Jörg Stetefeld, (Tier 1)
Canada Research Chair in Structural
Biology and Biophysics/Professor

How to employ Artificial Intelligence to fight cancer

David Owasi, [BSc/16]
Career Consultant (David Aplin)

Emotional Intelligence is Essential

If your degree is only a precondition to be considered for a job, you need new skills to stand out. My talk will center around the skills of emotional intelligence and how it can be your new premium in the job market.

Dr. Michael Gericke
Professor, Subatomic Physics 

“The Physics of Detectors:
Artificial Eyes that help us “see”

The vast majority of the natural processes to which we are exposed to happen entirely outside of the human sensory range. Understand the basic physics necessary to build detectors from medical diagnostics to the LHC.

Dr. Hersh Shefrin,[BSc(Hons)/70]
Mario L. Belotti Professor of Finance,
Leavey School of Business

Psychological Pitfalls That Have Made the COVID-19 Pandemic Go From Bad to Much Worse

Abstract: Hersh Shefrin’s book Behavioral Risk Management makes the point that every major risk management disaster in the twenty-first century has psychological pitfalls at its root. In this talk, he describes how the same pitfalls that underlie past disasters underlie the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Susan Cooper
Associate Professor, Mathematics

The Strength of a Secret

One goal of the science (and art!) of coding theory deals with the properties of sending and receiving coded messages. Governments, financial institutions, and businesses need to frequently transfer sensitive information from one user or from one computer to another in such a way that even if a message is intercepted by the wrong party, it cannot be read. In this talk, we will consider a family of codes called linear codes and we will investigate how to measure the strength of such codes via the minimum Hamming distance using the lens of algebra and geometry.

Dr. James (Jim) Peebles,
[BSc(Hons)/58, DSc/89]
2019 Nobel Prize in Physics
Professor Emeritus, Princeton University

Lessons on the Nature of Physical Science from the Study of the Expanding Universe

Social constructionism gave sociology a bad name among physicists because it seems to ignore the vast predictive power of our science. I will discuss some insights sociologists did give us about the enterprise of physical science, and why I conclude we got the science of the evolution of our universe about right.

Dr. Max Turgeon
Assistant Professor, Statistics

How to see in 100 dimensions: Transforming your data to better understand it

We are currently going through a data revolution in all aspects of our lives. Learn how data science can help make sense of this complex data.

Dr. Michael Landry [PhD/00]
Head of LIGO Hanford Observatory/Caltech

Colliding black holes and neutron stars: latest results from LIGO and Virgo

On Mar 27, 2020, the LIGO Scientific and Virgo Collaborations suspended their third observation run (O3), a search for gravitational waves (GWs) of astrophysical origin. Beginning Apr 1, 2019 and running 11 months (plus one month off for detector improvements), LIGO and Virgo interferometers recorded 56 unretracted triggers,  corresponding to an average rate of one likely GW signal every six days, before suspending operations owing to the global pandemic. The majority of these triggers correspond to mergers of binary black holes. Some candidates may be binary neutron star mergers, others black hole-neutron star collisions. Published O3 detections to date include GW190425, a heavy binary neutron star merger, and GW190412, an asymmetric mass binary black hole coalescence with measurable imprints of higher multipoles in the data. In this talk we review the detector performance in O3 and summarize novel detections published to date. We sketch the pathway to O4, nominal start date Jan 2022, and prospects for future detections.

Dr. Myrle Ballard
Assistant Professor, Indigenous Scholar, Chemistry

How Science can learn from Anishinaabe mowin!

Anishinaabe mowin is a language that is not only descriptive, but the lexicology of Anishinaabe mowin is a myriad of taxonomy that has been descriptive of the behaviors and characteristics of the ecosystems and its inhabitants. This talk will highlight some of the Anishinaabe names and descriptors of the ecosystem to demonstrate how natural law is embedded within the words.

Dr. Ballard has a Ph.D. in Natural Resources and Environmental Management. She is an Anishinaabe from Lake St. Martin First Nation. Dr. Ballard has researched and documented the flooding of her traditional homelands at Lake St. Martin First Nation. She has experience working with UN organizations on biological diversity and Indigenous Peoples.

Kate Stewart, [BSc./85]
Sr. Director of Strategic Programs
The Linux Foundation

“Building on Strengths: Open Source in Safety Critical Applications”
We’re seeing more and more evidence of open source now being used in safety-critical applications, from rocket launches to implantables.   The innovation that comes from open source-based collaboration is enabling new functionality and capabilities every day. However, the traditional processes and standards being used to assess risk in safety-critical applications were not designed with this rate of change and innovation in mind.   This talk will look at a couple of approaches being taken in some open source projects to be dependable and able to be effectively used in applications that have safety-critical considerations.

Dr. Pourang Irani
(Tier 2), Canada Research Chair in Ubiquitous Analytics,
Professor, Computer Science

Augmented Human

Dr. Pourang Irani, Canada Research Chair in Ubiquitous Analytics, has a vision for the next generation of analytic tools—one in which ubiquitous computing will facilitate insight-driven interaction with data anywhere.

Theo Srivastava
[BSc. (Microbiology)/05]
Account Manager at The Binding Site

Change Happens
Theo Srivastava graduated from the University of Manitoba in 2005 from the microbiology CO-OP program. For the last 15 years, he has been a sales leader with various roles with companies such as Xerox, Roche, Ortho Clinical Diagnostics. Currently, he is working at The Binding Site as an account manager. He has a passion for travel which has been grounded because of COVID. Change happens. Theo will talk about his experiences, how things have changed because of COVID, and what things might look like in 2021 and beyond.

Dr. Ayush Kumar
Professor, Department of Microbiology

Why talk about antimicrobial resistance during a viral pandemic?

Antibiotics are arguably one of the most important advancements in modern medicine. However, in less than 100 years since their first clinical use, our current arsenal of effective antibiotics is rapidly shrinking due to bacterial pathogens’ ability to develop resistance. It is estimated that if new and effective antibiotics are not found, antibiotic-resistant infections will be responsible for 10 million deaths worldwide by 2050. Increasing resistance of bacteria to antibiotics can be attributed to their overuse and misuse. Pandemics such as the one that is ongoing can lead to further overuse and misuse of antibiotics, which in turn can trigger the selection of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Antibiotic stewardship, therefore, needs to be an important aspect of pandemic response.

Dr. Margaret Docker
Professor, Biological Sciences

Lampreys: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Docker’s current research involves developing and applying environmental DNA techniques for monitoring aquatic invasive species and species at risk. This would allow the detection of a species’ presence based on the DNA it leaves behind in the water.

Nirvani Umadat, DMD, B.Sc(Dent), B.Sc(Hon), GPR
Citizen-Scientist Astronaut Candidate
Dental Surgeon, Biotechnologist, Healthcare Entrepreneur.
Project PoSSUM, The University of British Columbia. Canada

Topic: TBA