Mila is proud to announce the winners of its first science communication contest, Speed Science. Designed to train AI researchers to synthesize and communicate their research to a non-scientific audience, the program consisted of eight weeks of workshops and professional coaching on science communication, storytelling and public speaking.
During the contest’s grand finale on November 14, nine talented Mila researchers took to the stage to present their research in three minutes in front of a jury and a live audience of peers, industry professionals, and members of the media and general public.
The jury, composed of six communication specialists, evaluated the presentation according to four criteria: public speaking skills, science popularization, structure of the presentation, and creativity.
Following the finalists’ extraordinary pitches, the following four prizes were awarded:
1st place and Audience Choice Award: Dounia Shaaban Kabakibo, PhD student at Université de Montréal, for her presentation “A “Solid” Approach to Batteries”
2nd place: Arna Ghosh, PhD student at McGill, for his presentation “Bridging the Conceptual Gap Between Brains and AI”
3rd place: Abdelrahman Zayed, PhD student at Polytechnique Montréal, for his presentation “AI Fairness Surgery”
Here were the topics of each of the finalists’ presentations:
- Prakhar Ganesh, The Curious Case of Arbitrariness in Machine Learning
- Mélisande Teng, Mapping Bird Distributions
- Raymond Chua, Learning About Learning
- Thomas Dagonneau, Un super-radiologue pour votre grand-père
- Abdelrahman Zayed, AI Fairness Surgery
- Mansi Rankawat, Min-Max Games in Nature and AI
- Arna Ghosh, Bridging the Conceptual Gap Between Brains and AI
- Nathan Molinier, Traffic Interruption on Your Spinal Cord
- Dounia Shaaban-Kabakibo, A “Solid” Approach to Batteries
Following the success of this first edition, Mila is pleased to announce that the contest will be back next year for a second edition.
