Speakers
Learn about the researchers speaking at TNSBC 2018
Confirmed speakers
Dr. Jeremy Clark
Dr. Clark's talk will focus on Bitcoin & Blockchains: Landscape and Future Directions
Jeremy Clark is an assistant professor at the Concordia Institute for Information Systems Engineering. He obtained his PhD from the University of Waterloo, where his gold medal dissertation was on designing and deploying secure voting systems including Scantegrity — the first cryptographically verifiable system used in a public sector election. He wrote one of the earliest academic papers on Bitcoin, completed several research projects in the area, and contributed to the first textbook. Beyond research, he has worked with several municipalities on voting technology and testified to the Canadian Senate on Bitcoin. Find out more.
Dr. Carmela Cucuzzella
Dr. Cucuzzella will speak about her work on environmental design for the built environment.
Dr. Carmela Cucuzzella is an Associate Professor in the Design and Computation Arts Department and is holder of the Concordia University Research Chair in Integrated Design, Ecology and Sustainability for the Built Environment (www.ideas-be.ca). Her research work is framed within the broad domain of design studies where she investigates questions of sustainable design for urban living. Her varied background and expertise in environmental and social life cycle analysis, in green building rating systems, and in design and architecture, allows her to adopt a framework revolving around design’s interrelated dimensions of the cognitive-instrumental, the moral-practical and the aesthetic-expressive forms of conception and discourse. Find out more.
Dr. Catherine Guastavino
Dr. Guastavino will speak about her research "Sounds in the city: Applying the soundscape approach to urban noise management."
Catherine Guastavino is an Associate Professor at the School of Information Studies of McGill University, where she holds a William Dawson Research Chair. She is a member of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) where she served as Associate Director for Scientific and Technological Research from 2007 to 2009, and an associate member of the McGill Schulich School of Music. Her research interests include soundscape, spatial audio, auditory localization, multisensory perception, and music perception and cognition. Find out more.
Dr. Wahab Hamou-Lhadj
Dr. Hamou-Lhadj will speak about his work using AI to empower system development and operations teams.
Dr. Wahab Hamou-Lhadj is a Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Concordia University where he leads the Intelligent System-Logging and Monitoring (ISyLM) Research Lab. His research interests include software development and operations, machine data, logging and monitoring, software security, and the application of AI and machine learning to these areas. He has led many research and consulting projects with various organizations including Ericsson, Ubisoft, Brookfield, CAE, and Defence R&D Canada. He is a founding member of the ENCS Center of Software Engineering Research, a member of the Concordia Institute of Aerospace Design & Innovation, a lead member of the governing council of ITAC Business Technology Management Forum, and a technical contributor to OMG standards and certification programs. Dr. Hamou-Lhadj is also a long-lasting member of IEEE and ACM, and a licensed engineer with the province of Quebec.
Dr. Najmeh Khalili-Mahani
Dr. Khalili-Mahani will speak about her work involving mobile technologies for preventative and rehabilitational healthcare.
Najmeh Khalili-Mahani (aka Naj Mahani) is a PERFORM Scientist and an affiliate Assistant Professor in the Department of Design and Computation Arts, at Concordia University. Dr Mahani is a Biomedical Engineer (MEng., McGill 2001) and obtained her PhD (Neuroscience) from McGill University in 2009. Her dissertation "Observing Stressed Brain", focused on establishing the relation between stress hormones and functional and anatomical neuroimaging markers of attention and adaptation. As a postdoctoral fellow, she worked in Leiden University (Leiden, Netherlands) and collaborated with the Centre for Human Drug Research, to develop neuroimaging methods for detecting the effect of psychoactive and pain medications in the brain. This work has led to her current research, where she explores the use of various media and communication technologies as preventative and interventional strategies for pain and chronic stress management. In addition, she works with the McGill Centre for Integrative Neuroscience (MCIN) at McGill University to develop data platforms for integration of data obtained from wearable biosensors and mobile telecommunication technologies. Such data collection strategies enable researchers to evaluate the clinical impact of lifestyle and the lived experiences of individuals who are at risk of chronic stress and illness.
Dr. Nitika Pai
Dr Pai will speak about the journey of an HIV self testing app: from innovation to public health & global social impact.
Nitika Pant Pai (Nikki Pai), MD., MPH., PhD, is an Associate Professor at McGill University in the Department of Medicine, Division of Clinical Epidemiology and a Research Scientist at the MUHC Research Institute. She is a medical doctor with a doctorate in Epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley and a post-doctoral fellowship at McGill University.
Her Global research program at McGill is focused on ‘Rapid point-of-care diagnostics for HIV and co-infections’. It covers the spectrum of innovations, from implementation to public health impact. She has developed innovative screening solutions, with portable smartphone apps, for HIV self-testing, Hepatitis C, and multiplexed screening for co-infections. These solutions are being scaled nationally and internationally, in various marginalized populations in South Africa, India and Canada. In parallel, she is working to develop innovations for young women, aimed to improve health awareness, access to health, improve early, timely screening, and expedite treatment linkages, so as to improve the quality of health service delivery.
Her research has been supported by grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the FRSQ Quebec, Grand Challenges Canada, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, NIH, among others. Dr. Pai was featured twice in the Economist in 2017, where she was listed as one of their Global Change Makers. Her work has also be featured in Macleans, The Globe and Mail, Montreal Gazette, Times Now, CTV, CBC, CKUD, La Presse, and the international media, among others. To take her innovations to scale beyond academia, she founded a social enterprise-Sympact-X, which aims to engage public private organizations in her mission to generate public health and social impact.