Rob Warren at Big Data Week
Date:
May 15, 2014

Big Data Week (May 5-11) was a global event with activities in more than 30 cities worldwide.  Here in Nova Scotia, companies in ICT have access to the highest number of post-secondary graduates in Engineering, Applied Sciences, Mathematics, and Physical Sciences per capita compared to any other province in Canada.  Big Data Week included events in Cape Breton, Kentville and Halifax and Rob Warren was in attendance at the "How Big is Your Data?" event at the World Trade Centre in Halifax on May 9.  It was a great opportunity for networking, coffee, conversations and big ideas.

 

Dr. Marina Sokolova becomes a Privacy By Design (PbD) Ambassador
Date:
April 30, 2014

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Marina Sokolova has been invited  to become a Privacy by Design (PbD) Ambassador.

As an Ambassador, she joins an exclusive, but growing, group of privacy thought-leaders committed to ensuring the on-going protection of personal information by following the Principles of PbD. This involves a commitment to continue to advance the case for embedding privacy protective measures in technology, processes and physical design.

For more details visit the PbD website.

 

 

Institute for Big Data Analytics in the News
Date:
March 19, 2014

University Affairs has featured the Institute for Big Data Analytics in a recent story called "Making Sense of Big Data".  Here's a link if you want to read more

Stan Matwin Gives Presentation at Big Data Congress
Date:
March 3, 2014

Big Data Congress II, held in Saint John February 24-25 and sponsored by T4G, was a big success this year with an impressive lineup of speakers from industry and Academia.  Stan Matwin was there to deliver a presentation on Visual Analytics together with Frank Wiemer from Microsoft.

Stan Matwin Gives Presentation at ASUG meeting in Halifax
Date:
March 3, 2014

On February 21 Halifax was the host for the meeting of the Atlantic Chapter of the ASUG (America's SAP User Group).  Made up of more than 140,000 individuals at 3,700 companies in more than 17 industries across the SAP ecosystem, ASUG is the world’s largest independent SAP users' group.   Stan Matwin was there to deliver a presentation on Big Data and the work of the Institute.

CFI Policy Consultation concerning Cyber-infrastructure
Date:
February 5, 2014

The Canada Fund for Innovation will be allocating significant funding to support cyber-infrastructure at Canada's universities, colleges, research hospitals and non-profit organizations.  A policy consultation workshop will be held on February 23 in Toronto to refine the goals and objectives of this funding.  We are pleased to announce that our Director Stan Matwin has been invited to this workshop to contribute to the development of this policy.

Dalhousie University Data Privacy Day
Date:
February 5, 2014

Respecting Privacy, Safeguarding Data, Enabling Trust.

Join us for Data Privacy Day, February 19, 2014 1:00 - 5:00pm as Dalhousie University again hosts a half-day conference focused on privacy.  Come and learn how to protect your privacy and why it matters.

To accommodate growing attendance an interest in this topic we have moed the location to the Ondaatje Hall, Marion McCain Arts and Social Sciences Building, 6135 University Avenue and slightly changed the structure of the day to still provide newtorking opportunities.

We are very pleased to have Chantal Bernier, Acting Privacy Commissioner of Canada, and Racy Ann Kosa, Senior Strategist at Microsoft, as our opening and closing keynotes.

Additional speakers include Carrie Gates, Dalhousie alumnus and chief Scientist at Dell and Graham McWaters, Canada's leading expert on identity theft protection.

Register Now!  Visit www.dal.ca/dataprivacyday.  The low registration fee (free for students) is required and includes a mid-afternoon networking break with refreshments plus eligibility for door prizes.  The event is open to all members of the public.

Dalhousie has championed Data Privacy Day since it began in 2008.

New Project: Satellite AIS Data for Intelligent Maritime Solutions
Date:
February 4, 2014

A new project sponsored by  International Science and Technology Partnerships Canada-Brazil Bilateral R&D Project "Satellite AIS Data for Intelligent Maritime Solutions" has started at the Institute. This is a joint project between Dalhousie, GSTS Inc., the Centre for Informatics at the Federal University of Pernambuco, and Neurotech, Inc. of Recife, Brazil. 

The project  will work with  Brazilian data showing, using a GPS-like device, ship movements on the ocean. When you look at fishing ships, and you know about fishing, you can see from these “traces” (called trajectories) what kind of fish the ship is taking. You can then monitor your fisheries at a regional and national scale, without reliance on declarations of the fishing fleet, or putting inspectors on ships, etc. This addresses a real problem in some countries, and Brazil is just an example.

Working on the project will be Erico Neves who has joined the Institute as a Research Associate, Erico is a PhD candidate at the University of Ottawa, and a graduate of the Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica, Brazil.

Visit from Dr. Fred Popowich
Date:
February 4, 2014

Dr. Fred Popowich, Director of the Vancouver Institute for Visual Analytics and President of CANVASS, visited us on Jan. 31. Professor Popowich gave a presentation on "Using Natural Language Processing to Support On-Line Learning"

Abstract: When instructors prepare learning materials for students, they frequently develop accompanying questions (prompts) to guide learning. Natural language processing technology can be used to automatically generate such questions but many approaches have not fully leveraged the semantic information contained in the learning materials or the full context in which the prompt generation task occurs. We describe an approach that incorporates semantic role labels and templates into a system that automatically generates natural language prompts to support on-line learning. We then explore how information in a user model along with instructor goals can be incorporated into a full learning context to aid in prompt selection. Our preliminary results indicate our approach is a promising one for supporting learning. The work being presented in being done in collaboration with Alissa Ehrenkranz, David Lindberg, John Nesbit, Lydia Odilinye, and Phil Winne.


 
Visit from Dr. Tomasz Szapiro
Date:
February 4, 2014

Professor Tomasz Szapiro, the President of the Warsaw School of Economics, the top management university in Poland, will visit the Institute Feb. 10-15. During his visit, Professor Szapiro will be signing a Memorandum of Understanding concerning the cooperation between the WSE, Dalhgousie, and the Institute.

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