Breakout Session 1

Where do education and AI meet, and what could that mean for your future? In this session, Corbett Artym shares how his background in computing science, teaching, and graduate research shaped a career across classrooms, systems, and technology. Through real examples and reflection, you will explore how AI shows up in teaching practice, why relationships still matter, and how curiosity and judgment shape learning more than any tool. Whether you are considering education or another path, this session offers insight into how teaching can intersect with coding, creativity, and systems thinking. Discover how careers unfold and how your interests can grow into futures you may not have expected.

About Corbett Artym:

Corbett Artym is a teacher, doctoral student, and systems leader working at the intersection of education, technology, and career development. With a background in Computing Science, Mathematics, and secondary education, he brings over a decade of experience teaching and leading in Alberta schools and universities. As an HR Consultant with Edmonton Public Schools, he supports teacher staffing and helps schools build strong, human-centered teams.

Corbett uses AI tools to streamline communication, automate workflows, and support professional decision-making. His doctoral research in Secondary Education explores how emerging technologies like generative AI are shaping learning, professional judgment, and curriculum design.

He has also supported students at the University of Alberta, including as a teaching assistant for EDU 210: Introduction to Educational Technology and EDIT 486: Interactive Multimedia. His work focuses on helping future educators think critically and creatively about how to integrate technology into teaching and learning.

This talk will provide attendees with an overview of how artificial intelligence gets applied to real world use cases at the City of Edmonton. We will begin by describing our project intake and prioritization process, along with a discussion on AI ethics and governance practices, and an overview of our top applied AI project deployments to date. This will be followed by the presentation of two recent case studies: 

• Operating Edmonton: An advanced analytics and AI project supporting the City of Edmonton’s Capital Infrastructure Planning Project; and 

• City Vision: A computer vision project that supports cost-effective vehicular traffic monitoring within the City of Edmonton.

About the Speakers:

Clayton Clemens - Clayton is a Data Scientist for the City of Edmonton, and a thirteen-year veteran of municipal data and analytics. He specializes in data transformation, visualization, and AI/ML, and obsesses over practical innovation and process efficiency. 

Sahand Somi - Sahand is a Data Scientist with the City of Edmonton, specializing in AI/ML, time series analysis, and graph neural networks. He is consistently focused on leveraging these technologies to improve processes and increase efficiency in city operations.

As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly accessible, we are quickly learning its impact on social well-being, particularly within Indigenous communities. Drawing on practical examples from working with Indigenous communities such as Frog Lake, as well as other broader communities, we will explore how AI can be used sustainably to support and enhance the well-being and quality of life of Indigenous communities.  In this session, we'll talk about When we combine the sustainable use of AI, motivation to uplift our communities, and strong consideration for ethics and values, we have the tools to create people-friendly futures.

About Dean Bittner:

Dean Bittner is the Chief Technology Officer, Co-Founder, and principal inventor at RUNWITHIT (RWI) Synthetics, an AI-driven modelling company that creates synthetic environments to support decision-makers and planners operating in rapidly evolving and disrupted sectors. These VR-based simulations of real-world cities and regions include live geospatially accurate digital representations of cities and regions, complete with populations, behaviours, policies, and infrastructure, which are used to analyze the impact of opportunities, risks, and conditions, existing and anticipated, across any conceivable scenario.

Dean is a descendant of Chief Mistawasis and Chief Starblanket, signatories of Canadian Treaty 6.

DOCEO AI leverages existing data created and gathered in classrooms, schools, and districts to predict challenges and recommend strategies to support student learning and staff support. The talk introduces students to how real-world AI systems are built and used responsibly through the lens of DOCEO AI, a Canadian AI company focused on applied, real-world AI deployment. Using DOCEO AI and its conversational system, CLARIO, as a case study, the session explains what Large Language Models (LLMs) are and how they work. It also explores key risks associated with LLMs in practical applications, such as hallucinations, harmful content generation, and over-reliance by users. Finally, the talk demonstrates how DOCEO AI manages these risks in production systems through guardrails, trusted data retrieval, and transparent citations, giving students a practical view of how AI can be applied safely and effectively.

About the Speakers:

Ahmad Jawad - Ahmad is an established member in Alberta’s technology community and serves as CEO of DOCEO AI, a corporation focused on helping school districts leverage artificial intelligence as a data-informed decision-making tool to enhance student learning and support staff. He earned a Bachelor of Science from the University of Alberta and an Executive MBA from Athabasca University. He has also completed the Management Excellence Program at Harvard Business School and holds an Executive Certificate in Digital Business from MIT. Ahmad is currently pursuing a Doctor of Business Administration at Royal Roads University.

Ahmad serves on the board of Technology Alberta, the Computer Science Industry Advisory Board at the University of Alberta, and the Edmonton Regional Innovation Network Steering Committee. He is also co-founder and director of the Edmonton Research Park Business Consortium, an organization dedicated to fostering innovation and collaboration among companies in the Edmonton Research Park and across the wider innovation community.

Zahin Sufiyan - Zahin is a Machine Learning Engineer and AI researcher specializing in large language models, reinforcement learning, and scalable AI systems. Zahin has over four years of experience in machine learning research and applied AI development. He previously worked as a ML Research Assistant at the University of Alberta under the supervision of Dr. Osmar Zaïane, collaborating with Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (MELCO), Japan. His research focused on Generative Flow Networks (GFlowNets) and their application to robotics and machine fault adaptation. He also worked at the Spine Assessment Clinic in Edmonton, where he developed transformer-based models for clinical data analysis. He currently works at DOCEO AI, where he designs and deploys Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines and integrates large language models into intelligent educational support platforms.

Negar Sakhaei - Negar is a Machine Learning engineer that builds AI systems that work in the real world. Since 2016, she has focused on integrating machine learning into practical workflows across industries, from public health and safety to transportation with the Institution of Artificial Intelligence. She is currently working with DOCEO AI, a company developing AI tools to improve efficiency in educational systems with the goal of giving every student access to a better education.