Industry and Government Track
Canadian AI 2026 invites industry researchers, developers, entrepreneurs and employees in the public sector to take part in the Industry Track of the 39th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence, in Vancouver, British Columbia.
You will have the opportunity to share your experience, get insight from the global network of academic experts and researchers, and meet graduate students interested in your activities.
Industry Track Chair
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Annie T.T. Ying |
Dates
The Industry Track will take place on Wednesday, May 27 in SFU's Presentation Studio in the Big Data Hub (Room ASB 10900). The detailed program can be found below.
Industry Track Program
| 14:00 — 15:00 | Panel #1: Open Model and Open Access in AIModerator: Newvick Lee (Software Engineer - Self-Hosted Models, GitLab) Panelists: Kris Krug (BC + AI Ecosystem) • Dr. Jekaterina Novikova (Principal AI Research Scientist, Vanguard) • Dr. Annie Ying (Engineering Manager - Self-hosted Models, GitLab) • Prof. Steve DiPaola (Professor, Simon Fraser University, joined through video recordings) |
| 15:00 — 15:30 | Invited TalkDr. Karsten Kreis, Principal Research Scientist, NVIDIA "Research from pixels to proteins: scaling generative AI for scientific discovery" |
| 15:30 — 16:00 |
Coffee break
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| 16:00 — 17:00 | Panel #2: Navigating AI Safety ChallengesModerated by Alka Tandan, Founder, Reframe & Refine Panelists: Robert Barton (Distinguished AI Engineer, Cisco Systems), Dr. Eric Brochu (Member of Technical Staff - Superintelligence Team, Microsoft), Mitu Mann (AVP - Data/ML Governance, Interac), Dr. Annika Rosanowski (Senior Advisor, Mitacs) |
| 17:00 — 17:20 | Invited TalkDr. Eric Oosenbrug (BC Public Service) "Confident & Wrong: Why Responsible AI Demands More Than a Checklist" Abstract: AI tools are arriving in government faster than the capacity to evaluate them. This talk argues that responsible AI use isn't fundamentally an attitude problem or a compliance problem — it's a competency problem. Drawing on examples from my team's practice, I show what it actually took to catch the things AI got wrong: not a checklist, but an independent evaluative standard built before the AI touched anything. That capacity is what current government guidance leaves unbuilt — and what this talk makes the case for.
Eric Oosenbrug, PhD is a Research Officer in the BC Public Service specializing in survey methodology, research design, and critical data literacy. His doctoral training in the history and philosophy of science gives him an unusual lens for government research work: a longstanding interest in how knowledge gets made, what counts as evidence, and what it actually takes to know whether a tool is working.
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Speakers and panelists
Click on the speaker's name for a biographical note.
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Newvick Lee |
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Kris Krug |
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Jekaterina Novikova |
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Steve DiPaola |
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Karsten Kreis |
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Alka Tandan |
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Robert Barton |
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Eric Brochu |
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Annika Rosanowski |
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Eric Oosenbrug |
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Mitu Mann |
