Mila is proud to announce the winners of the 3rd edition of its science communication competition, Speed Science. The mission of this program is to train the next generation of AI researchers to synthesize and communicate their work to a non-scientific audience. Leading up to the contest, participants attended workshops and received professional coaching focused on science communication, storytelling, and public speaking.
During the grand finale held on November 19, seven talented Mila researchers took the stage. Their challenge: to present their research topic in three minutes before a jury and an audience composed of peers, industry professionals, members of the media, and the general public.
The jury, composed of six communication specialists, had the difficult task of evaluating the finalists based on four criteria: public speaking skills, science popularization, structure of the presentation, and creativity.
Following the finalists’ pitches, four prizes were awarded
1st place: Briac Cordelle, Master’s student at Concordia University, for his presentation “Detecting Parkinson’s from Speech”
2nd place: Mélanie Gaillochet, PhD student at ÉTS Montréal, for her presentation “Mieux diagnostiquer, avec moins”
3rd place: Artem Ploujnikov, PhD student at Concordia University, for his presentation “Keeping Linguistic Heritage Alive”
Audience Choice Award: Simon-Olivier Duguay, Master's student at Université de Montréal, for his presentation “Les géants vus du ciel : Tracer la vie des arbres”
Here were the topics of each of the finalists’ presentations
- Simon-Olivier Duguay, Les géants vus du ciel : Tracer la vie des arbres
- Sophie Ellwood, How can we improve 3D objects?
- Artem Ploujnikov, Keeping Linguistic Heritage Alive
- Elnathan Tiokou, What if Canada’s financial institutions could fight fraud together without ever sharing customer data?
- Briac Cordelle, Detecting Parkinson’s Disease from Speech
- Khaoula Chehbouni, CleverGPT: The Model That Could Write
- Mélanie Gaillochet, Mieux diagnostiquer, avec moins
Mila extends its sincere thanks to Bell and BrainBox AI for their generous contribution.
Given the success of the evening, Mila looks forward to organizing a 4th edition of the Speed Science contest next year.
