Bio: Angelique Mohring is the founder and CEO of GainX, where she is on a mission to help large enterprises transform and thrive in the face of disruption. With a background in anthropology, innovation, and digital transformation, Angelique recognized the growing challenge companies face in staying competitive and launched GainX to provide AI-driven insights that drive innovation strategy and change management. GainX helps organizations unlock their potential by bridging the gap between innovation and operational efficiency, helping companies navigate the complexities of the 21st-century economy.

Bio: Ben Cox is the founder and CEO of Page where they are on a mission to make government relations & public affairs effortless. After a decade at Shopify, Ben founded Page after recognizing that government is big, and only getting bigger, while technology has largely ignored the pain companies of all sizes feel when trying to understand how government will affect them.

Bio: Matthew Silk is a philosopher at the University of Waterloo, news analyst for the Prindle Post out of DePauw University, and founder of the Ethics of AI Society of Waterloo. Raised in Palmerston Ontario, Matt completed his doctorate at the University of Waterloo with a focus in philosophy of science and values in science. He is the co-author of a forthcoming textbook on the ethics of artificial intelligence which examines issues ranging from bias in AI, opacity, AI and democracy, the ethics of generative AI, and the epistemic and psychological issues involved when humans interact with AI. In his spare time, he also works in outer space ethics.

Bio: Dr. Jeff Nagge is a seasoned clinical associate professor at the University of Waterloo's School of Pharmacy, where he has been instrumental in shaping the next generation of pharmacists since 2006. Born and raised in Mary Hill, just outside of Kitchener-Waterloo, Jeff's journey to academia began with an undergraduate degree in science at UW, followed by a pharmacy residency at McMaster University Medical Center and a doctorate in pharmacy at the University of Toronto. With a passion for cardiology, Jeff has focused much of his career on innovative ways to enhance patient care, particularly in the realm of anticoagulation therapy. Throughout his tenure at the University of Waterloo, Jeff has spearheaded groundbreaking initiatives at the intersection of pharmacy and artificial intelligence (AI). His pioneering work includes the development of virtual anticoagulation clinics using AI-driven chatbots, revolutionizing the way pharmacists receive experiential clinical training. This innovative approach not only enhances the scalability of training but also ensures standardized and comprehensive learning experiences for pharmacists across Canada. Jeff's dedication to advancing pharmacy education extends beyond the classroom. He actively collaborates on research projects aimed at improving healthcare outcomes, particularly in underserved communities. His recent endeavors include initiatives to train pharmacists in culturally competent care for indigenous patients and to streamline residency training through AI-powered clinical modules. As a respected educator and researcher, Jeff continues to push the boundaries of pharmacy practice, leveraging AI to address critical healthcare challenges and empower pharmacists to deliver high-quality.

Joseph Lafleur, President and Co-Founder of PolyML - joseph.lafleur@polyml.com

Bio: Joseph Lafleur, educated in business at Wilfred Laurier University, has extensive experience in financial services, including private debt, equity, and venture capital. Joseph has been involved with numerous technology companies, assisting them through capital raises and IPO processes.

Mardi Witzel, CEO and Co-Founder of PolyML - mardi.witzel@polyml.com

Bio: Mardi Witzel has an MBA from Wilfrid Laurier University and a Bachelor's in Political Studies from Queen's University. Mardi's expertise is in AI Governance, previously serving as Vice President at NuEnergy.ai and has led various boards and foundations.

For more detailed information, please visit the PolyML website: https://polyml.com/

Bio: Sushanta Mitra is a professor in Mechanical & Mechatronics Engineering and the Executive Director of the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology (WIN). He is an elected fellow of several organizations, including the Canadian Academy of Engineering and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, for his contributions to science and engineering.

Bio: Dr. Maura R. Grossman is a Research Professor in the School of Computer Science and an Adjunct Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School. Renowned for her work in technology-assisted review in legal proceedings, her research intersects AI, data science, law, and ethics. At the University of Waterloo, she focuses on the ethical implications and societal impacts of AI, contributing significantly to the fields of AI ethics and legal informatics.

Bio: Dr. Helen Chen is the Director of Professional Practice Centre n for Health Systems; she is also the faculty lead of the Master of Health Informatics Program at the School of Public Health Sciences. 

Additionally, she is jointly appointed to both Cheriton School of Computer Science and Statistics and Actuarial Science. She is also the President of Canadian Personalized Healthcare Innovation Network, a not-for-profit organizing promoting the access and use of real world health data to enable learning health systems.

Chris Silivestru is a proven Engineering Leader with a background in full stack development across a variety of problem domain and scaling demands.He has experience forming and growing high performing teams, leading technical direction, planning for the long term while still iteratively delivering value, and working across entire orgs to make sure they're solving the right problems at the right time.

The Hopkins Laboratory for Spectroscopy and Dynamics Research employs experimental spectroscopy and chemical dynamics techniques in conjunction with high level quantum chemical calculations to decipher the nature of nanocluster systems. His research focuses on three key areas: velocity map imaging, structure and reactivities of nanoclusters, and high-resolution spectroscopy.

Bio: Dr. Rambhatla is an Assistant Professor in the Management Sciences Department, Faculty of Engineering with cross appointments with David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science and Systems Design Engineering Department at the University of Waterloo, ON, Canada. Affiliated with Waterloo AI Institute and Waterloo Institute for Sustainable Aeronautics, she leads the CriticalML lab where her research focusses on reliable artificial intelligence (AI) models for real-world decision making for critical applications in healthcare (transplant and surgery), intelligent automation, aviation, and climate change, using deep learning, time-series and spatiotemporal data analysis, blackbox interpretability, and provable algorithms. Her inter-disciplinary work spanning both theory and practice of machine learning (ML), has been published at top ML venues such as NeurIPS, ICLR, KDD, IJCAI, AAAI, and clinical venues such as AMIA, Urology Clinics North America, and Surgery. Recipient of academic awards such as the prestigious 2021 Merit Award for Excellence in Postdoctoral, and E Bruce Lee Memorial Fellowship, among others, Dr. Rambhatla received her Ph.D. and Master's in electrical engineering from the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN, U.S.A. in 2019 and 2012, respectively. She pursued her postdoctoral research (2019-21) in the Computer Science department at the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A. She received her B.Tech with Honors in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering from College of Engineering Roorkee, Roorkee, India in 2010, where she was the university Bronze Medalist for the class of 2010.

Bio: William Melek is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Waterloo. He also serves as the Director of the Laboratory of Computational Intelligence and Automation and the Director of RoboHub.

Bio: Zhao Pan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Waterloo and the Principal Investigator of the Interdisciplinary Fluid Physics Lab - Pan Lab. Prior to joining Waterloo, he worked at Utah State University and Florida Center for Advanced Aero-propulsion (FCAAP, FSU) as a postdoctoral fellow.

Bio: Rodney Smith’s research involves the study of electrocatalysts for use in sustainable energy storage systems. His research examines the chemistry of electrode surfaces, measures electron transfer kinetics and probes electrochemical reaction dynamics in an effort to guide the design and fabrication of solid-state electrocatalysts.

Bio: I was born in Saskatoon and grew up in Calgary and Montreal. However, I spent my teens and young adult life in Nigeria and India. As a result I was exposed to rather extreme differences in economic conditions and material comforts. I became interested in why people in prosperous countries like Canada could obtain their groceries and household needs from large and clean stores while individuals in less developed countries, had to access tumultuous (and vibrant) bazaars. The acute and chronic poverty I also encountered impacted me, and I began to wonder on what a government could and should do in terms of policy intervention. I saw economics as a natural outlet to answer these questions.

Bio: I am a Post-Doctoral fellow at SIRRL at the University of Waterloo under the supervision of Professor Kerstin Dautenhahn. I graduated with a Ph.D. degree from REAL at The Pennsylvania State University, under the supervision of Professor Alan R. Wagner. Before joining Penn State, I completed my undergraduate in Electrical Engineering from the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore. I was also a part of the Global UGRAD program funded by USEFP and spent a semester at the University of Central Missouri during my undergraduate studies.

My research is highly inspired by neuroscience and focuses on lifelong learning to enable long-term autonomy for assistive robots. In particular, I focus on robot learning from a limited number of interactions with humans in a lifelong manner. With respect to applications, my research is applicable in different fields of robotics that require long-term autonomy, particularly domestic robots and home service robots. Overall the main goal of my research is to develop autonomous assistive robots that can continually adapt to the dynamic real-world environments to support their users in daily living.

Bio: Dr. Helen Chen is the Associate Director of Professional Practice Centre in Health Systems, she is also the faculty lead of the WHISTL research group. Additionally, she is an assistant research professor, jointly appointed to both the School of Public Health and Health Systems and to the Cheriton School of Computer Science.

Bio: I am an Assistant Professor at the University of Waterloo's Cheriton School of Computer Science, and a faculty affiliate at the Vector Institute. I run The Salon. I'm interested in reliable and trustworthy statistics and machine learning, including considerations such as data privacy and robustness.

I was a Microsoft Research Fellow at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing for the Fall 2018 semester program on Foundations of Data Science and the Spring 2019 semester program on Data Privacy: Foundations and Applications. Before that, I completed my Ph.D. at MIT, affiliated with the Theory of Computing group in CSAIL. I was very fortunate to be advised by Costis Daskalakis.

Before MIT, I spent four wonderful years at Cornell University, graduating in May 2012 with a degree in Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering. At Cornell, I was incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to work with Bobby Kleinberg.

Bio: Vijay Ganesh is an associate professor at the University of Waterloo's department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, cross-appointed with the School of Computer Science in the Faculty of Math, and the Co-Director of the Waterloo AI Institute. He is also a member of the Waterloo Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute, the Waterloo Computational Math program, and the Waterloo blockchain research community. Vijay completed his PhD in computer science from Stanford University in 2007 and was a research scientist at MIT from 2007 to 2012.

The primary focus of Vijay's research is the theory and practice of SAT/SMT solvers and their applications in software engineering, security, AI, mathematics, and physics.