Join this year’s DawsCon Conference for Faculty and Students

The Dawson community is invited to attend the upcoming DawsCon, organized in collaboration with the Computer Science Department and DawsonAI. DawsonAI has been actively working toward implementing objectives laid out in the Three-Year Plan for AI at Dawson with support from NovaScience and Pole IA grants.

To find out more and register, visit https://www.dawsoncollege.qc.ca/dawscon/

DawsCon: Conference for educators and students

On Friday, March 24, Dawson College will be hosting a free conference for educators and a subsequent weekend Data Journalism challenge (March 25-26) aimed at students of any background.

Attendees will be exposed to a wide range of AI topics from challenges of ChatGPT in education to ethics and bias to data manipulation and machine learning, to opportunities for faculty research and student internships.

Presentations will be given by Dawson students and faculty from the AI Teaching and Research Communities of Practice as well as partner organizations, external researchers and industry professionals.

Highlights of March 24

• Keynote 1 to 2:15 p.m. in 5B.16
  Hugo Larochelle, Research Scientist at Google Brain and lead of the Montreal Google Brain team
• 9 a.m. in 5B.16
  Elham Kheradmand — AI For Social Good
• 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. in 3F.38
  ChatGPT Workshop and Roundtable: challenges and opportunities in education
• 3:30 to 4 p.m.
  Mitacs Research Opportunities at the College Level: connecting faculty with industry and community partners for research and student internships
• 4 to 5 p.m.
  Applied AI Student Institute Internships: updates from the 35 student interns working on research projects with Concordia partners

Data Journalism Challenge (March 25-26)

The DawsCon – DawsonAI Data Journalism Challenge will help introduce students to the broad field of Data Journalism, wherein large datasets from various sources are compiled into a visual aid at the center of a story meant to inform the general public. Inspired by the work done at “Our World in Data”, we will begin with publicly available C02 emissions data for Canada at the provincial level and set the stage for you to produce a data journalism project.

The challenge is designed to be doable for teams of college students of any background or program. Preparatory exercises will be provided for participants. We will help you find a team if you don’t have one! A workshop that will also be a special, standalone session of the winter 2023 AI Launch Lab will be given that helps students get their challenge solutions started.

AI Launch Lab Winter Workshops

The AI Launch Lab is an exciting opportunity for CÉGEP students that allows them to learn state-of-the-art skills through the process of creation while being mentored by experts in the field and expanding their data-science portfolio. The workshop series offered again this winter will cover a wide range of AI topics including data manipulation, fundamental machine learning models, deep learning, reinforcement learning and other advanced topics. Students do not need to have prior experience or be technologically proficient in order to participate. The sessions are structured such that students at all levels of skill and knowledge can participate and benefit from the instruction, accompanied by AI specialists all along the way. It was launched on March 4, with more than 100 students registered from Dawson and across the college network.

Dawson faculty interested in bringing classes to DawsCon or finding out more about specific sessions or activities are invited to reach out to Joel Trudeau (jtrudeau@dawsoncollege.qc.ca).