New funds aid in AI methods to advance autism research
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Professor Kohitij Kar, from York University’s Department of Biology in the Faculty of Science, is among 28 early-career researchers who received grants valued at $100,000 from Brain Canada’s Future Leaders in Canadian Brain Research program. His project will combine neuroscience and artificial intelligence (AI) studies of vision into autism research.
Kohitij Kar
Kar, a Canada Research Chair in Visual Neuroscience, combines machine learning and neuroscience to better understand visual intelligence. His new project funded by Brain Canada will explore these intersections in the context of autism.
“The ability to recognize other people’s moods, emotions and intent from their facial expressions differs in autistic children and adults,” says Kar. “Our project will introduce a new, vastly unexplored direction of combining AI models of vision into autism research – which could be used to inform cognitive therapies and other approaches to better nurture autistic individuals.”
Based on prior funding from the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative, Kar’s research team at York University has been developing a non-human primate model of facial emotion recognition in autism. The machine learning-based models the team will use are called artificial neural networks (ANNs), which mimic the way the brain operates and processes information. Kar will develop models that predict at an image-by-image level how primates represent facial emotions across different parts of their brain and how such representations are linked to their performance in facial emotion judgment tasks. They will then use state-of-the-art methods developed by their team to fine-tune the ANNs to align them more with the performance of neurotypical brains and those of an autistic adult.
The second part of Kar’s project will focus on using the updated ANNs to reverse-engineer images that could potentially be used to help autistic adults match their facial emotion judgments to that of the neurotypically developed adults. This work builds on his previous research (published in the journal Science) that showed ANNs can be used to construct images that broadly activate large populations of neurons or selectively activate one population while keeping the others unchanged, to achieve a desired effect on the visual cortex. In this project, he will shift the target objective from neurons to a clinically relevant behaviour.
Brain Canada’s Future Leaders in Canadian Brain Research program aims to accelerate novel and transformative research that will change the understanding of nervous system function and dysfunction and their impact on health. It has been made possible by the Canada Brain Research Fund, an arrangement between the Government of Canada (through Health Canada) Brain Canada Foundation and the Azrieli Foundation, with support from the Erika Legacy Foundation, the Arrell Family Foundation, the Segal Foundation and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
Professor receives patent to improve AI machine learning
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Steven Xiaogang Wang, a professor in York University’s Department of Mathematics & Statistics at the Faculty of Science, and a member of the Laboratory of Mathematical Parallel Systems, has had a U.S. patent approved for an algorithm that will reduce the training time of artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning (ML).
The now-patented algorithm, approved this year, was a result of six months of research at York. It was submitted to the United States Patent and Trademark Office in 2019. The algorithm’s framework is based on mathematical arguments that helps significantly reduce the training time of machine learning, as it absorbs, processes and analyzes new information. It does so by using a mathematical formula to allow residual networks – responsible for the training of AI – to compute in parallel to each other, thereby enabling faster simultaneous learning.
Wang’s desire to accelerate machine learning’s abilities is driven, in part, by a specific area of AI applications. “I want to apply all the algorithms I develop to health care,” Wang says. “This is my dream and mission.”
Wang has especially focused on using AI to improve care for seniors and that work has previously earned him the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Award from the House of Commons for initiatives during COVID-19 to mitigate the spread of the virus in long-term care facilities.
Wang plans to use the patented algorithm in ongoing projects that aim to provide smart monitoring of biological signals for seniors. For example, it could be used in long-term care to continuously monitor electrocardiogram signals at night to register heartbeats that have stopped. To move towards that goal, Wang is also working on building an AI platform that will complement those ambitions, and expects it to be ready in several years.
He is deeply invested in the social impact of AI as a member of the York organized research unit Centre for Artificial Intelligence & Society, where researchers at York who are collectively advancing the state of the art in the theory and practice of AI systems, governance and public policy.
“I can use the machine learning to help the long-term care facilities improve the quality of care, but also help out with the struggles of the Canadian health-care system,” says Wang.
Upskill digital storytelling through new course at Glendon
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By Elaine Smith
Raiman Dilag, director of information technology services (ITS) at York University’s Glendon College, and his team are working to ensure their students have access to the most current technology to enhance their storytelling capabilities.
They will make this possible through an Academic Innovation Fund grant that allowed them to create a new eight-week extracurricular course – XR Storytelling in Extended Reality / XR Accroche Narrative en Réalité Étendue – that will provide interested Glendon students and faculty, with an introduction to virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), 360-degree cameras, podcasting and 3D printing. The course is not for credit, but those who complete it will earn a microcredential and a digital badge that can be affixed to their resumes and LinkedIn profiles.
Glendon College offers a new course for all students that allows them to upskill digital storytelling. This photo is a screenshot from a video showing 360-degree photoraphy. For another example, go here.
“While it’s expected for STEM students to be exposed to technological tools, at Glendon, we are deeply rooted in the liberal arts tradition,” Dilag said. “I saw the opportunity to complement resources currently in place, and enhance our students’ access to these and other new tools. Our students have stories to tell, and they benefit from sharing them using new media.”
For those on the outside looking in, the idea of using these tools can be confusing and/or daunting. VR and its sleek headsets can immerse users in another space, such as the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris before and after the fire. Fans of Pokémon Go know that AR allows users to employ a device to interact digitally with the real world, bringing images to life. 360-degree photography brings the viewer into the space, letting them experience that moment from all of the photographer’s points of view. Podcasts stream on digital devices and are excellent audio/video tools for storytelling, while 3D printing enables the creation, and customization, of 3D objects crafted in one’s imagination or modified from previous designs.
Each of these technologies, independently or in combination, are valuable for storytelling in a digital era.
The eight-week course created by the ITS team will familiarize students with these key tools and require them to work on a group project to show their facility with one or more of them. The project will also reinforce teamwork skills, and in true Glendon nature, is conducted in English or French by the bilingual XR technology co-ordinator.
“I’d like students to think about the stories they want to tell,” said Dilag. “These are just tools; however, a course like this can open doors, because opportunities following graduation may be influenced by things beyond academics, such as exposure to any or all of these XR technologies.
“We’re all about the student experience, recruitment and retention. If this course helps them graduate more career-ready, it’s a great way for us to add value to their university, and post-graduation, experience.”
The in-person course is open to all Glendon students and will be offered during both the Fall and Winter terms. Dilag hopes the success of the course will lead to expansion for all York students.
The team has been planning the course since February: designing the curriculum, writing the proposal, purchasing necessary equipment and making the space attractive. The course will be conducted by the XR technology co-ordinator with oversight from Dilag.
“Let’s get technology in the hands of this dynamic generation and see what they can do,” Dilag said. “I think they’ll impress us.”
He is proud of his team’s work and reminds the larger community that the ITS department “is about more than resetting passwords,” he said. “We aim to humanize technology, and to use it to enable the telling of great stories.”
XR Storytelling in Extended Reality / XR Accroche Narrative en Réalité Étendue begins the week of Oct. 16. Glendon students can register online.
Faculty who may be interested in the course can contact xrglendon@glendon.yorku.ca to discuss their needs and learning objectives.
Copyright could make or break artificial intelligence, says prof
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Osgoode Hall Law School Professor Carys Craig is stepping into the role of associate dean of research and institutional relations at a time when her own scholarship is posing fundamental questions about society’s next technological shift and the future of artificial intelligence (AI).
Carys Craig
Craig, who will serve in this new role over the next year, argues in a series of recent articles and presentations that the text and data mining required for AI to produce anything could potentially clash with copyright law, significantly hampering the development of the technology or changing its direction.
“The way I see it now, copyright is the thing that could make or break AI,” she said. “The question about whether training AI involves making copies that constitute copyright infringement is an enormous issue.”
An internationally recognized intellectual property (IP) law expert, Craig said that, more than ever, the interaction of law and technology is forcing legal scholars to re-examine legal principles and concepts that may have been taken for granted – especially when it comes AI. In many areas, she added, Osgoode is at the forefront of that process.
“When you have a technology that has this paradigm-shifting capacity,” she observed, “suddenly you’re looking at the law and you’re thinking, well, we always knew, for example, what copyright laws protected when something was authored, but we didn’t really know what an author was because we hadn’t really encountered that question before.
“We want to future-proof the law,” she added, “but we need to understand that the law will evolve and so we need to look at how technology is shaping the law, as well as the potential for the law to shape technology.”
In her new role as associate dean, research and institutional relations, Craig said she will be focused on continuing to enhance Osgoode’s vibrant research community post-pandemic, supporting its researchers, communicating their successes and improving the public’s understanding of the importance of legal research.
In particular, Craig said, she will work hard to ensure that students feel that they’re an integral part of Osgoode’s research community. The law school’s curriculum aids in that by ensuring students are engaged in legal research and scholarly writing, especially with its upper-year writing requirement, editorial opportunities with its leading law journals and the annual JD Research Symposium.
“It’s easy for them to get caught up in their studies and their deadlines and their exams and their grades, but being at Osgoode gives you a real opportunity to participate in an intellectual community,” she said. “We want to see the students here and engaged in that scholarly conversation.”
In addition to her role as an associate dean, Craig is director of IP Osgoode, which explores legal governance issues at the intersection of IP and technology. She is also editor-in-chief of the Osgoode Hall Law Journal. A recipient of multiple teaching awards, she is often invited to share her work and expertise with academic audiences, professional organizations, policymakers and the press. Her publications are regularly cited in legal arguments and judicial opinions, including in several landmark rulings by the Supreme Court of Canada.
New academic year, new teaching and learning initiatives
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Welcome to the first issue of Innovatus for the 2023-24 academic year!
Innovatus is a special issue of YFile that offers a space to highlight initiatives and colleagues who are transforming teaching and learning at York, and it is my hope that these special issues will begin new conversations and facilitate collaboration.
Chloe Brushwood Rose
As we begin another academic year together, I am looking forward to many opportunities to learn and talk together about the ways in which teaching and learning in higher education continues to evolve. I believe that the complex times we are living in demand an approach to pedagogical innovation that foregrounds qualities of risk-taking, openness to failure, human-centredness, creativity, social transformation, diversification and decolonization. Innovation may at times need to focus on reparation before it can lead to transformation.
Our University Academic Plan articulates the aim to ”diversify whom, what and how we teach” as one of its six key priorities. In the Office of the Vice-Provost Teaching & Learning, we are focused on this priority and on enriching the pedagogical experience for students, faculty and instructors across all academic units and programs. As our monthly teaching and learning publication, Innovatus reflects such efforts taking place across the University, and I am excited about offering you a glimpse into the innovative ideas our faculty and staff put into practice in this regard.
Our office recognizes the unparalleled diversity of our community, and that diversifying what and how we teach is inextricably linked to creating an institution in which all of us can thrive. This year, we are looking forward to the forthcoming report and recommendations of the Joint APPRC-ASCP Task Force on the Future of Pedagogy and to working with colleagues to support its implementation. Other priorities this year include expanding experiential education opportunities for both undergraduate and graduate students, addressing the complex impacts of generative artificial intelligence for teaching and learning with assistance from the Teaching Commons, and developing models for program delivery and technology-enhanced learning that enhance the creativity and accessibility of teaching and learning at York.
As the school year progresses, I look forward to sharing with you many of the creative, innovative approaches to teaching and learning that our faculty members develop and bring to the classroom, whether that classroom is virtual, in-person or a combination.
All the best for an enriching, engaging school year.
Sincerely,
Chloë Brushwood Rose Vice-Provost Teaching & Learning
Faculty, course directors and staff are invited to share their experiences in teaching, learning, internationalization and the student experience through the Innovatus story form, which is available at tl.apps01.yorku.ca/machform/view.php?id=16573.
In this issue:
Teaching Commons offers fresh content, new perspectives Artificial intelligence continues to be a focus in the evolution of teaching and learning at York University. The Teaching Commons will host an online summit in October.
Teaching with an assist from technology Faculty at York University have continued to embrace technology as a useful and interesting adjunct to their courses after returning to in-person teaching. Read this story to learn how these innovations benefit students.
C4 students turn gaze toward York University Libraries, SDGs Students in the Cross-Campus Capstone Course (C4) worked with York University Libraries to explore new ways for library programs to support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Teaching Commons offers fresh content, new perspectives
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By Elaine Smith
The team of teaching and learning experts at York University’s Teaching Commons (TC) has a full slate of offerings to unveil as the new academic year gets underway, including some new opportunities. Each year, the Teaching Commons team assists faculty and graduate students in pursuing engaged teaching practices centred on the student learning experience, helping them to stay up to date on the latest pedagogical innovations.
Artificial intelligence (AI) will continue to be a focus for TC in 2023-24, says Geneviève Maheux-Pelletier, director of the Teaching Commons.
Geneviève Maheux-Pelletier
“We’re building on the work from last year, because faculty are interested in AI and continue to grapple with academic integration,” Maheux-Pelletier said. “We held an event in February on the York experience with AI and its implications for education that was broadly attended. Since then, our educational developers have launched a course addressing AI and education that ran in the spring and summer and will be back again in October. It’s a sought-after topic and is top of mind for many educators.”
Robin Sutherland-Harris, a TC educational developer, has collected ideas and strategies from participants in various York AI sessions on how to adapt to AI in the teaching and learning space. She will turn them into a series of tip sheet-style resources that will be developed and housed on the TC website.
In addition, TC is hosting an online summit Oct. 18 to 20, in collaboration with the Institute for Research on Digital Literacies, on AI and academic integrity in higher education. It will include a faculty showcase on ways to integrate AI into the teaching practice; a panel of experts from both within the University and elsewhere discussing critical perspectives on generative AI; and student voices about how generative AI affects their learning journey.
“It’s a matter of understanding the role of AI in education and bringing everyone on board with how to ethically use it,” Maheux-Pelletier said.
Bringing decolonization, equity, diversity and inclusion strategies to life, the Teaching Commons, in partnership with the Centre for Human Rights, Equity & Inclusion, will introduce a new online workshop series about trauma-informed pedagogies, led by Ameera Ali, a TC educational developer. It’s a 10-part series with five sessions scheduled for the fall term and five for the winter. Participants who complete seven sessions are eligible for a letter of completion.
The series will introduce participants to the topic of trauma-informed teaching and offer practical strategies for supporting students and themselves while developing a trauma-informed classroom. Sessions will focus on topics such as racial and cultural justice and dis/ableism, access and accommodations.
A new initiative for 2023-24 is supporting faculty in applying for teaching awards.
“Part of our role is to elevate teaching and learning,” said Maheux-Pelletier, “and one way to do that is to nurture a culture where effective instructors feel comfortable applying for awards.
“I know there are many faculty members who are eligible for external awards, but unless they have a plan, applications don’t always happen. We can support them in thinking through the narrative of what they do as instructors, where their innovation lies and how to describe innovations.”
TC will host a series of events focused on informing and encouraging York faculty to apply for awards, drawing on the support of educational developers, including a Sept. 26 workshop about teaching application dossiers.
“When we’ve had the capacity to support nominees in the past, we’ve experienced some success, such as faculty winning 3M Teaching Awards,” Maheux-Pelletier said. “There is so much extraordinary work happening in the classroom, but to be recognized takes intention and that’s what we’re trying to encourage.”
The Teaching Commons is also preparing to use a space redesigned and upgraded to include HyFlex capability, which translates to the ability to provide an equitable experience for people in the classroom and those accessing the class remotely.
“We’re looking forward to seeing what is possible,” said Maheux-Pelletier. “When we hold workshops there, they’ll be available to others outside the classroom. It will be a new chapter for us learning to use the classroom and its digital technology.”
This year, TC is shining a light on graduate students – teaching assistants and others – and working with them to develop sound teaching skills.
“We’ve seen that those who engage with us early in their graduate careers get the most return on investment in terms of acquiring new skills and becoming effective teachers.”
An ongoing program, Reading for Teaching, returns this fall in a slightly different shape. Reading for Teaching is an informal, collegial opportunity to engage with colleagues from across campus interested in reading and talking about teaching; it is a collaborative program between the Teaching Commons and York University Libraries. Participants meet a few times each term to discuss specific reading material. This fall, York’s participants will be collaborating with those at the University of Guelph who have a similar reading program.
Lisa Endersby
“They reached out to us after we chatted about Reading for Teaching at a conference,” said Lisa Endersby, an educational developer and one of the program’s organizers. “We’re exploring new ways of collaborating with colleagues outside York on professional development activities. We’ll all read the same book this fall and converse asynchronously in September. In December, we’ll meet synchronously to share our reflections.
“With teaching, some conversations are very contextual, but others are broader, so it seems like a natural next step. It’s always so interesting to get new perspectives on something you’ve done for a long time.”
TC has its usual full calendar of workshops and events to support all aspects of teaching, and its educational developers are always available for consultation.
Project aims to educate students on academic integrity
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By Angela Ward
An Academic Innovation Fund (AIF) project at York University aims to broaden the understanding of academic integrity and the student experience.
“Academic misconduct is a complex and multifaceted issue that involves consequences such as compromised learning, reduced student success and reputational damage to an institution,” says Angela Clark, academic integrity specialist in the Office of the Vice-Provost Academic. Exploring the approaches used to educate students about academic integrity at York University is a key part of Clark’s project.
Angela Clark
The AIF project, “Understanding Academic Integrity Instruction at York: A First Step to Developing Meaningful Interventions for Students,”will explore the current interventions in place so students can be supported in their understanding of academic honesty at York. It will lead to developing future interventions that are aligned to students’ circumstances and realities and are geared towards supporting their success.
“There are many reasons why academic misconduct occurs. Although it is normally linked to a student’s lack of morals, it more commonly arises from both a lack of academic skills and a lack of awareness around academic integrity,” Clark explains. At York, Faculties offer different types of interventions, which can include modules, websites, activities and assessments, among others. Clark would like to learn what instruction is taking place, how it occurs, how students interpret it and how it is scaffolded. To that end, this project aims to collect all these interventions into an inventory and evaluate them, starting with co-curricular interventions and moving to curricular interventions in the fall. The next phase will take place in Winter 2024, in which focus groups with students will take place.
“In education, most interventions that institutions offer are general in nature, but this doesn’t benefit students who are more at risk of engaging in academic misconduct,” Clark notes. “There is research on international students who are non-native English speakers that shows they tend to engage in breaches more often than domestic students. But there is a lack of research on equity-deserving groups such as racialized students, Indigenous students and those with disabilities, and the struggles they may face with academic integrity standards.
“The research does indicate that the development of competence in academic integrity is affected by a student’s starting point: their academic level, their language, their educational level and other contextual factors.”
Clark is especially interested in these focus groups to understand students’ perspectives and experiences on current academic integrity interventions. “I would like to learn how students are encountering these interventions and where the gaps lie. It’s important to meet students where they are in order to effectively instruct them on this topic.
“The new interventions, paired with the student voice in focus groups, will help us learn about our students and incorporate their diverse experiences and ideas about what can be offered in academic integrity education to best support them.”
Clark adds, “It’s particularly important to understand student behaviour now more than ever. During the pandemic and the corresponding move to remote learning, the use of homework help and content-sharing sites like Chegg and Course Hero flourished across higher education institutions. Now we have generative AI (artificial intelligence) technology, prompting more concern about academic integrity.”
Not only is there a concern around how students potentially use these tools to complete their work, but detecting their unauthorized use has been problematic, as no detection tool to date has been proven to be reliable.
Choosing whether to leverage AI in classrooms is also based on each individual instructor’s judgment, as outlined in York’s Academic Standards, Curriculum and Pedagogy Committee statement. If instructors do allow the use of AI in course assessments or assignments, it is requested that they clearly communicate the parameters for how students utilize it, including being transparent about its use and providing citations. It is also recommended that they engage students in discussions about the ethical use of the technology and common concerns about inaccurate information, false references, privacy, confidentiality and copyright.
The topic of academic integrity is timely, with Academic Integrity Month coming up in October at the University. The event encompasses the theme of “Connecting the Community,” as it will bring together students, faculty and staff for a series of discussions on innovative academic integrity approaches and ways instructors have revised their assessments.
“Generative AI seems to be a popular topic in scheduled discussions, which presents a good opportunity for the York community to learn from each other,” Clark says.
While sessions are aimed at instructors, there is also an opportunity for students to get involved. “Last year, we hosted an online scavenger hunt for students. Students were tasked with finding the answers to questions from various student service areas on their websites and then sending in their answers for chances to win prizes. This year, we’re hosting an in-person scavenger hunt, encouraging students to visit student support services such as Student Community & Leadership Development, the library, the Writing Centre and the English as a Second Language Open Learning Centre, among others, where they can connect with people in person, collect printed material and feel more comfortable accessing these services on campus,” Clark explains.
The Academic Integrity Month website can be found here. “It’s not too late to get involved,” Clark adds. “If anyone in the York community has any academic integrity research, practices or ideas that they think would benefit the York community, they can reach out to me.”
For further information on support and events related to academic integrity, visit the Academic Integrity website. For information about generative AI in particular, visit the AI Technology and Academic Support for Instructors web page, which includes contextual information on AI technology, tips for addressing AI technology with students, managing grey areas and ethical concerns, using AI technology as a teaching and learning tool, and detecting AI content, along with upcoming workshops in October and beyond.
York program funds 16 Global South health-care hubs
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A York University-led program is helping bolster health care with artificial intelligence (AI) solutions throughout the Global South by providing more than $5.8 million in funding for 16 projects in as many countries. The projects aim to combat infectious diseases, including polio surveillance in Ethiopia and helping Indigenous communities in the Philippines.
“We have led the call to strengthen the health-care system in low- and medium-income countries (LMIC) in the Global South for more than a year now,” says Assistant Professor Jude Kong, executive director of the Global South Artificial Intelligence for Pandemic and Epidemic Preparedness and Response Network (AI4PEP), which received $7.25 million in funding from the International Development Research Centre in 2022 to develop a multi-regional, interdisciplinary network to use AI and big data to improve public health preparedness and response, and promote equitable and ethical solutions.
Jude Kong
Originally from Cameroon, Kong understands the strains faced by health-care systems in LMIC and the importance of southern-led solutions. “Funding these projects will help strengthen capacity and support prevention, early detection, preparedness, mitigation and control of emerging or re-emerging infectious disease outbreaks in LMIC countries in Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Middle East, which, as we know, can make their way to every country in the world.” Incidents of disease outbreaks are expected to increase in severity and frequency as more viruses, bacteria and parasites jump from animals to people.
After a recent call for project proposals, the AI4PEP team received 221 submissions from 47 countries, with 142 of them from Africa, 40 from Asia and 26 from Latin America. The overall program framework centres around a gender, equity, inclusion and decolonization lens.
Vinitha Gingatharan
“AI4PEP at York University is deepening the understanding of how equitable and responsibly designed artificial intelligence can lead to southern-led solutions to strengthen public health-care systems in the Global South,” says Vinitha Gengatharan, assistant vice-president, global engagement and partnerships. “This is just the start of a growing, multi-regional network to improve and strengthen public health preparedness and response to disease outbreaks that can make a real difference in the lives of people.”
The projects are led by universities in collaboration with health-care system stakeholders in 16 regions of the Global South. They include – among others – AI and modelling for community-based detection of zoonotic disease with increasing climate change in Senegal; a Foundation for Medical Research-University of Mumbai project; an AI-powered early detection system for communicable respiratory diseases based on integrated data sets at Wits University in South Africa; an Al-Quds University project; and an AI and eco-epidemiology-based early warning systems to improve public health response to mosquito-borne viruses in the Dominican Republic.
As diseases increasingly spread from animals to people with continued human encroachment into natural landscapes, AI4PEP’s One Health concept is designed to recognize and respond to the reality that human health is interdependent with the health of animals and the environment. Climate change is another huge factor.
“Climate change is exacerbating existing health and social inequities by increasing the vulnerability of climate hotspots to the emergence and re-emergence of many infectious diseases, such as malaria, dengue fever and Zika,” says Associate Professor Ali Asgary of the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. “This is a huge initiative, but with the support of many of York’s research institutes, including the York Emergency Mitigation, Engagement, Response and Governance Institute directed by Distinguished Research Professor Jianhong Wu, as well as CIFAL and the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research, I believe we can all collaborate with this exceptional global network to respond to the increasing threat of infectious diseases.”
AI solutions and data science approaches are increasingly being used across the globe to identify risks, conduct predictive modelling and provide evidence-based recommendations for public health policy and action.
But even with the promised good of these innovative tools to improve public health outcomes, the team recognizes there are important ethical, legal and social implications that, if not appropriately managed and governed, can translate into significant risks to individuals and populations. AI4PEP intends to deepen the understanding of designing responsible AI solutions.
“Responsible AI entails intentional design to enhance health equity and gender equality and avoid amplifying existing inequalities and biases. We are working toward the realization of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals; in particular, three and five – good health and well-being, and gender equality,” says Kong. “Colonialism and gendered oppression have enduring effects, disproportionately impacting the health and quality of life of formerly colonized people and vulnerable groups, including women, gender non-conforming people, people with disabilities, rural communities and low-income households.”
Projects within the initiative will work closely with governments, public health agencies, civil society and others to generate new knowledge and collaborations to inform practice and policies at subnational, national, regional and global levels.
Lassonde students place fourth at international unmanned aircraft competition
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This summer, a team of graduate students from York University’s Lassonde School of Engineering, in Professor Jinjun Shan’s research group, placed fourth at an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) competition at the 2023 International Conference of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS) in Warsaw, Poland.
Pictured, left to right: Professor Jinjun Shan, Ingredy Gabriela Gomes Carmo and Hunter Schofield. Mingfeng Yuan on laptop screen
The competition, designed to mimic challenges faced by UAVs performing infrastructure inspections in unknown environments, required teams to program a UAV with the ability to navigate an obstacle course safely and autonomously while identifying defects in the course infrastructure.
The Lassonde students, Hunter Schofield and Mingfeng Yuan (both PhD candidates), together with Ingredy Gabriela Gomes Carmo (MASc candidate), formed a team and spent months preparing and qualifying for the ICUAS UAV competition. The team adopted the name SDCN Lab, after Shan’s Spacecraft Dynamics Control and Navigation (SDCN) Lab at Lassonde.
“The initial event was the qualification round,” says Schofield. “We had to compete in a challenge against 39 international teams to navigate our UAV around a simulated environment and identify any defects at different points of interest.”
After successfully placing among the top five teams, the SDCN Lab team was off to Poland to compete against other top contenders.
In preparation for the final competition, the team combined their expertise in object detection, machine learning, control design, decision-making for autonomous vehicles and more, to develop and implement a code for their UAV. The code was designed to help the UAV achieve the required benchmarks in the final competition – exploration, perception and pose estimation. Exploration allows the UAV to safely navigate the obstacle course and find defects in infrastructure; perception is used to identify and classify defects; and pose estimation helps the UAV evaluate its position and trajectory in a given environment. The team also had the opportunity to work with industry professionals from Quanser Consulting, who provided technical support and practice facilities.
“Preparing for the competition in Poland was a steep learning curve, and we had to collaborate with each other a lot for each benchmark,” says Schofield. “None of us are experts on pose estimation, so we had to work with other lab members to figure it out. It was good experience because it allowed us all to learn something new.”
At the final UAV competition, the team’s drone autonomously navigated and inspected the challenging obstacle course. After each of the teams’ drones made their way through the competition arena, scores were given based on their performance quality. The Lassonde students ultimately finished in fourth place – only 0.5 points behind the third-place team.
“The competition was really difficult, but it was a great experience to collaborate with my team and see the work done by other students,” says Carmo. “I also liked travelling to a new country.”
This opportunity allowed the students to network and collaborate with other international teams at the competition, share interests, build relationships and discuss different approaches and strategies used throughout the competition.
“Professor Shan gave us a great opportunity with this conference and through the partnership with Quanser. We’ve now learned how we can put all our knowledge together to create solutions for real-world problems,” says Yuan.
Professor advancing hardware that mimics human brain
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Amirali Amirsoleimani, assistant professor in the Electrical Engineering & Computer Science Department at York University’s Lassonde School of Engineering is leading efforts to advance neuromorphic computing, which aims to develop specialized software and hardware modelled after the human brain, mimicking its biological structure and function to establish computer systems with human intelligence at their core.
Like the human brain, which uses a complex system of neurons and other structures to perform various functions, neuromorphic computing systems use an expansive network of artificial neurons to receive and transmit signals, allowing for humanistic skills such as the ability to learn from and adapt to changing stimuli. These systems also replicate the brain’s ability to perform advanced tasks with minimal energy and remain functional when partially damaged, supporting energy-efficient computing systems that are resilient against component failure.
Amirali Amirsoleimani
“By building computing systems that mimic the human brain, we can improve computing efficiency and also extend applications to health care. We need to change the way we’re computing,” says Amirsoleimani.
His work has explored the use and optimization of numerous hardware technologies to support a future, global transition from traditional to neuromorphic computing systems. This includes using emerging technologies to build spiking neural accelerators, which can reduce energy consumption and footprint, as well as increase throughput.
Amirsoleimani’s intent is to advance this emerging research field focused on building hardware for neuromorphic computing systems, which can be overlooked during the current wave of artificial intelligence (AI) advancements. “The AI side of research is very saturated, but not many people work on the hardware side,” he says. “We want to build hardware to support the design of novel computing systems.”
In a recent project, Amirsoleimani and his research team proposed a novel system for epileptic seizure detection and prediction. As the underlying mechanism of epilepsy is not entirely understood, experimental methods of treatment require accurate detection and prediction systems. Researchers have explored the use of electroencephalograms (EEG) and human intracranial electroencephalograms (iEEG) to monitor electrical activity in the brain, coupled with machine learning (ML) algorithms to classify seizures; however, these methods have proven to be tedious and inconvenient.
Amirsoleimani’s project explored the use of a convolutional neural network (CNN) based on in-memory computing (IMC) resistive random-access memory (RRAM) architecture, with analog crossbars. This dual-function architecture allowed for data storage and computation, and resulted in patient data being collected from EEGs and iEEGs in a way that the system effectively detected and predicted epileptic seizures with 97.5 to 99.8 per cent accuracy.
With promising benefits and applications of these intelligent computing systems, Amirsoleimani continues to work towards his purposeful research goals, while tackling the many obstacles that overwhelm the field of neuromorphic computing. “You have to be very flexible with this research; there is a lot of trial and error involved,” he says. “The world doesn’t even know exactly how the human brain works yet, so it can be difficult to develop computing systems modelled after something that isn’t completely understood.”
Amirsoleimani’s Lab for Computing Research and Innovation (LCRAIN) is open to interested undergraduate and graduate students looking to change the future of computing. Learn more about LCRAIN and research opportunities available in the lab.
