in many of his creations.

“If you just look at a drop of water, you can’t see the movement of the molecules, but if you put a laser through it, these fabulous patterns are projected out,” said Folger.

One of Geuer’s seminal pieces — a seismometer that records motion — is permanently installed at the Ottawa Art Gallery.

“Wonderment! He kept using that word over and over again. Wonderment. It’s what people should feel,” said Folger.

Unfortunately, much of Geuer’s work is too complicated to be shown often, said Folger.

Geuer’s website describes one creation, Hellot Glasses, made in 1996, as small mirrors that allow viewers to “live vicariously in one another’s gaze.”

In an interview he gave at the age of 91, Geuer gave a hint of how it might feel to look through his own gaze.

“Every day, I get up with this wonderful feeling, and I think I can do something new today, something nobody else has done. I will find something,” he said.

Here’s a link to Folger’s film, Water, Light and Chaos: Art by Juan Geuer. It’s on Vimeo and it’s about 20 minutes long.

Surprise! Surprise! 50th anniversary for TRIUMF (Canada’s National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics) and HR MacMillan Space Centre in Vancouver, Canada

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I guess they wanted to keep it a secret? In any event, TRIUMF’s 2018 year of celebrating their 50th anniversary is almost over. Their celebratory website, TRIUMF50 lists two events (scroll down to see them) for October 2018 and nothing after that. One event is in Ottawa (which is titled ‘#DiscoverTHIS: TRIUMF, Science, and Society’ on the TRIUMF50 website) and the other in Vancouver (Canada). Then, there’s the the other 50th sciencish anniversary in Vancouver, this being celebrated by the HR MacMillan Space Centre.

TRIUMF’s two events

Weirdly, I found out about TRIUMF’s 50th anniversary after reading an October 1, 2018 Ingenium (formerly Canada Science and Technology Museums Corporation) news release (received via email) and digging further. First, the announcement about the Ottawa event,

#DISCOVERTHIS: […] THE MOTHER OF INVENTION […] CANADA SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY MUSEUM
October 3, 2018
Time: 7:30 p.m. – 9 p.m. (Doors open at 7 p.m.)
FEE: FREE (REGISTRATION REQUIRED)
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH ONLY
On October 3, join a team of experts from TRIUMF […], Canada’s particle accelerator centre, for an illuminating discussion. The event will take place at the museum, and will also include a screening of a short documentary that explores the possibility for TRIUMF to take up the reins as the world’s largest producer of actinium-225 (Ac-225), a radioisotope with promising potential as an anti-cancer therapy.

They have a more engaging and informative description on their event registration page,

#discoverTHIS: The Mother of Invention

by TRIUMF

Free

Actions and Detail Panel

Event Information

Description

Doors open 7:00pm

Programming begins in the Auditorium 7:30pm

Q+A to follow

If the adage is true that necessity is the mother of invention, then curiosity-driven research is the grandmother of the whole shebang. The internet, the cellphone, the PET scanner – or even further back – radio, penicillin, electricity: all these inventions and their impacts on our lives were made possible because of innovative people looking at scientific discoveries and asking, “What problem can I solve with this?”

How exactly does a scientist’s eureka moment turn into the internet, the satellite, the next generation of cancer therapy? Join a team of experts from TRIUMF, Canada’s particle accelerator centre, for an illuminating discussion that sheds light on the journey from our research to you.

The event will include a screening of “The Rarest Drug on Earth,” a short documentary that explores the possibility for TRIUMF to take up the reins as the world’s largest producer of actinium-225 (Ac-225), a radioisotope with promising potential as an anti-cancer therapy.

Hosted by science journalist Tim Lougheed, and featuring:

  • Kathryn Hayashi: President & CEO, TRIUMF Innovations
  • Morgan Dehnel: Founder and Chief Science & Innovation Officer, D-Pace
  • Beatrice Franke: TRIUMF Research Scientist – Physical Sciences
  • Andrew Robertson: PhD Student – Life Sciences

#discoverTHIS: La mère de l’invention

On dit que la nécessité est mère de l’invention. Si ce dicton est vrai, alors la curiosité qui alimente la recherche serait, elle, grand-mère de tout le processus. L’internet, le téléphone cellulaire, la tomographie par émission de positrons ou, si on remonte encore plus loin, la radio, la pénicilline et l’électricité, toutes ces inventions, qui ont changé nos vies, auraient été impossibles sans ces personnes innovatrices qui se sont intéressées aux découvertes scientifiques et qui se sont demandé quels problèmes elles pouvaient résoudre grâce à celles-ci. Mais comment l’éclair de génie d’un chercheur donne-t-il naissance à l’internet, au satellite ou à la nouvelle génération de traitement contre le cancer?

Joignez-vous à un groupe d’experts de TRIUMF, le Centre canadien d’accélération des particules, pour une discussion éclairante qui fera la lumière sur les étapes du processus, des chercheurs jusqu’à vous.

L’événement comprendra la projection du court documentaire The Rarest Drug on Earth, qui explore la possibilité que TRIUMF devienne le plus grand producteur mondial d’actinium-225 (AC-225), un radio-isotope prometteur dans le traitement contre le cancer.

La discussion, animée par le journaliste scientifique Tim Lougheed, mettra en vedette :

  • Kathryn Hayashi : présidente et directrice générale, TRIUMF Innovations
  • Morgan Dehnel : fondateur et agent en chef de la science et de l’innovation, D-Pace
  • Beatrice Franke : chercheuse scientifique chez TRIUMF – sciences physiques
  • Andrew Robertson : doctorant – sciences de la vie

Date and Time

Wed, 3 October 2018

7:30 PM – 9:00 PM EDT

Add to Calendar

Location

Canada Science and Technology Museum

1867 Saint Laurent Boulevard

Ottawa, ON K1G 5A3

View Map

Register here.

As for the Vancouver event, it’s titled ‘Catching Ghosts: Using Neutrinos to Unveil the Universe‘ and will be held at Science World at Telus World of Science (everyone calls it Science World) on October 23, 2018,

Catching Ghosts: Using Neutrinos to Unveil the Universe

On a clear night, away from the bright lights of Vancouver, you can see the incredible expanse of the universe before you. To study these far-away celestial bodies, scientists use a “radiation toolkit” to observe our universe and understand how the galaxies we see today came to be. Some types of radiation, such as infrared radiation, can sense stars in their infancy, not yet hot enough to shine visible light. Others, like x-rays and gamma rays, can reveal matter being sucked into a black hole.

When it comes to studying the nuclear processes in the heart of stars, scientists must turn to neutrinos: subatomic particles that are currently flying unbeknownst through your body by the billions, right this second. These elusive little particles are an excellent probe into the core of the sun and distant supernovae, but they are notoriously difficult to detect. Difficult, but not impossible.

On Tuesday, October 23, join Dr. Stanley Yen, TRIUMF Research Scientist, for his talk, Detecting the Ghost Particles of the Universe.

Date: October 23, 2018
Doors open at 6:30pm
Lecture begins at 7:00pm

Register

This lecture is presented in partnership by TRIUMF and Science World as part of the TRIUMF 50th Anniversary Unveiling the Universe Lecture Series.

Some may have noticed that I’m still referring to TRIUMF as Canada’s National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics. I know it has changed but I prefer it to the latest one, TRIUMF (Canada’s particle accelerator centre).

HR MacMillan Space Centre’s 50th anniversary

The centre has two upcoming celebratory events, here’s more from the ‘Life in the Universe’ event page,

Life in the Universe
An evening of music and astronomy

Join the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre in celebrating their 50th anniversary with a very special evening of music under the cosmic visuals of the Planetarium Star Theatre. Composer Thomas Beckman will be premiering an original work “Life in the Universe” inspired by the unique character of the planets in our solar system and the wonders of our Universe. The suite will be performed by Thomas Beckman and the Borealis String Quartet.

Thomas Beckman, CMC  [Canadian Music Centre] associate composer, has written for a wide range of ensembles that include the Borealis String Quartet, the Vancouver Symphony orchestra, the Prince George Symphony orchestra, the Postmodern Camerata and the Vancouver Youth Choir. For the past several years he has served as Festival Composer for the Artists for Conservation organization, as the in-house-composer for the Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network and as a freelance film composer for several award-winning independent documentaries. With an MMus in western classical performance from the University of British Columbia, Thomas also serves as principal violist of the Vancouver Pops Symphony and the Prince George Symphony orchestra, and performs solo with his looping project for a number of events held by the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, Semperviva Yoga studios, and the Vancouver Maritime Museum. Thomas’ latest project has been to create the Jean Coulthard Music Video series in collaboration with the Canadian Music Centre as a means to empower local composers in BC.

The Borealis Quartet was founded in Vancouver, British Columbia in the fall of 2000 and rapidly establishing a stellar reputation. The Borealis has toured extensively in North America, Europe and Asia and performed to enthusiastic sold-out audiences in major cities, including New York, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Rome, Mainz, Shanghai, Taipei, Beijing, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and, of course, in their home town of Vancouver. http://www.borealisstringquartet.com/ 

TICKETS: $35 early bird tickets until October 5th, $40 after.
Tickets available online through Eventbrite until 12:00pm on October 19th.

Tickets available for 7:30pm and 9:00pm shows.

Beer and wine will be available for purchase.

This is a 19+ event. All attendees will be required to provide photo ID upon entry.

Get tickets here.

Their second event is more family-oriented (from the 50th Anniversary Celebration Weekend event page),

We’re turning 50 – help us celebrate! Bring the entire family out and enjoy our programming and special activities on Saturday and Sunday. Discover more about our past 50 years of science and space education as we pull some gems from our archives and explore how producing shows in the planetarium has changed over the decades. Share your memories of the Space Centre on our memory wall and create a card for Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques as he prepares for his mission to the International Space Station in December. We’ll be testing your knowledge with trivia questions before each show in the Planetarium Star Theatre and we’ll have a birthday treat for all to eat.

$5 for general admission and children under 5 are free.

We will be open from 10:00am – 5:00pm on Saturday and Sunday for the celebration with activities running from 10:30am – 4:30pm.

Event Details

October 20, 2018 – 10:00am to October 21, 2018 – 5:00pm

1968 seems to have been quite the sciencish year in Vancouver.

One last anniversary and this is a national one, the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC) is celebrating its sesquicentennial (150th) in 2018 just one year after the country’s sesquicentennial in 2017. First mentioned here in a July 2, 2018 posting about celebratory events in Toronto, There don’t seem to be any more events planned for this year but RASC’s 150th Anniversary webpage lists resources such as podcasts and more for you delectation.

AI fairytale and April 25, 2018 AI event at Canada Science and Technology Museum*** in Ottawa

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These days it’s all about artificial intelligence (AI) or robots and often, it’s both. They’re everywhere and they will take everyone’s jobs, or not, depending on how you view them. Today, I’ve got two artificial intelligence items, the first of which may provoke writers’ anxieties.

Fairytales

The Princess and the Fox is a new fairytale by the Brothers Grimm or rather, their artificially intelligent surrogate according to an April 18, 2018 article on the British Broadcasting Corporation’s online news website,

It was recently reported that the meditation app Calm had published a “new” fairytale by the Brothers Grimm.

However, The Princess and the Fox was written not by the brothers, who died over 150 years ago, but by humans using an artificial intelligence (AI) tool.

It’s the first fairy tale written by an AI, claims Calm, and is the result of a collaboration with Botnik Studios – a community of writers, artists and developers. Calm says the technique could be referred to as “literary cloning”.

Botnik employees used a predictive-text program to generate words and phrases that might be found in the original Grimm fairytales. Human writers then pieced together sentences to form “the rough shape of a story”, according to Jamie Brew, chief executive of Botnik.

The full version is available to paying customers of Calm, but here’s a short extract:

“Once upon a time, there was a golden horse with a golden saddle and a beautiful purple flower in its hair. The horse would carry the flower to the village where the princess danced for joy at the thought of looking so beautiful and good.

…

Advertising for a meditation app?

Of course, it’s advertising and it’s ‘smart’ advertising (wordplay intended). Here’s a preview/trailer,

Blair Marnell’s April 18, 2018 article for SyFy Wire provides a bit more detail,

…

“You might call it a form of literary cloning,” said Calm co-founder Michael Acton Smith. Calm commissioned Botnik to use its predictive text program, Voicebox, to create a new Brothers Grimm story. But first, Voicebox was given the entire collected works of the Brothers Grimm to analyze, before it suggested phrases and sentences based upon those stories. Of course, human writers gave the program an assist when it came to laying out the plot. …

“The Brothers Grimm definitely have a reputation for darkness and many of their best-known tales are undoubtedly scary,” Peter Freedman told SYFY WIRE. Freedman is a spokesperson for Calm who was a part of the team behind the creation of this story. “In the process of machine-human collaboration that generated The Princess and The Fox, we did gently steer the story towards something with a more soothing, calm plot and vibe, that would make it work both as a new Grimm fairy tale and simultaneously as a Sleep Story on Calm.” [emphasis mine]

….

If Marnell’s article is to be believed, Peter Freedman doesn’t hold much hope for writers in the long-term future although we don’t need to start ‘battening down the hatches’ yet.

You can find Calm here.

You can find Botnik  here and Botnik Studios here.

 

AI at Ingenium [Canada Science and Technology Museum] on April 25, 2018

Formerly known (I believe) [*Read the comments for the clarification] as the Canada Science and Technology Museum, Ingenium is hosting a ‘sold out but there will be a livestream’ Google event. From Ingenium’s ‘Curiosity on Stage Evening Edition with Google – The AI Revolution‘ event page,

Join Google, Inc. and the Canada Science and Technology Museum for an evening of thought-provoking discussions about artificial intelligence.

[April 25, 2018
7:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. {ET}
Fees: Free]

Invited speakers from industry leaders Google, Facebook, Element AI and Deepmind will explore the intersection of artificial intelligence with robotics, arts, social impact and healthcare. The session will end with a panel discussion and question-and-answer period. Following the event, there will be a reception along with light refreshments and networking opportunities.

The event will be simultaneously translated into both official languages as well as available via livestream from the Museum’s YouTube channel.

Seating is limited

THIS EVENT IS NOW SOLD OUT. Please join us for the livestream from the Museum’s YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/cstmweb *** April 25, 2018: I received corrective information about the link for the livestream: https://youtu.be/jG84BIno5J4 from someone at Ingenium.***

Speakers

David Usher (Moderator)

David Usher is an artist, best-selling author, entrepreneur and keynote speaker. As a musician he has sold more than 1.4 million albums, won 4 Junos and has had #1 singles singing in English, French and Thai. When David is not making music, he is equally passionate about his other life, as a Geek. He is the founder of Reimagine AI, an artificial intelligence creative studio working at the intersection of art and artificial intelligence. David is also the founder and creative director of the non-profit, the Human Impact Lab at Concordia University [located in Montréal, Québec]. The Lab uses interactive storytelling to revisualize the story of climate change. David is the co-creator, with Dr. Damon Matthews, of the Climate Clock. Climate Clock has been presented all over the world including the United Nations COP 23 Climate Conference and is presently on a three-year tour with the Canada Museum of Science and Innovation’s Climate Change Exhibit.

Joelle Pineau (Facebook)

The AI Revolution:  From Ideas and Models to Building Smart Robots
Joelle Pineau is head of the Facebook AI Research Lab Montreal, and an Associate Professor and William Dawson Scholar at McGill University. Dr. Pineau’s research focuses on developing new models and algorithms for automatic planning and learning in partially-observable domains. She also applies these algorithms to complex problems in robotics, health-care, games and conversational agents. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research and the Journal of Machine Learning Research and is currently President of the International Machine Learning Society. She is a AAAI Fellow, a Senior Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) and in 2016 was named a member of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists by the Royal Society of Canada.

Pablo Samuel Castro (Google)

Building an Intelligent Assistant for Music Creators
Pablo was born and raised in Quito, Ecuador, and moved to Montreal after high school to study at McGill. He stayed in Montreal for the next 10 years, finished his bachelors, worked at a flight simulator company, and then eventually obtained his masters and PhD at McGill, focusing on Reinforcement Learning. After his PhD Pablo did a 10-month postdoc in Paris before moving to Pittsburgh to join Google. He has worked at Google for almost 6 years, and is currently a research Software Engineer in Google Brain in Montreal, focusing on fundamental Reinforcement Learning research, as well as Machine Learning and Music. Aside from his interest in coding/AI/math, Pablo is an active musician (https://www.psctrio.com), loves running (5 marathons so far, including Boston!), and discussing politics and activism.

Philippe Beaudoin (Element AI)

Concrete AI-for-Good initiatives at Element AI
Philippe cofounded Element AI in 2016 and currently leads its applied lab and AI-for-Good initiatives. His team has helped tackle some of the biggest and most interesting business challenges using machine learning. Philippe holds a Ph.D in Computer Science and taught virtual bipeds to walk by themselves during his postdoc at UBC. He spent five years at Google as a Senior Developer and Technical Lead Manager, partly with the Chrome Machine Learning team. Philippe also founded ArcBees, specializing in cloud-based development. Prior to that he worked in the videogame and graphics hardware industries. When he has some free time, Philippe likes to invent new boardgames — the kind of games where he can still beat the AI!

Doina Precup (Deepmind)

Challenges and opportunities for the AI revolution in health care
Doina Precup splits her time between McGill University, where she co-directs the Reasoning and Learning Lab in the School of Computer Science, and DeepMind Montreal, where she leads the newly formed research team since October 2017.  She got her BSc degree in computer science form the Technical University Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and her MSc and PhD degrees from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where she was a Fulbright fellow. Her research interests are in the areas of reinforcement learning, deep learning, time series analysis, and diverse applications of machine learning in health care, automated control and other fields. She became a senior member of AAAI in 2015, a Canada Research Chair in Machine Learning in 2016 and a Senior Fellow of CIFAR in 2017.

Interesting, oui? Not a single expert from Ottawa or Toronto. Well, Element AI has an office in Toronto. Still, I wonder why this singular focus on AI in Montréal. After all, one of the current darlings of AI, machine learning, was developed at the University of Toronto which houses the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR),  the institution in charge of the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy and the Vector Institutes (more about that in my March 31,2017 posting).

Enough with my musing: For those of us on the West Coast, there’s an opportunity to attend via livestream from 4 pm to 7 pm on April 25, 2018 on xxxxxxxxx. *** April 25, 2018: I received corrective information about the link for the livestream: https://youtu.be/jG84BIno5J4 and clarification as the relationship between Ingenium and the Canada Science and Technology Museum from someone at Ingenium.***

For more about Element AI, go here; for more about DeepMind, go here for information about parent company in the UK and the most I dug up about their Montréal office was this job posting; and, finally , Reimagine.AI is here.

Meet Pepper, a robot for health care clinical settings

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A Canadian project to introduce robots like Pepper into clinical settings (aside: can seniors’ facilities be far behind?) is the subject of a June 23, 2017 news item on phys.org,

McMaster and Ryerson universities today announced the Smart Robots for Health Communication project, a joint research initiative designed to introduce social robotics and artificial intelligence into clinical health care.

A June 22, 2017 McMaster University news release, which originated the news item, provides more detail,

With the help of Softbank’s humanoid robot Pepper and IBM Bluemix Watson Cognitive Services, the researchers will study health information exchange through a state-of-the-art human-robot interaction system. The project is a collaboration between David Harris Smith, professor in the Department of Communication Studies and Multimedia at McMaster University, Frauke Zeller, professor in the School of Professional Communication at Ryerson University and Hermenio Lima, a dermatologist and professor of medicine at McMaster’s Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine. His main research interests are in the area of immunodermatology and technology applied to human health.

The research project involves the development and analysis of physical and virtual human-robot interactions, and has the capability to improve healthcare outcomes by helping healthcare professionals better understand patients’ behaviour.

Zeller and Harris Smith have previously worked together on hitchBOT, the friendly hitchhiking robot that travelled across Canada and has since found its new home in the [Canada] Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa.

“Pepper will help us highlight some very important aspects and motives of human behaviour and communication,” said Zeller.

Designed to be used in professional environments, Pepper is a humanoid robot that can interact with people, ‘read’ emotions, learn, move and adapt to its environment, and even recharge on its own. Pepper is able to perform facial recognition and develop individualized relationships when it interacts with people.

Lima, the clinic director, said: “We are excited to have the opportunity to potentially transform patient engagement in a clinical setting, and ultimately improve healthcare outcomes by adapting to clients’ communications needs.”

At Ryerson, Pepper was funded by the Co-lab in the Faculty of Communication and Design. FCAD’s Co-lab provides strategic leadership, technological support and acquisitions of technologies that are shaping the future of communications.

“This partnership is a testament to the collaborative nature of innovation,” said dean of FCAD, Charles Falzon. “I’m thrilled to support this multidisciplinary project that pushes the boundaries of research, and allows our faculty and students to find uses for emerging tech inside and outside the classroom.”

“This project exemplifies the value that research in the Humanities can bring to the wider world, in this case building understanding and enhancing communications in critical settings such as health care,” says McMaster’s Dean of Humanities, Ken Cruikshank.

The integration of IBM Watson cognitive computing services with the state-of-the-art social robot Pepper, offers a rich source of research potential for the projects at Ryerson and McMaster. This integration is also supported by IBM Canada and [Southern Ontario Smart Computing Innovation Platform] SOSCIP by providing the project access to high performance research computing resources and staff in Ontario.

“We see this as the initiation of an ongoing collaborative university and industry research program to develop and test applications of embodied AI, a research program that is well-positioned to integrate and apply emerging improvements in machine learning and social robotics innovations,” said Harris Smith.

I just went to a presentation at the facility where my mother lives and it was all about delivering more individualized and better care for residents. Given that most seniors in British Columbia care facilities do not receive the number of service hours per resident recommended by the province due to funding issues, it seemed a well-meaning initiative offered in the face of daunting odds against success. Now with this news, I wonder what impact ‘Pepper’ might ultimately have on seniors and on the people who currently deliver service. Of course, this assumes that researchers will be able to tackle problems with understanding various accents and communication strategies, which are strongly influenced by culture and, over time, the aging process.

After writing that last paragraph I stumbled onto this June 27, 2017 Sage Publications press release on EurekAlert about a related matter,

Existing digital technologies must be exploited to enable a paradigm shift in current healthcare delivery which focuses on tests, treatments and targets rather than the therapeutic benefits of empathy. Writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Dr Jeremy Howick and Dr Sian Rees of the Oxford Empathy Programme, say a new paradigm of empathy-based medicine is needed to improve patient outcomes, reduce practitioner burnout and save money.

Empathy-based medicine, they write, re-establishes relationship as the heart of healthcare. “Time pressure, conflicting priorities and bureaucracy can make practitioners less likely to express empathy. By re-establishing the clinical encounter as the heart of healthcare, and exploiting available technologies, this can change”, said Dr Howick, a Senior Researcher in Oxford University’s Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences.

Technology is already available that could reduce the burden of practitioner paperwork by gathering basic information prior to consultation, for example via email or a mobile device in the waiting room.

During the consultation, the computer screen could be placed so that both patient and clinician can see it, a help to both if needed, for example, to show infographics on risks and treatment options to aid decision-making and the joint development of a treatment plan.

Dr Howick said: “The spread of alternatives to face-to-face consultations is still in its infancy, as is our understanding of when a machine will do and when a person-to-person relationship is needed.” However, he warned, technology can also get in the way. A computer screen can become a barrier to communication rather than an aid to decision-making. “Patients and carers need to be involved in determining the need for, and designing, new technologies”, he said.

I sincerely hope that the Canadian project has taken into account some of the issues described in the ’empathy’ press release and in the article, which can be found here,

Overthrowing barriers to empathy in healthcare: empathy in the age of the Internet
by J Howick and S Rees. Journaly= of the Royal Society of Medicine Article first published online: June 27, 2017 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0141076817714443

This article is open access.

Canada Science and Technology Museum to reopen in November 2017

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It’s been along time coming but the opening of the refurbished and mould-free Canada Science and Technology Museum (CSTM) is coming up in November 2017, some 150 days away. Here’s more from  the CSTM’s june 20, 2017 announcement page,

The New Canada Science and Technology Museum

June 20, 2017 marks 150 days until the new Canada and Science Technology Museum opens!

The Museum will open its doors to the public at 9 a.m. EST on November 17, 2017.  Visit the Museum for an entirely new, immersive heritage experience, including completely redesigned exhibits, a demo stage, and more artifacts on view than ever before.

1967 to 2017

  • The first Museum opened in November 1967 for Canada`s Centennial. In 2017, nearly 50 years to the day, the Museum is opening for Canada`s sesquicentennial!
  • The original Museum was heralded as unique for its emphasis on visitor participation and avoiding “do not touch signs”. Like the 1967 Museum, the new Canada Science and Technology Museum will be interactive, immersive, and fun!

Be there on November 17, 2017 to experience the new Canada Science and Technology Museum!

There’s an introductory video,

The CSTM provides more information on its ‘museum renewal’ page,

When it reopens, it will feature over 7,400 m2 (80,000 sq. ft.) of new exhibition space, including an 850 m2 (9,200 sq. ft.) temporary exhibition hall to accommodate travelling exhibitions from around the world.

The Museum will have five main galleries:

  • Creating and Using Knowledge;
  • Children’s Gallery;
  • Moving and Connecting, which will include the beloved locomotives;
  • Technology in our Lives;
  • Transforming Resources.

Additionally, to better showcase the Museum’s magnificent collection, there will be Artifact Alley, which will introduce Augmented Reality to Museum visitors. Visitor favourite the Crazy Kitchen will also be part of the renewed Museum, as well as a demonstration stage, classrooms and maker space.

After more than three years (see my June 12, 2015 posting; the first paragraph notes the museum has been shut since Sept. 2014), the Canada Science and Technology Museum finally reopens its doors on November 17, 2017. It would be nice for those of us who are don’t live in Ottawa if the CSTM organized some online events so we can participate.