Tatjana Dzambazova is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Strategist at Autodesk. Trained in architecture and originally part of the Revit team, she expanded her horizons to include reality capture (e.g., scanning, photogrammetry) and has now gone even further into AI. Tatjana's passion is using automation to solve customer problems. She filed this internal report that I am sharing with It's Alive in the Lab readers with her permission.
Recently, the AI Lab had a chance to claim its place in the vibrant Canadian AI scene. It hosted Deep Learning and AI focused events in both Toronto and Montreal. Both of the events were sold out with hundreds of people on waiting lists. Mike Haley, with his knowledge, energy, and inexhaustible enthusiasm, made Autodesk known and irresistible to many AI experts. After learning about the important and interesting problems we can solve with AI and Machine Learning here at Autodesk, many of the attendees have already started articulating their interest in working with us.
Toronto: The Toronto event was structured as a speaking event — three speakers: Autodesk Senior Director of Machine Intelligence, Mike Haley, Alex Levinshtein from Modiface, and Geoff Roeder, a researcher from the Vector Institute — followed by a panel moderated by Mike as a discussion with the other presenters and answering also audience questions. The topics included:
As mentioned, this was a sold-out event, featuring around 150 attendees, with such notable individuals such as Ying Tam, Managing Director of Health Services at MaRS, Parham Aarabi, Founder and CEO of ModiFace, and attendees from Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Element AI, Integrate AI, CIFAR (Canadian Institute for Advanced Research), Arup, University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, York University, Ryerson University, and the City of Toronto. Montreal: The Montreal event featured the help from lots of volunteers and colleagues, and Autodesk Principal Developer, Sacha Lepetre performed wonders organizing this event (BTW, we strongly encourage him to try a career as a magician). In less than two weeks, he managed to put together an event that was of unbelievable scientific level quality for which we received deep acknowledgment and recognition by the attendees. The event was co-organized by Autodesk and Deep Learning Montreal (a vibrant Montreal community group) and organized in two parts: Scientific Posters plus Demos (with 16 Scientific Posters displays and Presentations) creating an opportunity to mingle, learn, and exchange with some top researchers in the industry. All this, and a Presentation session with eight talks:
A total of 250 attendees from universities, companies, startups, and research institutions enjoyed the event, with over 100 people on the waiting list! All in all, both events were a smashing success, thanks largely to great organization and support by the local teams. Specifically, thanks go to Autodesk Senior Principal Research Scientist, Ramtin Attar, and the MaRS ATC team as well as Sacha LePetre in Montreal. This is just the beginning, folks! |
If you would like to see Mike Haley's Montreal presentation for yourself:
Actually, if you want to see all of the videos from Montreal, check out this YouTube playlist.
Both events took place at our Autodesk offices, exposing our beautiful spaces and the caring, smart cookies who work for us. We have all the intentions to continue being a serious player in the AI field. The types of problems we deal with are worth working on, we have knowledgeable people, and we are a great company. Events like these show that to others in AI who now want to partner with us.
Thanks, Tatjana. By the way, if you are interested in AI and want to work with us, email [email protected].
Autodesk has always been an automation company, and today more than ever that means helping people make more things, better things, with less; more and better in terms of increasing efficiency, performance, quality, and innovation; less in terms of time, resources, and negative impacts (e.g., social, environmental). Part of that vision is to have the machines working for us to address design and make challenges.
AI is alive in the lab.