Topic: Acadia Institute for Data Analytics
Ag + Tech = Innovation
February 12, 2019 at 7:00pm
Agriculture globally is a 12 trillion dollar annual industry ripe for technology startups looking to bring new hi-tech innovations to market. Where does digital technology and agriculture meet, and what are the opportunities?
Gary Morton (Morton Horticultural Associates, Annapolis Valley Chamber of Commerce Agriculture Committee) will discuss this exciting technology space, and the over $160,000 (cash and in-kind services) that the AVCC has awarded locally to spark agriculture innovation. Dr. Danny Silver (Acadia Institute for Data Analytics) will look at the opportunities around ag. and the field of data analytics. Finally, we will also explore the locally grown startup FoodByte, and how they are making big waves in the ag. tech space.
Seed: Hacking Entrepreneurship in the Annapolis Valley
November 21, 2017 at 6:00pm
Seed is a documentary that follows an international group of programmer entrepreneurs at AngelHack: one of the most competitive global hackathons and digital business ideation competitions. Three minutes to pitch. One shot to fund their proposals.
Seed is also a gathering of our Annapolis Valley startup community. The event will feature the diversity of associations, businesses, and individuals who comprise our digital tech startup community. An assembly of our entrepreneurial family. Come mingle and build your network.
Forecasting: Using Machine Learning Techniques in Energy, Environment and Agriculture
January 10, 2017 at 7:00pm
Dr Daniel Silver will review a series of projects undertaken by the Acadia Institute for Data Analytics . These amazing projects can estimate crop yield from smart phone images, do solar energy forecasting, manage building energy, determine stream flow rate and aquifer recharge prediction, sales forecasting, and classifying objects in UAV agriculture field images.
Many of these problems utilize high resolution observed and forecasted weather, high definition and multi-spectral digital images, and 5 minute through 60 minute data flow rates. These projects use a variety of machine learning methods. Come learn about standard neural networks, random forests, more advanced deep and recurrent neural networks, as well as transfer learning.
Dr Daniel Silver
Dr. Daniel L. Silver is the Director of the Acadia Institute for Data Analytics . He is also a Professor in and currently the Acting-Director of the Jodrey School of Computer Science at Acadia University. His areas of research and application are machine learning, data mining, and data analytics. His expertise is in Lifelong Machine Learning and Transfer Learning. He has published over 65 scientific papers and has co-chaired or been part of program committees for a number of national and international conferences, seminars and workshops on data mining and machine learning. He was the President of the Canadian Artificial Intelligence Association (CAIAC) from 2009-11. In 2011, he received the Science Champion Award from the Nova Scotia Discovery Center for his work on youth robotics and the advancement of STEM education. In December, 2014, he became an Honorary Colonel in the RCAF attached to 14 Wing Software Engineering Squadron, in Greenwood, NS. In June of 2016, was awarded Canadian AI’s Distinguished Service Award. Danny has over 30 years of experience in information technology, project management and business administration. Since 1993, he has worked on machine learning and data mining projects in the private and public sector providing situation analysis and problem definition, project management and guidance, and data mining services.