Payam is a computer scientist who has received his Master's degree in Computer Science at Simon Fraser University. During the course of his thesis, Payam developed the first fully automatic approach to finding cancerous lesions in 3D medical images. He was involved in one of the biggest projects for cancer treatment in Canada, in collaboration with the BC Cancer Agency and The University of British Columbia and Quantitative Imaging Network in the USA for the evaluation of responses to cancer therapies. He has published over 10 scientific papers and has won several awards during his study, including The SFU’s People’s Choice Award at the Faculty of Applied Sciences Heat of the Three Minute Thesis. He has 3+ years of experience in full life cycle Software development involving OOP design development, testing, documentation.

Pouya Ahmadvand is a research assistance in The Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (AIM) Lab and also doing a M.Sc. program at bioinformatics in the University of British Columbia. He used to be a lecturer in Shahid Rajaee Teacher Training University, Iran in the Department of Computer Engineering for two years. He also has cooperated in a variety of industrial and research projects. His research addresses problems in computer vision, object detection, and deep-learning. A common theme across these projects is the application of machine learning and image/video processing to solve real-world problems.

Vanessa Hennessey is the Programming Coordinator and Podcast Producer at Westcoast Women in Engineering, Science, and Technology. She helps with the many fun projects that WWEST is undertaking, including programming and planning events and workshops, graphic design, and coordination of the WWEST Outreach Apps, among others. She has also produced the Best of the WWEST podcast since 2016. Vanessa finished her post-baccalaureate in Communication at Simon Fraser University in 2019, co-hosts/produces a podcast on “the X-Files” (her favourite character is, of course, Dana Scully) as well as a podcast about travel; and lives with her loving husband, cuddly-on-their-own-terms cats, and silly but adorable dog.

Julianne Kim is a Communication Major at Simon Fraser University and is the Communications Assistant at WWEST. Her role at WWEST allows her to apply her passions for writing, graphic design, and digital marketing across several projects. In her spare time, she loves to find new shows to binge watch and listen to her vinyl record collection.

Alicen Ricard is the Communications Lead at WWEST.  When she isn't working she is hosting a podcast on mental health, writing for various different places, creating product for her etsy store,  or reading many books. She lives in a chaotic household with her fiancé, three pet rats, and two birds.