The public lectures at ICPEAC aim to be accessible and of interest to the general public. They were introduced into the program of ICPEAC to provide an outreach component that would excite a general public audience about the aspects of physics from the ICPEAC community. This component is now also complemented by lectures that have no connection to ICPEAC physics, and aim to educate the ICPEAC community about topics the general public is interested in.
To attend these lectures no registration is necessary. Just show up on time.
Wednesday, July 26, 20:00, Shaw Centre, Ottawa Salon
Generating High-Intensity, Ultrashort Optical Pulses
Donna Strickland
Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Waterloo
Nobel Laureate, Physics 2018
Donna Strickland is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo and is one of the recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics 2018 for developing chirped pulse amplification with Gérard Mourou, her PhD supervisor at the time. They published this Nobel-winning research in 1985 when Strickland was a PhD student at the University of Rochester.
Strickland earned a B.Eng. from McMaster University and a PhD in optics from the University of Rochester. Strickland was a research associate at the National Research Council Canada, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a member of technical staff at Princeton University. In 1997, she joined the University of Waterloo, where her ultrafast laser group develops high-intensity laser systems for nonlinear optics investigations. She was named a 2021 Hagler Fellow of Texas A&M University and sits on the Growth Technology Advisory Board of Applied Materials. Strickland served as the president of the Optica (formerly OSA) in 2013 and is a fellow of Optica, SPIE, the Royal Society of Canada and the Royal Society. She is an honorary fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Physics, an international member of the US National Academy of Science and member of the Pontifical Academy of Science. Strickland was named a Companion of the Order of Canada.
Thursday, July 27, 20:00, Shaw Centre, Ottawa Salon
A Brighter Future or The Robot Apocalypse?: The Challenges of AI Governance
Teresa Scassa
University of Ottawa Centre for Law, Technology and Society
Dr. Teresa Scassa is the Canada Research Chair in Information Law and Policy at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law. She is cross appointed to the School of Information Studies, and is a member of the Centre for Law, Technology and Society.
Dr. Scassa earned her LLB in Common and Civil Law from McGill University, and her LLM and SJD in Law from the University of Michigan. Her research explores the intersection of law and technology, and she draws upon interdisciplinary approaches and networks in her work.
She has written widely about intellectual property and privacy law issues in a broad range of contexts. Dr. Scassa is author, co-author, or co-editor of several books, including Canadian Intellectual Property Law (3d ed., Emond, 2022), Artificial Intelligence and the Law in Canada (LexisNexis 2021), Digital Commerce in Canada (LexisNexis 2020), Law and the Sharing Economy (uOttawa Press 2018), and Canadian Trademark Law (2d edition, LexisNexis 2015). She has researched and published widely on law and technology subjects. She is a member of Canada’s Advisory Council on Artificial Intelligence, a member of the Law Commission of Ontario’s Advisory Panel on the AI in Civil and Administrative Justice Project, and was the first Scholar-in Residence at the office of the Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner in 2022-23. She is a past member of the Canadian Government Advisory Panel on Open Government and External Advisory Committee to the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.