Dr. Marina Sokolova
Dr. Marina Sokolova is a researcher at the Institute for Big Data Analytics (IBDA), Dalhousie University and faculty member at University of Ottawa, Faculty of Medicine and School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Dr. Sokolova obtained her PhD from the University of Ottawa in 2006.
Marina has been a member of CAIAC since 2004 and has published papers in the Canadian AI conference and attended almost every year since then. Marina has been a champion at promoting the Canadian AI conference. In particular in 2014 as program co-chair, she sent a personalised email to every single Chair of Computer Science and related departments in Canada! She then repeated this exploit from 2015 to 2017, as CAIAC secretary. She has effectively advocated the involvement of younger members and has been a champion for giving opportunity to those in the community that may otherwise not have the chance.
In more formal roles, Dr. Sokolova has served as Program Committee as well as Canadian AI Graduate Student Symposium every single year since 2009. She also served as the Program co-Chair for the Graduate Student Symposium in 2010.. At the same event, she also served as the Workshop Program co-Chair for the Workshop on Intelligent Methods for Protecting Privacy and Confidentiality of Data. In 2014, Marina served as Program co-Chair for the main Canadian AI conference. In 2015, Dr. Sokolova served as Program co-chair for the GSS with Dr. Silver as well as Publicity Chair for the main conference. From 2015 to 2019, Dr. Sokolova served as Executive Secretary for CAIAC. She held this position with highest regard for inclusivity, excellence and collegiality. Finally in 2020, Dr. Sokolova volunteered to serve as General co-chair for the AI-CRV conferences along with Chris Drummond.
Marina is known as CAIAC’s Google, for her impressive knowledge of CAIAC’s Executives as well as Canadian AI and GSS’s program chairs, invited speakers and best paper awardees.
For her outstanding contribution to the Canadian AI community, CAIAC is very happy to award the 2020 Distinguished Service Award to Dr. Marina Sokolova.