Align Master of Science in Computer Science Online – Canada

Dr. Bethany Edmunds is a recognized leader in Computer Science and STEM education in North America. She has a Ph.D. in Computer Science, with a specialization in Artificial Intelligence, and is currently the Associate Dean of Computing Programs – West Coast. Bethany is passionate about breaking down barriers to create greater diversity, access and inclusivity within the technology community. She brings together expertise in software development, machine learning, and educational innovation to create STEM opportunities for people of all backgrounds and abilities.

Bethany’s commitment to breaking ground in tech education began early. While earning her Ph.D. in Machine Learning at Rutgers University in her native New Jersey, she was the co-organizer for the second international Women in Machine Learning Workshop. She continues to actively encourage women and girls to pursue careers in tech, speaking regularly at women in technology events. She is also currently on the Board of Directors for Women in Machine Learning.

Prior to joining Northeastern, Bethany was the first female Associate Dean of Computing at British Columbia Institute of Technology where she led the pedagogical innovation of the Computer Information Technology Program. Her industry experience includes developing flight simulation software while working for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the government body that oversees all aspects of civil aviation in the United States.

Dr. Edmunds has been named one of BC Business’s Most Influential Women in STEM, Business in Vancouver’s Forty under 40, and YWCA’s Women of Distinction. She is a broadly published researcher, and sought after media expert on the subject of improving diversity in STEM education.

Education:
• Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning specialization, Rutgers University
• Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, Rowan University

Research Interests:
• Generalized reinforcement learning for mobile robotics

Awards and Recognition:
• YWCA Metro Vancouver Women of Distinction Award, Education, Training, and Development, 2019
• Business in Vancouver, Top Forty under 40, 2018
• BC’s Most Influential Women, BC Business Magazine, 2018
• Brian Thom Advancing Teaching Excellence Award, 2016
• National Science Foundation’s Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training Fellowship, 2006 – 2008

[email protected]

Ildar Akhmetov is the director of computing programs for Vancouver and an associate teaching professor in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University, based in Vancouver.

Throughout his career, Akhmetov has worn three hats. As a university educator, he spent more than a decade in his native Russia before jumping to the University of Alberta. There, he continued to design and teach undergraduate and graduate courses, with an emphasis on forging partnerships to facilitate hands-on, experiential projects for his students. As an entrepreneur, he founded and managed several businesses. And as a software developer, he has overseen the development, integration, maintenance, and security of IT and computer systems.

Akhmetov was drawn to Khoury College by the opportunity to contribute to the Align program, the college’s “CS for everyone” mission, and Northeastern’s culture of innovation. In Vancouver, the veteran professor aims to connect with local companies and organizations, leveraging his entrepreneurial experience to launch his students into industry. In the classroom, he feels inspired by the unique perspectives and impact of the graduate students who transition into computing, and he relishes the opportunity to set the stage for these students’ successes.

Outside of teaching, Akhmetov keeps both a busy travel itinerary — having been to more than 30 countries — and a regular distance running regimen, having finished the prestigious Chicago Marathon. Since 1998, he has learned a new programming language each year.

Education:

Dr. Logan Schmidt holds a PhD in Rhetoric from Carnegie Mellon University, where their doctoral research examined the effective communication of technical and scientific information to lay audiences. Dr. Schmidt has six years of experience working in research development, first at Tufts University and then at Northeastern, where they built and coordinated cross-disciplinary research teams for projects driven by major grant funding from US government agencies such as the NSF, DOD, and NIH as well as private foundations and corporations. Dr. Schmidt joined the Khoury College of Computer Sciences in 2019 as the Assistant Director of Online Programs, and played a role in the rapid shift to online learning necessitated by COVID-19. Logan has over eight years of teaching experience, and is also a proud alumni of Northeastern’s Align Master of Science in Computer Science program, and is committed to the mission of CS for All.

Education:
• PhD in Rhetoric, Carnegie Mellon University
• MS in Computer Science, Northeastern University
• MA in Rhetoric, Carnegie Mellon University
• BA in English Literature, Ohio University
• BA in Classics, Ohio University

Research Interests:
• Efficacy of interventions in CS education

[email protected]

Richard Hoshino is an Associate Teaching Professor at Northeastern University in Vancouver. He was previously a mathematician for the Government of Canada, a post-doctoral fellow at the National Institute of Informatics in Tokyo, and most recently a professor of mathematics and computer science at Quest University Canada in Squamish, British Columbia. He obtained his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Richard has published 35 research papers across numerous fields, including graph theory, biometric identification, sports tournament scheduling, and optimal school timetabling. He has consulted for a billion-dollar professional baseball league and three Canadian TV game shows.

Richard has presented at the annual conference of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) six times in the past decade, winning their Deployed Application Award twice. His work for the Canada Border Services Agency included helping reduce wait times at Canadian border crossings as well as creating risk scoring algorithms for marine cargo containers.

Richard is also heavily involved in community outreach, and has visited over 50 high schools, conducting workshops on problem-solving and computational thinking for thousands of students and teachers. He was the 2017 recipient of the Adrien Pouliot Award, awarded by the Canadian Mathematical Society as a lifetime achievement award to celebrate “significant and sustained contributions to mathematics education.” He is also the author of the novel “The Math Olympian,” currently ranked #1 by GoodReads for Best Young Adult Books that Empower.

Education
• Ph.D. Math, Dalhousie University
• M.Sc., Dalhousie University
• B.Math, University of Waterloo
• B.Ed, Queen’s University

Research Interests
• Scheduling Optimization
• Operations Research
• Mathematics Pedagogy

Awards and Recognition
• Adrien Pouliot Award, Canadian Mathematical Society, 2017
• Action Canada Fellowship, 2003
• Silver Medallist, International Mathematical Olympiad, 1996

Selected Publications
• R. Hoshino and I. Fabris, Optimizing Student Course Preferences in School Timetabling, Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on the Integration of Constraint Programming, Artificial Intelligence, and Operations Research (CPAIOR 2020), Vienna, Austria, May 2020.
• R. Hoshino and M. Notarangelo, Computational Intractability and Solvability for the Birds of a Feather Game, Proceedings of the 9th EAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (EAAI 2019), Honolulu, Hawaii, January 2019.
• R. Hoshino, A. Slobodin, and W. Bernoudy, An Automated Employee Timetabling System for Small Businesses, Proceedings of the 30th IAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IAAI 2018), New Orleans, Louisiana, February 2018. Winner of the Deployed Application Award.
• R. Hoshino and J. Beairsto, Optimal Pricing for Distance-Based Transit Fares, Proceedings of the 30th IAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IAAI 2018), New Orleans, Louisiana, February 2018.
• R. Hoshino and C. Raible-Clark, The Quest Draft: an Automated Course Allocation Algorithm, Proceedings of the 26th IAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IAAI 2014), Quebec City, Quebec, July 2014. Winner of the Deployed Application Award.

Yvonne Coady is a visiting professor of computer science at the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University. She is also a computer science professor at the University of Victoria and serves as an adjunct professor at the Centre for Digital Media in Vancouver. Coady works with Indigenous community members to develop software learning tools and platforms for improved access to remote education.

Coady’s research changes the way software developers and users utilize the collaborative medium that is the World Wide Web. She believes that the power to harness the power of cloud computing is on the horizon. Her ultimate goal is to take the enormous computing power that used to only be accessible to specialized researchers and share it with the community.

Education:
● Ph.D., Computer Science, University of British Columbia (UBC)

Research Interests:
● Scalable system infrastructures
● Aspect-oriented software development
● Distributed virtualization

[email protected]

Lino is an engineer, educator and researcher working in computer vision applications. Lino has over fifteen years of experience working in both industry and academia.

Lino has conducted research in the fields of image processing and computer vision. He has published multiple papers in topics such as blind signal separation, digital image and video watermarking, high dynamic range imaging, stereoscopic video, and 3D quality of experience.

For over six years, he was a Professor at ITESO University in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. Additionally, he has taught several courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels at the University of British Columbia, Langara College, and CINVESTAV (Mexico).

For the past nine years, Lino has worked as an engineer at several Vancouver startups developing computer vision algorithms and machine learning models for a variety of applications, including online video and metadata optimization, custom footwear design, and agricultural technology.

Lino is a member of the Society for Canadian Women in Science & Technology (SCWIST) and has volunteered as a mentor with the Immigrant Employment Council of BC (IEC-BC) since 2016.

Education:
• M.Eng., Electrical Engineering, McMaster University
• Ph.D., Electrical Engineering, University of British Columbia (UBC)

Research Interests:
• Computer Vision
• Image Processing

[email protected]

Dr. Michal Aibin is an associate professor of computer science at Khoury College of Computer Sciences, Northeastern University. Outside of his role at Northeastern, he is also currently a research faculty at British Columbia Institute of Technology.

Aibin was born in 1989 in Poland. He began his doctoral studies at the Department of Systems and Computer Networks at the Wroclaw University of Technology in 2012, where he was twice awarded the dean’s award and a scholarship to the best Ph.D. students. He received his doctoral degree in June 2017 by defending the thesis: “Dynamic Routing Algorithms for Cloud-Ready Elastic Optical Networks.” He currently upholds his first academic position, at the British Columbia University of Technology, Vancouver, Canada, in the Department of Computing, where he was awarded the Employee Excellence Award in the Applied Research category. He joined Northeastern University in 2020 as a part-time associate professor.

His research interests include the optimization of various processes using adaptive approaches, such as machine learning. His recent focus is on cognitive networking. In particular, data analytics, machine learning and deep learning concepts applied to optical networks to enable cognitive network data analysis.

Research Interests:
● Machine Learning
● Data Analytics

Education:
● PhD Wroclaw University of Science and Technology

Awards and Recognition
● Employee Excellence Award in Applied Research from British Columbia University of Technology

[email protected]