Mitacs Internship Update, Log 1

It’s been a little bit since I started my internship so I thought I’d give an update on how things are going and some of the events I’ve been too.

I’m working on site at the Parkwood Mental Health building some days now. I have my own office and it’s nice to settle in and get to work. A lot of what I’m doing falls under the role of a Data Scientist. It’s great to get hands on experience working with data.

April 1-2nd I was at IBM in Markham for a Design Think session. It was amazing to meet some of the staff working at IBM and see how they are facilitating the creative process in research. I got to meet a lot of the team that is working on the project I’ve been brought onto as part of my Mitacs Accelerate Internship. Dr. Alex Singer’s team from Winnipeg (and elsewhere), Dr. Zulkernine’s team from Queens University and Dr. Don Richardson, Dr. Renee Hunt and myself from the MacDonald Franklin OSI Clinic. It was very productive. I suggested crossing a river with a teleporter.

April 11th, I was fortunate enough to attend the Lawson 2019 Impact Awards with the OSI Clinic. Dr. Richardson was the recipient of the Innovation award for his work with PTSD in the Canadian Military. The keynote address was from Dr. Dorin Comaniciu on “Artificial Intelligence for Health Care: The Road Ahead”. There were fascinating visualizations of autoencoders and the way that neural networks could be explained by a visual interface.

April 26th, I was at the Parkwood Institute Research day, which highlighted different research going on around the Hospital. Seeing the initiatives going on gives some great insight on how everything is moving together to push forward health and medicine. Dr. Richard Booth gave a great presentation on how social media is affecting every aspect of medicine, health and society.

May 8th, I went to the Iniatives Ambassador’s event at Western.  The theme of the event was “Artificial Intelligence and the Future for Society“. There was a panel discussion that Dr. Lizotte of the Φ Lab was on. There was great discussion around the room about how the changes in Artificial Intelligence are going to change how we live our lives. There was reference to how the Industrial Revolution wasn’t as dramatic as the coming changes are meant to be. Productive meeting today about using IBM’s Watson for a project with the OSI Clinic, too!


Anyways, I’ve got a paper I should be working on.  Until next time!