Using Machine Learning for Competitive Advantage

Cory Janssen

Cory is CEO and co-founder of AltaML, a developer of machine learning applications. Previously, Cory was co-founder of Investopedia.com, a financial education site that provided content and tools to help educate individual investors. From its founding in 1999, Investopedia became one of the most popular financial sites on the web and was sold to Forbes Media in 2007. The business model for Investopedia was then replicated through Janalta Interactive Inc., a holding company for digital media properties. Currently, Janalta publishes over a dozen websites.

Cory is past-President of the Edmonton chapter for Entrepreneur’s Organization (EO) and active in the Alberta entrepreneurial community as a member of the A100, the Venture Mentoring Service (VMS) program at the University of Alberta and as an associate for Creative Destruction Labs (CDL) Rockies. He also sits on the Board of Edmonton Global, the economic development corporation for the Edmonton Municipal Region.

Anna Koop, MSc

Anna is Managing Director of Science at the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii), working to nurture productive relationships between industry and academia. Anna, whose research mainly focused on reinforcement learning, received her Master of Science in Computing Science under the supervision of Dr. Richard Sutton, one of the field’s pioneers, and she is currently a PhD candidate working to develop algorithms for real-time learning in dynamic environments. Passionate about making science accessible for all, Anna has developed and taught a wide range of computing science classes through the University of Alberta.

Adriana Lopez

Adriana believes in making life-long learning a fun experience. She studied Computing Science and Artificial Intelligence back in the 90s. Since then, her career has taken different turns requiring constant re-learning of new skills. From AI Programmer, to Video Game Developer, Project Manager, Operations Director, IT Management Consultant and now President at Onlea, a unique eLearning production company. Adriana brings a new take to the application of technology to education, with the vision of replacing the traditional barriers to learning with a new paradigm that is inclusive and learner-centric.

Marcin Mizianty

Marcin holds a Ph.D. in Software Engineering and Intelligent Systems from the University of Alberta, Canada, and an MSc in Applied Computing Science from AGH University of Science and Technology, Poland.

He has published over 30 scientific, peer-reviewed publications and has over a decade of practical academic and industry experience with Software Engineering, Machine Learning, Big Data, and Predictive Analytics.

Marcin has a passion for building and growing high performing Data Science teams, and for managing and coordinating Data Science and Big Data products. Currently, he is leading Data Science initiatives at AltaML as VP of Data Science. Marcin is also highly involved in Edmonton’s Data Science community, has co-founded the Edmonton DS meetup, and is teaching Data Science at North Alberta Institute of Technology.

Jonathan Schaeffer

Jonathan Schaeffer is a professor in the Department of Computing Science at the University of Alberta. His research is in the area of artificial intelligence, and he is well known for using games to demonstrate his work. His checkers-playing program Chinook was the first computer to win a human world championship in any game (1994), a feat recognized in the Guinness Book of World Records. He is co-founder of the University of Alberta not-for-profit spin-offs Amii (amii.ca; Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute) and Onlea (onlea.org; creating engaging online learning experiences).