Do you ever wonder what drives a researcher’s curiosity? What was the spark that led them to discovery? Blind Date with Knowledge seeks to demystify scholarly research and personalize the research process through discussions with various Queen’s faculty members. The show is a collaboration between CFRC, the Office of the Vice-Principal (University Relations), and the show host, Barry Kaplan. Kaplan is a member of the Kingston community, and his passion for spreading knowledge about research at Queen’s is palpable. Our name is based on the premise that research isn’t predictable. Like a blind date, research is about taking risks and being prepared for failure and success.Read more »
Do you ever wonder what drives a researcher’s curiosity? What was the spark that led them to discovery? Blind Date with Knowledge seeks to demystify scholarly research and personalize the research process through discussions with various Queen’s faculty members. The show is a collaboration between CFRC, the Office of the Vice-Principal (University Relations), and the show host, Barry Kaplan. Kaplan is a member of the Kingston community, and his passion for spreading knowledge about research at Queen’s is palpable. Our name is based on the premise that research isn’t predictable. Like a blind date, research is about taking risks and being prepared for failure and success.Read Less
Amy Wu, Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Ingenuity Labs Research InstituteHelping robots learn to walk
Host:Barry Kaplan Synopsis:Dr. Amy Wu is an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science at Queen’s University. She leads the Biomechanics x Robotics Laboratory (BxRL) and is a member of the Queen’s Ingenuity Labs Research Institute. Her research interests include mechatronics, human biomechanics, and wearable and assistive devices. One of Dr. Wu’s projects, Rando the Robot, is a low-cost bipedal walking robot with an open-source mindset, to expand accessibility to and involvement in walking robot education and research. She has demonstrated this project at Queen’s Park in Toronto, Maker Faire Rome, and Science Rendezvous Kingston.In this episode, Dr. Wu discusses her work at BxRL and the first-principles approach in understanding the mechanics and energies of human movement for robot design and biomechanics. Shealso explains the motivation for constructing Rando the Robot with an open-source mindset to encourage cost-efficient robotics research.Please visit the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering for more information about Dr.Wu’s research.
Xiaodan Zhu, Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ingenuity Labs Research InstituteTeaching language to computers
Host:Barry Kaplan Synopsis:Dr. Xiaodan Zhu is an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Queen’s,where he leads the Text Analytics and Machine Learning Lab (TAML). He is also a member of the Ingenuity Labs Research Institute and is an affiliated expert with Queen’s Conflict Analytics Lab. He is associate editor of the journal Computational Intelligence and serves as the program co-chair of the 33rd Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence.His research interests include machine learning, natural language processing, deep learning, and artificial intelligence.Prior to joining Queen’s in 2017, Dr. Zhu was a research officer at the National Research Council of Canada.In this episode, Dr. Zhu discusses how his research, at the frontier of artificial intelligence, is helping computers better understand language, with wide ranging applications. He also explains the intersections of law and AI with his work at the Queen’s Conflict Analytics Lab.Please visit the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering for more information about Dr. Zhu’s research