Latest news with #Polytechnique
CBC
06-05-2025
- Science
- CBC
Is this intersection safe? New tool measures hazard level of most Montreal intersections
Researchers at Polytechnique Montréal have developed a tool that combines existing data on several variables to determine hazard levels for intersections, hoping the city will use the tool to improve problematic areas.
CBC
25-03-2025
- Politics
- CBC
Carney apologizes to Montreal massacre survivor running for Liberals after getting name and school wrong
Social Sharing Liberal Leader Mark Carney named the wrong university as the site of the 1989 Montreal massacre on Tuesday — and flubbed the last name of the survivor who is running with his party. At a campaign stop in Musquodoboit Harbour in the Nova Scotia riding of Central Nova, Carney made a nod to Liberal candidate Nathalie Provost but made two critical mistakes in the process. "You want les défenseurs de la justice sociale, like Nathalie Pronovost à Montréal," Carney said, calling Provost a defender of social justice. He then repeated Provost's name, making the same mistake and adding another. "Nathalie Pronovost, who out of the tragedy of the shootings at Concordia, became a social justice activist and she's put her hand up and she's running for us." The shooting happened at Polytechnique, the engineering school at the Université de Montréal. Carney said he apologized in a call to Provost soon after, but Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet was quick to seize on the blunders, the day after Carney had made another Quebec-related gaffe in turning down an invitation to TVA's Face-à-Face debate. "Ms. Provost will run her campaign, but she should inform her leader of who she is, what she did and what happened because it is one of the saddest, most dramatic wounds in the history of Quebec and I think Mr. Carney should know that," Blanchet said. He also posted about the incident on X, saying the Bloc had supported Provost's years of efforts to get the Liberals to change gun laws. Provost is the Liberal candidate for a suburban riding outside of Montreal, Châteauguay-Les Jardins-de-Napierville. Her candidacy was leaked to French-language media last week, days before Carney asked for an election. She is well known in Quebec and across the country for her years of lobbying for stronger gun control, alongside fellow massacre survivor Heidi Rathjen. The two survivors were honoured on Parliament Hill in February 2024 for their group PolySeSouvient's work. WATCH | Carney's two mistakes on campaign Day 2: Carney names wrong school when talking about Montreal massacre 1 hour ago Duration 0:34 Provost was shot four times at Polytechnique when she was 23. She even spoke up to the gunman before he shot all nine women in Provost's classroom. The gunman killed 14 people as well as himself and injured another 15. He said he wanted to fight feminism. Name mistake was a 'typo': Provost In an interview in French with CBC News Tuesday afternoon, Provost said she herself struggles with people's names. "For someone to butcher my name by adding two letters does not offend me because it's something I could have done," she said. "It's just a typo." The mistake he won't make twice, though, Provost said, is getting the place where the worst mass killing of women in Canadian history happened wrong. Provost said she believes Carney was abroad at the time of the massacre, but that she also believes he was affected by it, just like every other Canadian. "He got the essence of who I am," in his remarks, Provost said. "I am a woman committed to gun control because I was the victim of a shooting. All that is true." Provost noted she was the one who reached out to the Liberal Party in the first place.
CBC
17-03-2025
- Business
- CBC
Quebec businessman gifts $50M to Polytechnique Montréal for disruptive innovation hub
A Quebec-born businessman and philanthropist who is donating $50 million to a Montreal university to establish an institute dedicated to "disruptive innovation" says it has never been more important to invest in homegrown talent. Pierre Lassonde's donation to Polytechnique Montréal, to be officially announced at an event Monday, comes as Canada finds itself in the midst of a tariff war with the United States, its largest trading partner and ally. Lassonde believes Canada had grown used to being dependent on the U.S., a relationship that U.S. President Donald Trump has turned on its head since he took office in January. "It was an easy relationship. Well, it isn't anymore and we have to wake up to that," Lassonde said in an interview last week from his Toronto home. "Never waste a good crisis, this is a good crisis, so let's do something about it," Lassonde added. "This hopefully will kick-start something even bigger. Every single moment matters and this one matters a great deal." WATCH | Trump tariffs are in effect. Here's how Quebec is helping businesses: Trump tariffs are in effect. Here's how Quebec is helping businesses 13 days ago Duration 2:08 Lassonde, a Polytechnique graduate and an expert in mining and precious metals, heads the school's board of directors, and the family name already adorns a number of pavilions at the institution thanks to previous donations. The engineering school, which is affiliated with the Université de Montréal, described the $50 million as the largest gift in its history. Lassonde said the idea formed as he roamed the labs and spoke to professors and students. He detected untapped potential, due in part to a lack of money. "We do have incredible brains at Polytechnique in terms of deep tech. We are in some respects at the very cutting edge of the domain," he said. That's why the new funding will be used to invest in those minds before they are recruited into the private sector. Disruptive innovation is a process where a new product or service, often with a simpler or less sophisticated design, initially targets a specific market and then gradually or eventually replaces the existing product. "None of it is going into bricks and mortar, it's all about intellectual capital and about creating intellectual properties that will really be meaningful, that will create jobs, that will create economic activity, growth in Canada hopefully, and impact the world," Lassonde said. He also hopes to spur on others with the financial means to contribute toward the creation of forward-looking projects. Though Quebecers have in recent decades started "throwing their weight around" and giving more to higher education, he said more can be done. "It's a recurring issue in Canadian universities, simply because we don't have the philanthropic model that the U.S. universities have," Lassonde said. New tools, younger minds Oussama Moutanabbir, a professor at Polytechnique, said the new institute's main focus will be developing technologies to address immediate problems. "Since the beginning of humanity, people develop technology based on what they have in hand and what they need, and that paradigm continues today. There are many universities and research labs doing the same thing," Moutanabbir said. "But Polytechnique has a commitment to focus on this innovation by tapping into new fundamental knowledge, so bridging the gap between the discovery and the application." Moutanabbir gives the example of medical imaging and cancer — developing technology that can detect the first small clusters of tumour cells that appear in the body and to test as many patients as possible. Existing technology requires exposure to an X-ray with a high dose of radiation for people who are vulnerable, so the idea is to create a new tool that is smaller and can be operated with a much lower exposure. That involves going back to the drawing board. "To address that challenge, we have to go to the fundamental nature of matter and manipulate it," Moutanabbir said. "The institute would be focusing on these kind of problems ... the driving force will always be to maximize the impact of academic research on society." Forward-looking also means the need to invest in young minds, Moutanabbir said. "The very precious resource that we need to focus on is really young scientists," he said. Lassonde said he is worried about recent measures that limit the number of international students coming to Quebec. WATCH | Quebec cutting number of foreign students that can enrol in schools in the province Quebec cutting number of foreign students that can enrol in schools in the province 19 days ago Duration 2:05 The CAQ government is reducing how many applications it will process for new international students by about 20 per cent starting this year. Last month, the province announced it would issue 20 per cent fewer acceptance certificates to foreign students this year compared to last. "I am very concerned about our ability to attract the very best minds and bring them here," Lassonde said, noting that two-thirds of doctoral candidates at Polytechnique are international students and there are not enough Quebecers to meet the demand.
Khaleej Times
06-02-2025
- Business
- Khaleej Times
Scientists' conference kicks off global AI summit in Paris
Global experts will debate the threats and promise of artificial intelligence (AI) at a gathering in Paris on Thursday and Friday, ahead of a summit of world leaders on the fast-moving technology. Thousands are expected for the event aiming to find common ground on a technology that has upset many business sectors in less than two years -- as well as to keep France and Europe on the map as credible contenders in the AI race. Paris' ambitions also stretch to stoking citizens' interest in real-world uses of AI, taking stock of global governance of the technology and promoting ethical, accessible and frugal options. Scientists including Yann LeCun, AI chief for Facebook owner Meta and a father of the current surge in the technology, were discussing its impact on fields including work, health and sustainability from Thursday at the prestigious Polytechnique engineering school. "Science can help us think through this revolution" and "understand the societal impacts of AI", Macron's AI envoy Anne Bouverot told a packed lecture theatre at the Polytechnique's leafy campus outside Paris as the conference opened on Thursday. University chief Thierry Coulhon told scientists it was their "responsibility to ensure that world leaders are equipped with the insights and questions emerging from your world". Saturday and Sunday will see talks on AI's impact on culture before heads of state and government from around 100 countries and global tech industry leaders gather on Monday and Tuesday. High-profile attendees will include US Vice-President JD Vance, Chinese Vice-Premier Zhang Guoqing, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is co-hosting the summit as Macron seeks to involve the Global South in a technology battle that is for now largely playing out between the United States and China. Macron's office said he would also host United Arab Emirates leader Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan on Thursday to discuss "our two countries' common ambition on AI". From the business side, X and Tesla chief Elon Musk has yet to confirm attendance — as has Liang Wengfeng, founder of Chinese startup DeepSeek, which shocked the world with its frugal, high-performance R1 model last week. American figures such as OpenAI's Sam Altman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei, as well as Arthur Mensch of French AI developer Mistral, will all join the gathering. In science, Meta's LeCun will be flanked by the likes of Demis Hassabis, the Nobel chemistry prize-winning head of Google's DeepMind AI research lab, and Berkeley machine learning researcher Michael Jordan. Jordan on Thursday described as "hype and hysteria" claims from Altman and Amodei that the world was close to developing artificial general intelligence (AGI) — the holy grail of AI research that would surpass humans in all areas. AGI "will happen someday, I don't say it won't," Jordan said, although for now "humans are way smarter than machines". Three more Nobel winners — computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, journalist Maria Ressa and economist Joseph Stiglitz — will join a conference hosted by the International Association for Safe and Ethical AI (IASEI), created only last year. France hopes that the conference can reinforce its leading European position in AI, having already drawn several labs from leading AI firms to Paris, including Google, Meta and OpenAI. "This summit has to be a moment to position Paris as the global capital of AI," digital minister Clara Chappaz told AFP journalists. After a month in which DeepSeek's emergence shocked even Silicon Valley heavyweights and the United States announced a $500-billion AI investment scheme, France and Europe have a lot to prove in the coming days. Recent events "show us that the field is still very open in terms of global competition", French AI envoy Bouverot insisted. Paris plans to announce major investments running into the billions, including for new data centres on its territory. The government said on Thursday it had 35 "ready-to-use" sites totalling 1,200 hectares on offer across the country. And civil service minister Laurent Marcangeli announced a chatbot tool similar to ChatGPT for France's 5.7 million public-sector workers.
Yahoo
06-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Scientists' conference kicks off global AI summit in Paris
Global experts will debate threats from artificial intelligence (AI) at a gathering in Paris on Thursday and Friday, ahead of a summit of world leaders on the fast-moving technology. Thousands are expected for the event aiming to find common ground on a technology that has upset many business sectors in less than two years -- as well as to keep France and Europe on the map as credible contenders in the AI race. Scientists including Yann LeCun, AI chief for Facebook owner Meta, will discuss its impact on fields including work, health and sustainability from Thursday at the prestigious Polytechnique engineering school. The Frenchman, one of the fathers of the current wave of AI, and 20 other high-profile researchers dined with Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday, the French president's Elysee Palace office said. Saturday and Sunday will see talks on AI's impact on culture before heads of state and government from around 100 countries and global tech industry leaders gather on Monday and Tuesday. - DeepSeek invited - High-profile attendees will include US Vice President JD Vance, China's Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi is co-hosting the summit as Macron seeks to involve the Global South in a technology battle that is for now largely playing out between the United States and China. From the business side, X and Tesla chief Elon Musk has yet to confirm attendance -- as has Liang Wengfeng, founder of Chinese startup DeepSeek, which shocked the world with its frugal, high-performance R1 model last week. American figures such as OpenAI's Sam Altman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei, as well as Arthur Mensch of French AI developer Mistral, will all join the gathering. In science, Meta's LeCun will be be flanked by the likes of Demis Hassabis, the Nobel chemistry prize-winning head of Google's DeepMind AI research lab, and Berkeley machine learning researcher Michael Jordan. Three more Nobel winners -- computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, journalist Maria Ressa and economist Joseph Stiglitz -- will join a conference hosted by the International Association for Safe and Ethical AI (IASEI), created only last year. - French AI efforts - France hopes that the conference can reinforce its leading European position in AI, having already drawn several labs from leading AI firms to Paris, including Google, Meta and OpenAI. The Polytechnique school has been singled out to host the scientific conference as a symbol of French excellence in the field. "This summit has to be a moment to position Paris as the global capital of AI," digital minister Clara Chappaz told AFP journalists. After a month in which DeepSeek's emergence shocked even Silicon Valley titans and the United States announced a $500-billion AI investment scheme, France and Europe have a lot to prove in the coming days. Paris plans to announce major investments running into the billions, including for new data centres on its territory. mng/tgb/rlp
