Computing Science researchers receive $600,000 from CFI’s JELF Fund

September 22, 2020
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This year, SFU computing science researchers received a total of $600,000 for three research projects from the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s John R. Evans Leaders Fund. This funding allows researchers to perform leading-edge research by providing them with the foundational research infrastructure to become leaders in their fields. This enables SFU to remain internationally competitive in areas of research and technology development that align with the university’s strategic priorities.

Recipients of the CFI’s JELF Fund:

Angel Chang, a professor in the School of Computing Science, has received $100,000 from CFI’s JELF to explore interactive language learning in 3D environments. Her research group will explore how to develop interactive machine learning that integrates human feedback to develop algorithms and models that will help an AI virtual assistant to resolve references to the 3D representation of an object. The goal is to create an AI virtual assistant that can talk about and understand the physical world so that it can assist people in their daily lives. This research will add to Canada’s strong position in AI and provide skilled engineers to develop the next generation of virtual assistants.

Mo Chen and Manolis Savva, professors in the School of Computing Science, have received $300,000 from CFI’s JELF and matching funds from the BC Knowledge Development Fund. The duo, who are interested in robotics and visual computing, are researching how to improve virtual 3D simulations of everyday scenarios such as shopping in a store or visiting a coffee shop. They plan to use these simulations to develop artificial intelligence for robots and intelligent assistants on mobile devices so that they can efficiently and safely help people in similar real-world scenarios, while also collecting data to further improve the 3D simulations. This research could be applied to a variety of applications, including autonomous cars and service robots.

Yasutaka Furukawa and Jiangchuan (JC) Liu, professors in the School of Computing Science, have received $200,000 from CFI’s JELF to build infrastructure for a smart building research project that includes people as an integral part of the building system. This will involve unique interdisciplinary research across computer vision, motion sensing and wireless networking. By developing smart building infrastructure, their research hopes to facilitate a new computational platform that can provide business opportunities ranging from smart building operations to autonomous robots that need intelligent infrastructure support.

See the full list of SFU Faculty of Applied Science recipients >>

See the full list of SFU recipients >>