Events

The Edmonton region is home to the University of Alberta, which ranks 3^rd in the world for research related to artificial intelligence and machine learning and is recognized internationally for its pioneering research in the field of reinforcement learning.

Through the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii), the region is a core member of the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy (along with Vector in Toronto and Mila in Montreal)and has named 26 Canada CIFAR AI chairs. The region’s reputation as a hub for AI and reinforcement learning has attracted corporate investment from tech giants such as Google, IBM, Microsoft, Volkswagen Data Lab, Imperial Oil, and Hoffmann-La Roche. Amii’s mandate is to bridge the gap between world-leading research and industry and has forged more that 75 formal industry relationships since 2018.

The Edmonton region is home to seven post-secondary institutions and has the highest post-secondary rate in Canada – making it the highest performing region in the most educated OECD country. The University of Alberta is one of the top five engineering schools in Canada and is ranked 3^rd globally in AI research. The University of Alberta’s Computer Science division has more than 40 researchers, with approximately half of them working directly on artificial intelligence and machine learning.

In 2017, approximately 30% of computer science graduates in the Edmonton Metropolitan Region were qualified for ‘computer and information systems managers’ positions – the highest paid computer science-related occupation (the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area qualified only 23%.) This suggests the region has a well-established and highly-skilled talent pipeline being taught by some of the world’s pre-eminent researchers including:

Dr. Richard Sutton is considered by many to be the pre-eminent leader in AI and machine learning (ML) and has been named the pioneer of reinforcement learning (RL). In fact, Dr. Sutton is the most-cited researcher worldwide in reinforcement learning. He is a computer science professor at the University of Alberta.

Dr. Michael Bowling who also teaches at the University of Alberta, was instrumental in establishing the subfield of deep reinforcement learning through his Arcade Learning Environment, launched in 2013.

Alberta Health Services (AHS) is Canada’s largest single healthcare system (4.5 million patients) and has demonstrated a willingness to partner with industry to adopt AI tools. In collaboration with Amii, AHS has been integrating AI and health in a real-world setting since 2015.

Edmonton maintains an open data portal and adopts the international Open Data Charter. This promotes and supports free and open access to datasets.

There is an abundance of open data in Alberta’s health sector.

• The Alberta Real World Evidence Consortium has one of the world’s most comprehensive health data sets.
• Edmonton Health City is currently pursuing initiatives focused on the generation and use of synthetic data in order to increase opportunities for data accessibility and drive innovation in the life sciences sector.
• The region is also home to DrugBank – the world’s largest online database of drug and drug target information.

One of the key cost drivers for research heavy fields like AI is talent – and the Edmonton region shows up well in this regard when compared to competing jurisdictions in Canada. The cost for talent in Edmonton is 70.5% of the cost in Toronto and 73.8% of the cost in Montreal.

The price of office space in Edmonton is also very competitive when compared to competing jurisdictions. According to CBRE’s Q4 2020 office and industrial statistics, office rental space costs $20.65 per square foot in Edmonton and vacancy rates are approximately 19%. Office rental costs in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal were $44.54, $35.94, and $24.65 per square foot, respectively.