Updates from DawsonAI

Partnerships:

DawsonAI has joined forces with AI Launch Lab to offer Dawson students free access to hands-on workshops where they learn principles of data science and artificial intelligence and apply that knowledge towards real-world problems and projects. There are plans to run this workshop series again in future semesters.

DawsonAI is collaborating with the Computer Science department to host the annual software conference DawsCon, taking place on January 14, 2022. Registration is now open, but space is limited due to occupancy restrictions. Sign up now and don’t miss this year’s amazing line-up of speakers and workshops.

Research:

DawsonAI is collaborating with industry partner Ciena on a Mitacs Accelerate grant with 8 student interns, a postdoctoral researcher and external university partners from Concordia and ÉTS to study innovative AI-enabled applications for the future of 5G in Canada. The research lead at Dawson is Victor Ponce (Computer Science). Further news will be shared about this exciting collaboration in 2022.

This fall DawsonAI (Joel Trudeau) wrapped up a research grant funded by the Pôle Montréalais d’enseignement supérieur en intelligence artificielle (PIA) with Concordia Continuing Education (Sherry Blok, lead). The main outcome of this work was an AI competency framework for higher education, including CEGEP, university, and lifelong learning (“Artificial Intelligence Competency Framework: A success pipeline from college to university and beyond”). The framework was designed to be flexible and extensible for use now and in the future. Read more about the project resources here and in an article published in the Concordia news channel here.

Communities of Practice:

Entering the last semester of the Three-Year Plan for AI at Dawson, the dynamic work of the AI-themed communities of practice (CoPs) highlights the objective of building capacity at Dawson to deliver teaching and learning experiences for the AI era. Stay tuned for more updates on these faculty-driven initiatives.

Teaching CoP:

Under the guidance of Robert Stephens (Humanities & Philosophy), four of the six fellows from the 2021-22 cohort presented a session at the F21 Ped Day entitled “AI in Education: The Promise and the Peril”, by Andrew Katz, Kasia Wolfson, Sarah Allen, and Michel Fournier-Simard. Click here to view additional DawsonAI presentations. A future news item will feature the portfolio work of the Fall 2021 cohort of teaching fellows.

Research CoP:

We are pleased to announce the newest cohort of the Research community of practice, for Winter 2022, coordinated by Joel Trudeau (Physics):  Charles Le Guen (3D Animation & Computer-Generated Imagery), Michel Fournier-Simard (Political Science), Sameer Bhatnagar (Physics)

We look forward to sharing more news about the AI initiatives at Dawson College in 2022.