Conference & Meetings World Supplements Canada AI Supplement | Page 7

Canada Montréal is the No.1 university research hub in Canada • 1st in the country for university research funding • 11 university institutions • Over 200,000 students • Most university researchers in Canada • Two universities (of Canada’s six) ranking in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2018 - McGill University and Université de Montréal. Added to the above are 91,000 qualifi ed workers in ICT across 5,000 facilities and almost 9,000 university students in AI and data related programs. Deep Learning Ground Zero Montréal is home to its own Deep Learning expertise thanks to Université de Montréal’s professor Yoshua Bengio who heads the Montréal Institute for Learning Algorithms (MILA). MILA is also known as ‘Deep Learning Ground Zero’, the place where Deep Learning was born. MILA also offers world-class capabilities in AI key expertise: Computer Vision, Automatic Speech Recognition, Natural Language Processing and Reinforcement Learning. The Université de Montréal and McGill University have over 250 researchers and doctoral students in fi elds related to AI, the largest academic concentration in the world. Other Montréal fi elds of expertise include data science and medical imagery. And, it is not just theoretical: Facebook, DeepMind and Thales all announced the opening of AI labs in Montréal in 2017. Google has invested in an AI focused research lab, ‘Google Brain’ headed by Deep Learning specialist Hugo Larochelle, while Microsoft Ventures' fi rst investment was in Element AI. “Microsoft is excited to engage with faculties, students and the broader tech community in Montréal, which is becoming a global hub for AI research and innovation,” Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, has said. IBM has plans to open its own AI-development lab in Montréal, working directly with MILA and Samsung’s AI lab at Université de Montréal. They have direct links with Seoul National University. Montréal also took 24% of the $900m Canada First Research Excellence Fund in 2016, $93.5m of which was awarded to AI research through IVADO (Institute for Data Valorisation), which also raised C$110m from the private sector. Another key reason to invest in AI in Montréal is the fact that the region boasts the most bilingual population in Canada. Medical applications Another area of expertise is using advanced algorithms to better interpret medical images. Professor Ismail Ben Ayed, Ecole de Technologie Superieure (ÉTS) research chair on AI and medical imaging, has perfected a software program that is able to evaluate the ejection fraction of the heart and an algorithm that automatically annotates the bones of the spinal column. These programs are now used in hospitals. Professor Ben Ayed is also hoping to create algorithms that can detect what is invisible to the naked eye, and thus predict diseases. Finally, in terms of general MICE appeal, Montréal is dynamic and cosmopolitan; a centuries-old island city with a dual personality, where old- world charms meet high tech innovation, and French meets English. Its intelligence and appeal is both natural and 'artifi cial'. CONFERENCE & MEETINGS WORLD 7