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The Canadian Undergraduate Conference on AI

Artificial intelligence, real change.

March, 2023 | Queen's University

Dive into

the world of artificial intelligence.

Designed to connect passionate and talented undergraduate students with industry trailblazers, the Canadian Undergraduate Conference on Artificial Intelligence (CUCAI) is a national-scale conference aimed to inspire the future leaders of AI.

Conference

Highlights

Reasons to attend the conference this year.

Premier Speaker

Presentations

Speaker presentations from leaders in academia and industry have been a cornerstone of CUCAI since its inaugural year. These components of the conference empower delegates to learn from the ideas, experiences and knowledge of these professionals as they discuss a variety of fascinating AI topics.

Shivon
Zilis
Project Director, Office of the CEO
Neuralink
Ron
Bodkin
VP of AI Engineering
Vector Institute
Laurence
Moroney
Lead Artificial Intelligence Advocate
Google
David
Hayes
CEO & Founder
AVO - Autonomous Vehicle Organization
Inmar
Givoni
Director of Engineering
Uber ATG

student conversing with industry professional

Exclusive Networking

Opportunities

Exciting events throughout the conference designed to show undergraduate students the present and future of AI in industry. We hope to provide students with the opportunity to connect with the companies on the frontier of AI, hoping to find opportunities to push the boundaries on AI.

Interactive Workshop

Sessions

Workshops are an incredibly engaging facet of CUCAI intended to bring an element of concreteness to the topic of artificial intelligence. These events allow industry partners to showcase their firm’s technology while providing an opportunity for interactive experience with modern AI and data science tools for delegates.

AI Pitch

Competition

Come see promising early-stage student startups compete for a $10,000 prize pool! All the student ventures competing in the event leverage the power of AI to bring new and exciting business solutions to reality.

Design Team

Showcase

The design team showcase was the foundation on which CUCAI was started. This event features in-depth presentations for audiences of all levels of experience and backgrounds, as well as engaging and interactive demonstrations shifted to an online format for 30+ design teams from across Canada.

Past Events & Highlights

Multifaceted Idea Generation

In a Sunday afternoon workshop, William Gilroy-Briand, a Consulting Analyst at Accenture, challenged 50 delegates to tackle several different issues using a variety of AI techniques, including machine vision and sentiment analysis. These issues were topical for students as they primarily pertained to on-campus problems, such as mental health resources and the enhancement of lectures. After a unique idea generation phase, students narrowed down their potential solutions and presented them to the other groups.

Ethics in AI

Prior to lunch on Sunday, four AI industry experts alongside Jeremy Kulchyk, QMIND’s Director of Research, took the stage to discuss the ethical aspects of artificial intelligence. Rishi Behari, Associate Director of MMAI, Shelley Lineham, Executive Consultant for cShell Consulting Inc., Sheila McIlraith, Computer Science Professor at the University of Toronto, and Behzad Sarmadi, Senior Design Researcher at Element AI, conversed on several topics such as inherent gender and racial bias, and the future of smart cities. The conversations were thought-provoking and controversial, and will certainly be applicable for delegates as they make difficult decisions in their upcoming careers.

Geoffrey Hinton

World renowned researcher Geoffrey Hinton, winner of the 2018 ACM A. M. Turing Award (jointly with Yoshua Bengio and Yann LeCun), discussed his most recent research efforts and gave advice to aspiring students. In a technical presentation, Dr. Hinton described his work on model distillation, a process by which the knowledge contained within larger, more complex ensembles of models can be transferred to those which are smaller and require less computation. Dr. Hinton showed that by softening the large models’ outputs, a great deal of information can be extracted from its mistakes.

Women in AI

Tania De Gasperis from Over Under Inside Out, Jenny Lemieux from Torstar, and Dr. Amy Wu from Queen’s University discussed using AI as a tool for change. The panel was moderated by our very own, Sam Dunn, a 4th year Mechanical Engineering student and QMIND’s Director of Marketing. The panel discussion revolved around the changing industries of journalism, start ups, and biomechanics, in addition to why these women were driven to pursue careers in STEM despite the societal barriers that they encounter each and every day.

NLP x Game of Thrones

Alexander Scott, an Analytics Instructor at the Smith School of Business, provided an interactive workshop for delegates on natural language processing (NLP) and its importance in various industries. He went through the basic tasks required for NLP projects and explained their importance. The delegates were given the entire script of Game of Thrones as textual data to apply these techniques. The goal was to retrieve all of the lines associated with a specific character from the show. The process involved pulling the lines from a single character, cleaning the text, visualizing the words through a “word cloud” diagram, and determining the importance of each word through text vectorization. The final result was the lines for a single character, the number of lines, and the vectorization of each word.

How to Build a Chatbot

Fernando Hernandez Leiva, Data Analytics Developer at the Centre for Advanced Computing (CAC), discussed the IBM Watson Assistant and its features. CAC uses the Watson Assistant for several applications where a powerful yet easy-to-use virtual assistant is needed. The Watson assistant is able to integrate multiple data sources which creates a dynamic and efficient platform for users. Fernando taught delegates how to set up a Watson Assistant and design a custom chatbot from scratch.

Multifaceted Idea Generation

Ethics in AI

Geoffrey Hinton

Women in AI

NLP x Game of Thrones

How to Build a Chatbot

Multifaceted Idea Generation

Ethics in AI

Become a Sponsor

We wouldn't be able to host our conference without the help from our incredible sponsors.

Interested in sponsoring? Please contact our chairs at chair@cucai.ca

Queen's Faculty of Engineering & Applied Science

If you have any further questions feel free to reach us at chair@cucai.ca

When is the conference taking place?
CUCAI 2023 will be taking place on the weekend of March 4th and 5th. Events will run from 9:00 am to 7:00 pm on Saturday, and 10:00 am to 4:00 pm Sunday.
Where is the conference taking place?
This year, we are proud to be hosting CUCAI at it's birthplace on Queen's Campus in Kingston, Ontario.
What is included with a ticket?
The purchace of a ticket includes access to all conference events, as well as meals on both Saturday and Sunday during the conference hours, including a Gala Dinner Saturday evening, followed by a social. Tickets for non-Kingston residents will be available for discounted hotel accomodations.

When do conference applications open?
Applications to attend CUCAI 2023 will open in the new year. Students accepted to the conference will soonafter be able to purchase tickets to the conference.
Will there be transportation available from my school?
We will be offering transportation from our student partner schools to and from Queen's. Please contact your student organizaiton for more information.
How do I present my AI project at CUCAI 2023?
If you are a part of one of our Student Partner Groups, you will be included in the Design Team Showcase through them. If you are not a part of a Student Organization and wish to present, please contact us at chair@cucai.ca.

Get Involved

Delegates

Speakers

Student Groups

Delegate applications will open in the new year. Join our Discord to stay up to date!

As a CUCAI speaker, you will have the unique opportunity to speak to and engage with the nation's leading undergraduate AI talent. Conference speakers are encouraged to provide students with relevant insight from their own work and the AI field in an innovative, creative, and personable way. Speaker opportunities include speeches, as well as panelist positions, workshop leaders and incubator pitch competition judges.

CUCAI aims to bring together students from across the country. We partner with Student Organization throughout Canada to send delegates interested in AI who present their projects at CUCAI. If you are a part of a student organization and want to be a part of CUCAI, please do not hesitate to contact us at chair@cucai.ca. For more information, please download our Student Group Partnership Package below.

The Canadian Undergraduate Conference on AI

Artificial intelligence, real change.

March, 2023 | Queen's University

Dive into

Conference

Highlights

Premier Speaker

Shivon

Zilis

Project Director, Office of the CEO

Neuralink

Ron

Bodkin

VP of AI Engineering

Vector Institute

Laurence

Moroney

Lead Artificial Intelligence Advocate

Google

David

Hayes

CEO & Founder

AVO - Autonomous Vehicle Organization

Inmar

Givoni

Director of Engineering

Uber ATG

Exclusive Networking

Interactive Workshop

AI Pitch

Design Team

Past Events & Highlights

Geoffrey Hinton

Women in AI

Become a Sponsor

Our Past Sponsors

Thank you so much for making CUCAI possible!

Frequently Asked Questions

Get Involved