PTJC Webinar Series 2020-2021

Ageing Society in the Era of Pandemics: Approaches in Japan and Canada

For the detailed description of the dialogue, please click here.


July 13, 2020

Webinar 1: Policies in Japan and Alberta

Speakers:

Dr. Hitoshi Oshitani, Professor of Virology at Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine and Member of the Novel Coronavirus Expert Meeting, Government of Japan

Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Chief Medical Officer of Health, Government of Alberta

Moderator: Aya Fujiwara, Director of Prince Takamado Japan Centre

Sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Japan 


November 23, 2020

Webinar 2: Seniors’ Life and Care during COVID-19

Speakers:

Dr. Reiko Hayashi is deputy director-general of Japan’s National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (IPSS). Prior to joining IPSS in 2012, she served in Senegal as technical advisor to the Minister of Health (2008–2011), as an expert on the development of community health workers in the Project for Development of Human Resources in Health (2002–2003), and was engaged in other projects concerning population and health in various countries. Her research covers global population ageing, health and longevity, population development, and so forth. She holds a PhD in policy studies from the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), Japan.

Dr. Jasneet Parmar has 27 years of experience as an academic, educator, clinician and advocate in seniors' care in the Edmonton Zone. She is an Associate Professor at the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Alberta and the Medical Lead of Alberta Health Services, Edmonton Zne Home Living and Transitions.

Moderator: Chelsea Miya, PhD Candidate and CGS SSHRC fellow in English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta.

 


December 14, 2020

Webinar 3: Applying AI in COVID-19

Speakers:

Prof. Yuzuru Tanaka has been a professor emeritus of Hokkaido University (2013- ), an adjunct professor of Department of Computing Science, University of Alberta (2018- ), an affiliated scientist of ICS-FORTH (Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas )(2010- ), the research supervisor (program officer) of the JST CREST Program on Big Data Applications (2013-2021), the program officer of EIG JST CONCERT-Japan Program on ICT for Resilient, Safe and Secure Society (2020- ), an MI (Materials Informatics) research advisor of Research and Services Division of Materials Data and Integrated System at National Institute of Materials Science (2017-2019), and visiting professors of National Institute of Informatics (2004- ), Institute of Catalysis at Hokkaido University (2017- ), and specially appointed researcher at Comprehensive Research Organization for Science and Society (CROSS)(2019- ). He had been a full professor of computer architecture at the Department of Electrical Engineering (1990-2003), then of knowledge media architecture at the Department of Computer Science, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology (2004-2017), Hokkaido University, and the founding director of Meme Media Laboratory (1995-2013), Hokkaido University. He also worked as a visiting research fellow at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center (1985-1986), a full professor of Digital Library, Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University (1998-2000), and series editor of Springer’s LNAI (Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence). His research areas covered multiprocessor architectures, database schema-design theory, database machine architectures, full text search of document image files, and automatic cut detection in movies and full video search. His recent research areas cover meme media architectures, knowledge federation frameworks, proximity-based federation of smart objects, their application to digital libraries, e-Science, clinical trials, materials informatics, and social cyber-physical systems especially for the optimization of snow removal in Sapporo based on the big data analysis of weather, traffic and road conditions.

Prof. Randy Goebel is currently professor of Computing Science in the Department of Computing Science at the University of Alberta, Associate Vice President (Research & Innovation), and Fellow and co-founder of the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii). He received the B.Sc. (Computer Science), M.Sc. (Computing Science), and Ph.D. (Computer Science) from the Universities of Regina, Alberta, and British Columbia, respectively. Professor Goebel's theoretical work on abduction, hypothetical reasoning and belief revision is internationally well known; his recent research is focused on the formalization of visualization and explainable artificial intelligence (XAI). He has worked on optimization, algorithm complexity, systems biology, and natural language processing, including applications in legal reasoning and medical informatics. Goebel continues to run the Explainable AI Lab within Amii, working in a broad variety of research areas, including algorithm complexity, systems biology, and natural language processing, with a focus on legal reasoning and medical informatics, and is a former academic lead of the University of Alberta Precision Health Signature Area. Randy has previously held faculty appointments at the University of Waterloo, University of Tokyo, Multimedia University (Kuala Lumpur), Hokkaido University (Sapporo), visiting researcher engagements at National Institute of Informatics (Tokyo), DFKI (Germany), and NICTA (now Data61, Australia); is actively involved in collaborative research projects in Canada, Japan, China, and Germany.

Moderator: Chelsea Miya, PhD Candidate and CGS SSHRC fellow in English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta.

 


January 27, 2021

Webinar 4: Mobilizing Serious Game during COVID-19

Speakers:

Prof. Hiroyuki Matsukuma is currently an associate professor at Content and Creative Design, Faculty of Design of Kyushu University. He graduated from Department of Visual Communication Design of Kyushu Institute of Design in 1994, and completed master’s degree of Communication Science at the University in 1996. He has been working at GALA (Graphic Art Laboratory) of Toppan printing Co., Ltd from 1997 to 2003. He started working at Kyushu Institute of Design as a lecturer in the same year. He is also a member of DiGRA JAPAN, JSSD, IPS, ADADA and one of the executive board members of DiGRA JAPAN as well as an executive director of ADAA Committee office. His special subjects of study are Content Design, and Serious Gaming. In collaboration with hospitals and welfare institutions, he has engaged in research and development of Serious Games aimed at rehabilitation and health care mainly focusing on the elderly.

Prof. Geoffrey Rockwell is a professor of Philosophy and Humanities Computing at the University of Alberta, Canada. He received a B.A. in philosophy from Haverford College, an M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Toronto and worked at the University of Toronto as a Senior Instructional Technology Specialist. From 1994 to 2008 he was at McMaster University where he was the Director of the Humanities Media and Computing Centre (1994 - 2004) and he led the development of an undergraduate Multimedia program funded through the Ontario Access To Opportunities Program. He has published and presented papers in the area of philosophical dialogue, textual visualization and analysis, humanities computing, instructional technology, computer games and multimedia. He is the project leader for the CFI (Canada Foundation for Innovation) funded project TAPoR, a Text Analysis Portal for Research, which has developed a text tool portal for researchers who work with electronic texts and he organized a SSHRC funded conference, The Face of Text in 2004. He has published a book "Defining Dialogue: From Socrates to the Internet" with Humanity Books.

Moderator: Chelsea Miya, PhD Candidate and CGS SSHRC fellow in English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta.