Portrait of Audrey Durand

Audrey Durand

Associate Academic Member
Canada CIFAR AI Chair
Assistant Professor, Université Laval, Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering
Research Topics
Online Learning
Reinforcement Learning

Biography

Audrey Durand is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering and in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Université Laval.

She specializes in algorithms that learn through interaction with their environment using reinforcement learning, and is particularly interested in leveraging these approaches in health-related applications.

Current Students

Postdoctorate - Université Laval
PhD - Université Laval
PhD - Université Laval
PhD - McGill University
Co-supervisor :
PhD - Université Laval
Master's Research - Université Laval
Master's Research - Université Laval
PhD - Université Laval

Publications

Randomized Confidence Bounds for Stochastic Partial Monitoring
Maxime Heuillet
Ola Ahmad
Data harmonization for Advancing research on Personalized Rehabilitation Interventions for Patients with Traumatic Brain Injury and Stroke: A proof of concept
Dorra Rakia Allegue
Despoina Petsani
Nathalie Ponthon
Evdokimos Konstantinidis
Panagiotis Bamidis
Eva Kehayia
Sara Ahmed
Stroke and traumatic brain injury (TBI) are leading causes of morbidity and mortality, affecting survivors’ mobility and social participat… (see more)ion. Although personalized interventions could positively impact survivors' recovery, the effectiveness of such interventions remains unclear. Open-access data repositories can provide access to multiple shared data which could help uncover new evidence of effective interventions; however, harmonizing data between different studies requires many steps to make it possible given the various methods of data collection, intervention characteristics and population sociodemographic profile. This proof-of-concept study aimed to describe the steps and anchors that contributed to the development of guiding frameworks to harmonize data across different studies. Data were extracted from the Federal Interagency Traumatic Brain Injury Research (FITBIR) repository and stored on an online cloud platform. The outcome measures were mapped to mobility determinants using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) and Webber framework. The intervention's effect was categorized according to the Minimal Clinically Important Difference (MCID)s of the measures administered. The study proposed a novel framework for intervention features, which aims to enhance our understanding of the mechanisms of action and potential impact of rehabilitation interventions. The framework classified interventions based on their nature, context, specific body systems, dosage, caregiver assistance, and behaviour change strategies. In conclusion, this study demonstrated the feasibility of harmonizing data extracted from different sources in the FITBIR repository. Leveraging existing open databases offers tremendous opportunities to advance research on personalized interventions for patients with TBI and stroke and inform decision-making during transitions.
On shallow planning under partial observability
Randy Lefebvre
Neural Active Learning Meets the Partial Monitoring Framework
Maxime Heuillet
Ola Ahmad
We focus on the online-based active learning (OAL) setting where an agent operates over a stream of observations and trades-off between the … (see more)costly acquisition of information (labelled observations) and the cost of prediction errors. We propose a novel foundation for OAL tasks based on partial monitoring, a theoretical framework specialized in online learning from partially informative actions. We show that previously studied binary and multi-class OAL tasks are instances of partial monitoring. We expand the real-world potential of OAL by introducing a new class of cost-sensitive OAL tasks. We propose NeuralCBP, the first PM strategy that accounts for predictive uncertainty with deep neural networks. Our extensive empirical evaluation on open source datasets shows that NeuralCBP has favorable performance against state-of-the-art baselines on multiple binary, multi-class and cost-sensitive OAL tasks.
Neural Active Learning Meets the Partial Monitoring Framework
Maxime Heuillet
Ola Ahmad
Development of AI-assisted microscopy frameworks through realistic simulation in pySTED
Anthony Bilodeau
Albert Michaud-Gagnon
Julia Chabbert
Benoit Turcotte
Jörn Heine
Flavie Lavoie-Cardinal
The integration of artificial intelligence into microscopy systems significantly enhances performance, optimizing both the image acquisition… (see more) and analysis phases. Development of artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted super-resolution microscopy is often limited by the access to large biological datasets, as well as by the difficulties to benchmark and compare approaches on heterogeneous samples. We demonstrate the benefits of a realistic STED simulation platform, pySTED, for the development and deployment of AI-strategies for super-resolution microscopy. The simulation environment provided by pySTED allows the augmentation of data for the training of deep neural networks, the development of online optimization strategies, and the training of reinforcement learning models, that can be deployed successfully on a real microscope.
Randomized Confidence Bounds for Stochastic Partial Monitoring
Maxime Heuillet
Ola Ahmad
GrowSpace: A reinforcement learning environment for plant architecture
Yasmeen Hitti
Ionelia Buzatu
Manuel Del Verme
Mark Lefsrud
Florian Golemo
Deep reinforcement learning for continuous wood drying production line control
François-Alexandre Tremblay
Michael Morin
Philippe Marier
Jonathan Gaudreault
Latent Space Evolution under Incremental Learning with Concept Drift (Student Abstract)
Charles Bourbeau
This work investigates the evolution of latent space when deep learning models are trained incrementally in non-stationary environments that… (see more) stem from concept drift. We propose a methodology for visualizing the incurred change in latent representations. We further show that classes not targeted by concept drift can be negatively affected, suggesting that the observation of all classes during learning may regularize the latent space.
Chronic Stress Exposure Alters the Gut Barrier: Sex-Specific Effects on Microbiota and Jejunum Tight Junctions
Ellen Doney
Laurence Dion-Albert
Francois Coulombe-Rozon
Natasha Osborne
Renaud Bernatchez
Sam E.J. Paton
Fernanda Neutzling Kaufmann
Roseline Olory Agomma
José L. Solano
Raphael Gaumond
Katarzyna A. Dudek
Joanna Kasia Szyszkowicz
Manon Lebel
Alain Doyen
Flavie Lavoie-Cardinal
Marie-Claude Audet
Caroline Menard
The Influence of Age, Sex, and Socioeconomic Status on Glycemic Control Among People With Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes in Canada: Patient-Led Longitudinal Retrospective Cross-sectional Study With Multiple Time Points of Measurement
Seyedmostafa Mousavi
Dana Tannenbaum Greenberg
Ruth Ndjaboué
Michelle Greiver
Olivia Drescher
Selma Chipenda Dansokho
Denis Boutin
Jean-Marc Chouinard
Sylvie Dostie
Robert Fenton
Marley Greenberg
Jonathan McGavock
Adhiyat Najam
Monia Rekik
Tom Weisz
Donald J Willison
Holly O Witteman