During CAIDA’s formation process in 2018, it was important to address not only the academic goals of the institution but also the values and societal aspects that the group would showcase and strive for. By starting with a concrete Mission Statement and continuing to grow and develop, CAIDA hopes to be a leading group in AI research and innovation.
Vertical Themes A focus on AIDA unifies a broad range of UBC researchers working with a similar set of cutting-edge AI methodologies, even though some of the problems they attack are superficially very different. To help build bridges to external partners and to increase visibility for our work, we also want to establish vertical themes (roughly analogous to research clusters) focusing on the use of AIDA to address problems in particular application areas.
Composition We strongly believe in the cross-disciplinary opportunity that the Centre represents, and want to build an inclusive, diverse team.
Cohesion A Centre should be more than the sum of its parts. We want to measure and improve our record of intra-group collaboration.
External profile The CS field in general and AI research in particular are incredibly hot topics within private sector giants (Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc). Competition for faculty, graduate students and funding is intense. We want to refine and promulgate UBC’s identity as a beacon of AI research excellence.
Training and Graduate Recruitment Our discipline has a great track record of both attracting excellent graduate students and helping them launch rewarding careers. We would like to continue to train and recruit at these high standards of operation while also striving to improve both our approach and our results.
Industry and other External Partnerships AI research has the potential to generate strong partnerships between academia and receptors. In our case this has tended to be serendipitous. We now need a strategy for proactively identifying, designing and ultimately landing high-value research relationships with external partners.
Diversity AI research is a male-dominated field. We are making a major commitment to diversity and equality in all aspects of our planning, recruiting, and development.
Social Impact and Ethics AI research, development and deployment is having a major impact on many aspects of society. We will encourage research into the social impact and ethics of AIDA.