2022 Winner: Recognition Of Regional Innovation - Athabasca And Beyond
Initiative: Athabasca University’s IDEA Lab – Leading in Digital-first Research Solutions
IDEA Lab is a collaborative venture between the Athabasca University Research Office and the IT Cloud Research Architecture team – recognizing the collective achievements of the group and celebrating the ongoing insights and discoveries of faculty and students.
As Canada’s only open and online-by-design university, Athabasca University’s IDEA Lab is leading in this space by crafting digital-first research solutions to enable researchers to go further, faster – and investing in Alberta’s emerging talent through training and application of cloud technologies for research and innovation through IDEA Academy.
IDEA Lab enables researchers to leverage cloud computing assets—virtual servers, storage, databases, networking, software, and innovative A.I. and machine learning tools – and is discipline agnostic. Partnering with researchers of any field or specialty to design solutions that are innovative in their approach and impactful in their outcomes – work to date has included: intelligent agents to query complex data sets on COVID-19 research; machine learning to assess barriers to inclusion in RCMP survey data; remote field hydrology sensor networks; bias detection in nursing notes; network solutions for digital twinning of telepresence robotics in smart labs.
The activities and aims of IDEA Lab and Academy support key elements of both the Alberta Technology and Innovation Strategy and Alberta 2030.
