Mohammad Zulkernine Awarded Funding for ORF-RE Project
Dr. Mohammad Zulkernine was awarded research funding support as a co-applicant on the Ontario Research Fund – Research Excellent (ORF-RE) project CyPreSS: Software Techniques for the Engineering of Cyber-Physical Systems. The project is led by Dr. Kostas Kontogiannis from Western University, and includes collaborators from the University of Ottawa, the University of Toronto, and York University.
Dr. Zulkernine’s current research team at the Queen’s Reliable Software Technology Laboratory (QRST) Group focuses on building reliable and secure software systems for cloud, connected vehicles, mobile operating systems, and internet of things.
Click on the link to the QRST group website below to learn more about their research projects:
Steven Ding Receives Mitacs Accelerate Funding
QSC is happy to congratulate Dr. Steven Ding on his recent funding from the Mitacs Accelerate program. This funding will support a graduate student internship with partner Springboard Atlantic Inc.
Dr. Ding and his team at the Artificial Intelligence and Security Lab (L1NNA) focus on both the research and the development aspects of cybersecurity systems. Their research portfolio bridges the area of machine learning, data mining, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity.
Visit the L1NNA website to learn more.
Catherine Stinson’s Team Helps Launch the Tracking (In)Justice Portal
Dr. Catherine Stinson and their research team at the Ethics and Technology Lab were involved in building the website for the Tracking (In)Justice portal, launched in the end of February. Tracking (In)Justice is an accessible online database tracking police-involved deaths in Canada. Based on publicly available sources including government reports and reliable Canadian media sources, the database includes information on date, location, police service, level of force used, and when known, age, race, and gender of the victims.
This collaborative project involves many organizations, such as the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA), Carleton University, University of Toronto, Women’s Health in Women’s Hands Community Health Centre, JusticeTrans and Aboriginal Legal Services and many more.
You can access the full list of collaborators and more information on the database on the portal website www.trackinginjustice.ca
Sara Nabil Presented at TEDx QueensU
Dr. Nabil’s great passion for interior design coloured her research in interaction design, and is driving her innovation of smart homes and interactive furniture in novel ways. To do so, Sara and her team develops soft sensors, fabric circuits, e-textiles and smart materials that are malleable, shape-changing, and colour-changing. Her work aims to support the living quality of marginalized groups such as refugees, people with dual-identities, and people with physical disabilities.
TedxQueensU
This February, Dr.Sara Nabil was one of the speakers at the 13th Annual TEDxQueensU Conference: Revive! Sara spoke about the interdisciplinary nature of her research with her team at iStudio Lab, which often blends science, art, and technology.
One of the latest projects of iStudio Lab is the Borrowable Museum (BM), a portable interactive physical display based on the artifacts from the Wearable exhibition at the Canada Museum of Science and Technology. This portable interactive installation prototype is part of the research by Alaa Nousir, which aims to address the inaccessibility of museums in remote communities. You can hear Alaa describe the project in the video below!
Parvin Mousavi speaks to Global TV about AI use in cancer treatments
Queen’s School of Computing is excited to share with you the latest news about Dr. Parvin Mousavi, who was interviewed on live news about a cancer research trial she is currently leading.
Dr. Mousavi and her team study the smoke created by burning tissue in cancer biopsies and analyze the profiles of molecules using AI. By doing so, they can create a model that can correctly identify what type of tissue has been burnt, whether it is cancerous or not. This technology can be used to help surgeons make informed decisions in real time while the patient is still in the operating room.
The research has been focused on breast cancer surgery for the last five years and is still in the trial phase. While it is difficult to say when these methods will be fully adopted, Dr. Mousavi is optimistic that with the cooperation and generous participation of patients themselves, it is possible to further advance these technologies. “This innovative technology could change the way we treat cancer patients, giving doctors the ability to make informed decisions and perform better surgeries. With this development, we can hope for better outcomes for cancer patients and a brighter future for cancer treatment.”
QHacks 2023 List of Winning Teams
WINNER QHacks 1st Place Prize
WINNER Leading Learners x QHacks Prize
Snap a pic and learn to sketch it quick! Here at Sketch-it, we believe in re-discovering the joy of creation. With just a photo, we’ll give you 15 easy steps to help you bring your vision to life!
WINNER QHacks 2nd Place Prize
WINNER Leading Learners x QHacks Prize
Your pitch with one click!
WINNER QHacks 3rd Place Prize
WINNER MLH Best Accessibility Hack sponsored by Fidelity
WINNER Leading Learners x QHacks Prize
We created a device to help visually impaired people “see” the world around them! Our WEARABLE TECH uses computer vision to recognize objects and the ultrasonic sensor provides the distance from user
WINNER Mayor’s Innovation Challenge Prize
WINNER MLH Best Domain Name from Domain.com
Your guide to the city of Kingston.
WINNER Mayor’s Innovation Challenge Prize
Waste Notify helps garbage disposal employees communicate with citizens on how to maintain a better waste organization system.
Food4All – End Food Insecurity
A fully-functional web application designed to diminish the prevalence of food insecurity around the world through food redistribution.
WINNER QHacks 23 Theme Prize – Designing the Digital World
Our mission with X–To-Speech is to improve safety and inclusion for sensory-impaired members of society using machine learning.
WINNER Environmental Impact Prize – Presented by Utilities Kingston
EcoScan educates people about the environmental impact of their food.
WINNER DDQIC Sponsored Prize
ConcussionMD is an online concussion diagnosis tool. It determines if the patient has a concussion by analyzing the patient’s pupil radii and comparing their dilation.
WINNER MLH Best Blockchain Project Using Hedera
Understand a vehicle, before getting to know it.
WINNER MLH Best Use of Velo by Wix
A website to track your caffeine intake and get informed on all things coffee related!
WINNER MLH Best Use of Appwrite
Your smart note-taking companion that can organize, summarize and search through your documents! Who needs friends with software like this ヽ(°◇° )ノ
2022 QSC Celebration of Excellence List of Awardees
Full list of awardees of the QSC Celebration of Excellence ceremony on December 14th, 2022
Faculty retiring after many years of service to the School
Robin Dawes
Prof. Dawes had been a student favourite since his arrival in 1983. He deeply cares about his students and got to know them both in and outside the classroom, notably through the Partners in Crime interactive, murder mystery dinner games. His colleagues and students referred to his teaching style as relaxed, engaging, and a little old-school (Prof. Dawes exclusively used pen and paper or chalkboard and the students loved it). He always has a trick up his sleeve and loves to entertain using magic.
From 2004 to 2008 Prof. Dawes was the Director of the Queen’s Enrichment Studies Unit. Prof. Dawes has twice been the recipient of the Howard Staveley Teaching Award. In 2018 he received the Frank Knox Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Prof. Dawes says about his own teaching philosophy: “My philosophy of teaching is perhaps summed up in just a few words: teaching is most successful when informed by the recognition of its human dimensions.”
Dave Dove
In addition to his many years on the Technical Support team and as an instructor, Prof. Dove is an amazing musician who organized and took part in a school talent show annually for several years. Prof. Dove shared his other artistic skills freely with the school, becoming its de facto videographer and then designing and building a beautiful trophy case that stood for years inside the entrance to the 5th floor of Goodwin Hall. In 2004, The Queen’s News Centre featured Prof. Dove and his team-based learning approach in an article about the innovative Active Learning classrooms in Ellis Hall.
Alan McLeod
Alan McLeod taught many programming courses at QSC from 1997-2021. He was well-loved by his students.
In 2014, Prof. McLeod was featured in a Queen’s Journal article on “Stylish profs & faculty” for his remarkable penguin-pattern shirt.
Margaret Lamb
Prof. Lamb has been teaching QSC students since 1997 and many will remember her for teaching them Haskell. Students would often flock to her office hours to enjoy a 1:1 tutorial, along with a cookie which were always available on her desk. Prof. Lamb cared very deeply about her students and did everything she possibly could to ensure that they succeeded.
David Rappaport
Prof. Rappaport has been a professor at the School for 25 years. His research interests include discrete and computational geometry, algorithm design and development, and connections between geometry and music. He served as Associate Dean of SGS 2008-2012. David is an avid runner and has taken part in several races, including Beat Beethoven and the Kingston Half-Marathon. David is also a great musician and occasionally plays at the Kingston Jazz Festival.
Faculty celebrating prestigious awards
Selim Akl
Prof. Akl was one of the recipients of the Distinguished Service Award. Selected by the University Council Executive Committee, the award recognizes exemplary service to Queen’s University over an extended period of time. Dedicated faculty member since 1978, Selim Akl is a nationally recognized computer science researcher and scholar, and tireless champion for the School of Computing.
Gabor Fichtinger
Each year, the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) awards field-leading Canadian researchers across the arts and humanities, social sciences, and sciences with one of the most prestigious academic honours in the country: the RSC fellowship. This November, Prof. Fichtinger was appointed this fellowship alongside seven other researchers from Queen’s. Prof. Fichtinger has been working in the field of computer-assisted medical interventions and surgery for nearly three decades, and is the Canada Research Chair in Computer-Integrated Surgery at Queen’s. His novel research about image-guided robotics and real-time surgical navigation has paved the way for several modern diagnostic and therapeutic techniques. Dr. Fichtinger is recognized as a pioneer of his field, and a provider of free open-source research software resources that are used globally.
Parvin Mousavi
Prof. Mousavi was named as a Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Chair of Artificial Intelligence at the Vector Institute. This title recognizes Prof. Mousavi’s expertise in biomedical and healthcare applications of Artificial Intelligence.
Prof. Mousavi is the Director of Med-i lab at Queen’s School of Computing, which focuses on innovative computational approaches and intelligent systems that can predict and explain complex biological processes. Research is aimed at developing feature extraction, inference, modeling, and classification techniques for Systems Biology, Bioinformatics, Image-guided Diagnosis and Surgery, and Personalized Medicine.
Wendy Powley
Prof. Powley received the Distinguished Services Award from Computer Science Canada (CS-Can/Info-Can), a national professional organization for computer scientists. This award recognizes outstanding service to CS-Can|Info-Can and the Canadian computer science community at large. Prof. Powley received the award in recognition of her continued dedication to promoting gender diversity in Computing.
The announcement was made shortly after the 2022 Canadian Celebration of Women in Computing (CAN-CWiC) conference, an incredible event that Prof. Powley has been championing since its inception. Prof. Powley and the Queen’s Women in Computing Group (QWIC) founded and have been running the CAN-CWiC for the past 12 years.
Amber Simpson
Prof. Simpson was one of the four Queen’s researchers to receive $100,000 as part of the Government of Ontario Early Researcher Awards (ERA), which provide early-career scholars across the province with funding to build research teams. Her research leverages state-of-the-art machine learning technologies for biomedical data integration and exploration.
Prof. Simpson is a Canada Research Chair in Biomedical Computing and Informatics and associate professor in the School of Computing and Department of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences. She is the Director of the Centre for Health Innovation since 2020 and is also a Strategic Advisor for the Center of Advanced Computing.
Leahurst College Seniors Visit Goodwin Hall
Earlier this October, a group of grade 11 and grade 12 students from Leahurst College, an independent secondary school in Kingston, spent an afternoon learning about Biomedical Research in Goodwin Hall. The field trip was made possible by the Laboratory For Percutaneous Surgery (Perk Lab) and Medical Informatics (Med-i) Laboratory research teams, who have welcomed Leahurst students into their space and showed them the latest projects they are working on. A number of research teammates contributed throughout the afternoon, but the tour was largely prepared and conducted by Laura Connolly, a Master’s Student at the Med-i Lab and Dumitru Cernelev, an upper-year Biomedical Computing student at QSC and member of the Perk Lab. Laura and Dumitru both have previous experience working for high school outreach initiatives at QSC.
“It was great to chat with the students from Leahurst about the research going on in the Perk/ Med-i lab!” says Laura. “We’ve had the privilege of working with their students in the past, so it’s always great to reconnect.”
The visit began with a detailed tour of the lab facilities and equipment. The students then split into two groups, taking turns watching the separate presentations and displays created by Laura and Dumitru to showcase their research. Laura and Dumitru gave the students a crash course in their research topics, as well as a general overview of what life as a graduate student can look like and the number of different pathways at Queen’s School of Computing for those who are interested in working in the biomedical field.
One of the demos showcased state-of-the-art 3d medical imaging equipment, with Dumitru explaining the importance of 3d medical imaging with a small experiment involving 3d-objects and shadows. Laura’s group were in a lab next door, taking a look at some image-guided percutaneous surgery applications.
Laura recalls watching the group of students get excited abut the demos as the best part of the experience. “It’s always fun to show someone what you’re working on but it’s particularly rewarding to see a young student’s face light up when they get to try out your project. I remember being in that position in high school so it’s pretty surreal to get to pass that experience on.”
After the equipment demonstrations, the two groups joined together again for a Q&A section, where Laura and Dumitru spoke about their personal experience with graduate school and answered questions about science subjects and applying to universities.
Elizabeth Turcke, Head of School, thanked Laura and Dumitru for sharing their passion with Leahurst students and suggested working together again in the future.
“Outreach is a priority for the Perk and Med-i Lab”, says Laura. “We believe that getting to see this kind of research early on will help encourage students to pursue careers in computer science and engineering!”
Professor Parvin Mousavi named CIFAR AI Chair
Dr. Mousavi was named as a Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Chair of Artificial Intelligence at the Vector Institute. This title recognizes Parvin Mousavi’s expertise in biomedical and healthcare applications of Artificial Intelligence, which is one of the main priorities of growth within the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy at CIFAR. The full press release can be found on the CIFAR website.
Professor Mousavi is among eight newly appointed CIFAR AI Chairs announced this October. These exceptional researchers will advance Canadian leadership in artificial intelligence for priority areas, including health, energy and the environment, fundamental science and the responsible use of AI.
“Artificial intelligence is one of the greatest technological transformations and economic opportunities of our age,” says the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry. “That is why our government has placed fostering AI research at the heart of the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy. We continue to support and grow the Chairs program so Canada can continue to retain, attract and develop academic research talent in AI. Congratulations to our eight new chairholders – you join other world-leading researchers who are driving efforts to build a stronger economy, develop cleaner energy, improve public health, and increase innovation in Canada.”
Parvin Mousavi is the Director of Med-i lab at Queen’s School of Computing, which focuses on innovative computational approaches and intelligent systems that can predict and explain complex biological processes. Research is aimed at developing feature extraction, inference, modeling, and classification techniques for Systems Biology, Bioinformatics, Image-guided Diagnosis and Surgery, and Personalized Medicine.
Med-i Lab is home to the CREATE Training Program in Medical Informatics, one of two NSERC CREATE programs offered here at the Queen’s School of Computing (the only department at Queen’s University that offers more than one.) The $1.65M program offers funding for MSc and PhD students in the biomedical and related research fields in partnership with Western University. Dr. Mousavi and her team of investigators were one of thirteen research groups across Canada who were granted 6-year CREATE project funding in 2021. The research group is comprised of multiple labs with research spanning areas of genomics, bioinformatics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, computer aided surgery, and advanced imaging techniques.
Dr. Mousavi says she is honored to be named as a CIFAR AI Chair. “Thank you to my team at the Medical Informatics Lab at Queen’s, collaborators, colleagues, and the Vector Institute,” Parvin wrote. “The program will bring about transformative and actionable advances with meaningful impact on patient health and survival.”