“This kind of agentic AI [artificial intelligence] is the next big thing,” says Associate Professor Vijay Mago, director of the DaTALab at 91��ɫ and Chair of the School of Health Policy & Management, Faculty of Health.

“Right now, a clinician reviews test results such as CT scans, gathers the patient’s medical history, and uses that information to make a diagnosis or decide on treatment. In the future, AI agents will be capable of performing many of these tasks – analyzing data, integrating medical information, and supporting or even making clinical decisions. We’re heading toward a much more advanced stage of health-care intelligence.”

It is the stuff of science fiction and 91��ɫ researchers are on the cutting edge of helping to make it happen in a safe and ethical way. As Mago points out, LLMs are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and the emergence of agentic AI – systems capable of autonomous reasoning and decision making in health care – appears to be imminent.

As a type of LLM, these agentic AI models involve several agents working together to accomplish complex tasks, memorize and collect data, plan, reason and learn.

Mago is part of a project developing an AI-powered doctor’s assistant for patients with chest pain to enhance diagnostic support in First Nations communities in northern Ontario, as well as other rural areas.

“AI models are becoming more intelligent every day.”

If a patient presents with chest pain, a doctor would ask all sorts of questions, including medical history and symptoms, but Mago says the AI assistant could say: “‘Hey, doctor or nurse practitioner, you missed asking this question,’ or recommend care approaches or suggest an ambulance be called.” The ultimate goal is to improve diagnostic accuracy, patient outcomes and safety.

“For rural emergency departments, where there is limited access to critical care, these AI-based approaches can help alleviate a lot of pressure,” says Mago, a member of Connected Minds and the Centre for AI & Society at 91��ɫ.

The model, once complete, still needs to undergo testing in a clinical setting, but down the line these types of AI models could help manage and diagnose any number of ailments, including strokes or diabetes.

“There are some very exciting things happening right now in the field and a rush to leverage the potential of these systems to improve health care, which would eventually include treatment options and predicting disease progression and outcome,” says Mago, whose health related research has garnered some $3.5 million in funding, including from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC).

With such a surge in interest, Mago acknowledges, comes the necessity to ensure AI is unbiased, ethical and adding benefit, rather than harm, to patients.

“AI models are becoming more intelligent every day. The goal is to figure out how to infuse them with emotional intelligence and cognition, and to make sure they are safe,” says 91��ɫ Research Chair in Safe AI for Health Equity, Elham Dolatabadi, who recently received funding through the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s John R. Evans Leaders Fund to start the Health Equity and AI Lab (HEAL).

Over the next five years, she will be part of a team building a human-AI complementary system that combines human brain power with cognitively robust and emotionally intelligent AI for use in health care and mental health.

She agrees agentic AI holds the promise of being a game changer for improved health care, which is why much of her current focus is on creating toolkits and pipelines to evaluate these systems before being deployed. These multi-agent models are more complicated to assess than non-agentic generative AI models where it is easier to see if the outputs align with expectations.

When dealing with several agents in a model, if one is biased, perhaps toward a certain demographic, it could throw off the accuracy and safety of the output, the diagnosis or prognosis.

“Hackers are another issue. They can attack one of the agents in the group or infuse a faulty agent into the system, which may corrupt how the system thinks, or push it into hallucinating. That’s something many will find surprising, but AI not only lies; it hallucinates,” she says. In both cases, the model outputs something that looks factual, but is not.

“Hallucination is very complicated to understand, but we are working on a dynamic pipeline for hallucination evaluation, as well as pipelines for AI agentic models in mental health, acute care and outpatient care. These are across different dimensions, clinical values, behavioural values or cognition, and emotional intelligence, so they align with human values,” says Dolatabadi of 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Health and a faculty affiliate of the Vector Institute.

There can be different agentic systems for each health-care application. What will work for mental health care will not work for acute care. “We also need to ensure the output is not something AI made up because it didn’t know the answer.”

Gender, ethnicity, race and skin colour can all affect accuracy. Anyone who falls outside of the average parameters is not always served well.

“That’s the risk,” says 91��ɫ Associate Professor of the School of Public Policy & Administration, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. He is cross-appointed to 91��ɫ’s Osgoode Hall Law School where he graduated with a PhD. “Different subpopulations are not always captured as well with AI models. The question becomes, as a doctor do you still deploy the model if you know that it’s going to catch 80 per cent of European diseases and 10 per cent of sub-Saharan African diseases?” It’s a question Dolatabadi ponders often as she develops evaluation tools, suggesting the doctor needs to be aware of any limitations so they can make adjustments.

Despite the current shortcomings, Stedman too holds out great hope in the power of AI for the future of health care, specifically in how AI can help better leverage genome sequencing. As someone who lives with a rare genetic condition, he is a prime example of a person whose health data might not yet be captured by larger AI models, as is his daughter who inherited the same gene mutation.

It took 32 years of searching before he finally had a diagnosis and learned the name of his rare disease, which allowed him to access appropriate medicine. Stedman says that getting a diagnosis felt, at the time, like winning a lottery.

There are more than 8,000 known rare diseases that affect one in 12 Canadians, but only about five per cent of them have an effective therapy, with even fewer having access to available therapy. Stedman really is among the lucky.

In his vision of the future, he says, AI plays an outsized role in health-care systems. With its ability to speed up genomic data interpretation, unpack clues to rare disease diagnoses and generally help in the understanding of each individual’s needs better, he believes that getting AI right will be non-negotiable in moving toward the ideal of having personalized health-care systems.

“If you look at the power of genomics in the context of its ability to improve care, it comes from unlocking the data through genomics sequencing. If we can do that with big data analytics and in an everyday clinical setting, we can change health care,” he says. “The challenge is all the legal stuff, which is where my unique hat comes in.”

Stedman brings a particular set of skills, knowledge and experience as a patient to the realm of AI and health. He is on the executive of the Centre for AI & Society and Connected Minds at 91��ɫ and the Chair of the advisory board for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s (CIHR) Institute of Genetics.

“The potential of AI is bigger than people imagine.”

Ensuring rare disease health-care data and genome sequencing data is available across the country is a big part of the equation. That was the impetus for the (PCGL), funded by the CIHR and Genome Canada’s Canadian Precision Health Initiative, with the goal to sequence 100,000 genomes and deposit them in the PCGL. “We’ve done a lot of infrastructure work behind the scenes to build a secure, privacy-protected, properly governed repository,” says Stedman, a member of the PCGL leadership team.

He is confident the repository will lead to more equitable precision health and result in faster rare disease diagnoses. “AI, genetics, precision therapy, it all fits under the umbrella of – how do we build a personalized health-care system where data analytics has an actual bedside impact. When you walk into the ER or your family doctor’s office and data analytics has some impact on you getting quicker, better, more accurate care, people will understand the value of the infrastructure,” he says.

He was also instrumental in the creation of the Canadian Rare Disease Network, which got its start in 2023 with funding from One Child Every Child, a Canada First Research Excellence Fund grant hosted by the University of Calgary. It helps connect the country’s rare disease scientists and clinicians with patient expertise to advance care and research.

“I believe the rare disease patient’s experience will teach us how to create a personalized health-care system. If you build a system that treats every individual as an individual, you’ll create a system that cares for more. I think we’re going to find we’re all rare, even if we don’t call ourselves rare disease patients,” he says. “The potential of AI is bigger than people imagine.”

It is already exploding into so many aspects of the healthcare field, even if patients are unaware, adds Mago. In addition to his work on LLM-based doctor assistants, he is partnering with the Northern Ontario Academic Medicine Association to use LLMs for text simplification for things like medical summaries in highly technical research articles.

It is another way AI is removing geographical boundaries to medical knowledge, he says. “It’s making research a lot more understandable and accessible, not only to lay people, but also to medical practitioners.” The continuing challenge is ensuring the summaries are ethical and sensitive, including to Indigenous and Black communities. With an ill family member in India, Mago knows first-hand the value of these sorts of AI-assisted summaries to bridge the gap not only between layperson knowledge and medical jargon, but also between different countries.

He is also in the second stage of a project that monitors substance-related issues in real time using an LLM-based surveillance system to analyze social media, mainstream news items, including images and videos, and hospital reports across the country. As part of a larger team, the work could result in earlier intervention and more targeted healthcare action. It has already expanded into a multi-institutional collaboration with the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction and the Urban Data Centre at the University of Toronto, funded by PHAC Enhanced Surveillance for Chronic Disease Program.

“This is the time for us to embrace AI, especially in the medical domain because there is the promise of huge benefits,” says Mago, who is excited about the opening of 91��ɫ’s new School of Medicine saying it will help further accelerate research outputs.

He also believes Canada should design and develop its own AI technology and software rather than use technologies made elsewhere that are then customized for Canadians. It’s a matter of AI sovereignty, he says.

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At 91��ɫ, a team of researchers is currently collaborating to develop robots to protect and make life better for the elderly, with the potential for game-changing applications across the spectrum of elder care.

“The possibilities are endless,” says , a professor at the University’s Lassonde School of Engineering and Faculty of Health, who is co-leading CINTHeA: Co-creating Intelligent Neuro-Technologies for Healthy Aging, together with Professor Vincent DePaul from Queen’s University.

“Social robotics for older adult care has been explored for many years. But to date, most of the traction has been achieved with comfort robots – furry pets that people can hold and care for – and that’s great, but we know we can go further.”

Japanese companies were early out of the gate with life-like robotic pets to provide companionship to a massive aging generation. Paro, a therapeutic robot, with all the cuddliness of a baby seal, responds to touch, sound and eye contact in a way that can comfort elderly patients in hospitals. The more penguin-like LOVOT (short for love robot) coos when hugged, creating a bond with its human owner and, as it demands affection, a sense of purpose.

CINTHeA aims to get the technology to the next level, where robots move autonomously around places where people live and can provide social, cognitive and physical assessment and assistance.

Elder says that when integrated with recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI), robots can contribute in many ways, helping to socially engage isolated seniors, and assess pain, emotional state and cognitive health. They may also help assess gait, posture and risk of a fall. Together, these contributions can help extend the health span of older adults and help health-care workers in assisted living and long-term care facilities.

“What we’ll see in the next 10 years is an expansion to more general capabilities for robots that will really make a difference to both older adults and staff,” he says.

“The possibilities are endless.” 

The project has set its sights high. Its mission is to reshape the future of aging with dignity, autonomy and inclusion by creating new AI and robotics technologies to help assess, assist and engage older adults and improve their quality of life. Success will rely on a wide diversity of expertise. Neuroscientists are working with engineers, social scientists and experts in elder care, and the project is also relying on the experiences of older adults, their families and caregivers.

It is publicly funded with a $1.5-million Canada First Research Excellence Fund grant through the massive, 91��ɫ-led Connected Minds program that seeks to understand the opportunities and risks to society associated with advancing technology. It is also tied to a $3-million infrastructure application proposal made to the Canada Foundation for Innovation.

Partners who specialize in geriatric residential living, research and innovation, such as Baycrest Health Sciences, the Unionville Home Society, Seasons Retirement Communities and Oasis Aging Well, as well as technology companies like CrossWing, GlobalDWS and Esri Canada will help translate the research into practical solutions.

Mobility has long been recognized as a cornerstone of healthy aging. Without it, people can become isolated from social and physical activities, and unable to access resources in the community.

As part of CINTHeA, Distinguished Research Professor Shayna Rosenbaum, 91��ɫ Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Health and associate director of the Centre for Integrative and Applied Neuroscience, is focused on how mobility robotics can help older adults move around.

“We can train the robot to navigate and to make errors the way a human would, so that the robot would be better able to reorient a person who appears lost,” says Rosenbaum, vice-director of Connected Minds. She is researching what strategies older adults use in real-life situations to compensate when neurological conditions affect how they get around. The findings will play a role in how assistive robots are programmed to assess how elderly people navigate when they move into new health-care environments and make it easier to adapt, for example.

Rosenbaum has been interested in navigation and how it changes in aging adults since watching her four grandparents grow older – all immigrants to Canada, having to navigate new environments without drivers’ licenses. “None of my grandparents drove,” she says. “That was very striking to me. Their world was relatively small, at least when it came to space. It piqued my interest in how this type of diminished experience might affect brain function.”

“It became a critical question, ‘how can we deliver better later life care?’”

Elder, who is also 91��ɫ Research Chair in Human and Computer Vision, comes at it from a different perspective. His research has been focused on understanding human perception and building machine vision systems that are inspired by that understanding. “The framework is to try to build AI systems that are more human, and able to do human-like things. So, progressing from factory floor kind of automation to systems that can work in less controlled and more complex environments.”

Elder and Rosenbaum watched the pandemic’s devastating effect on older Canadians, especially those living in institutions, and want to leverage the spotlight COVID provided to do better.

“It became a critical question, ‘how can we deliver better later life care?’ And this seems like this is really a huge opportunity,” Elder says. “Not to replace human care, but to try to help these frontline staff who are really doing the angels’ work.”

Like anyone watching the increasing reliance on AI and its uncertain future, both Elder and Rosenbaum have an eye on the associated risks.

“These technologies can be incredibly useful in helping people lead independent lives longer, but at the same time, they might introduce levels of risk to privacy and security that we might not even anticipate. We have to look at how to mitigate risk while enhancing the benefits,” says Rosenbaum.

Another concern is that overuse of robotics can diminish the person’s ability to maintain flexible thinking.

“Eventually, it might lead to further decline,” she says. “We have to try to assess risk in ways that allow us to move forward, but do so cautiously.”

Elder agrees that there has to be a balance. “The goal is to maintain maximal human agency and only provide assistance when it’s required.”

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It felt like a near miss. Had I been on a later flight, I would have been caught up in the aftermath of airport operations disruptions and passenger confusion with hundreds of cancellations and delays over several days.

91��ɫ experts in disaster and emergency management, artificial intelligence (AI) and software engineering say these kinds of crises require highly complicated and detailed responses involving multiple people and systems, from first responders and airport operations to government agencies, working seamlessly together. In a world where AI is bursting into the mainstream, two 91��ɫ professors believe the effect of AI on airports to help better choreograph the many pieces during a crisis could have a huge impact.

Research and Training on the Future of Airports is the newest project of y, director of CIFAL 91��ɫ and executive director of at 91��ɫ, and , associate director of CIFAL 91��ɫ. As part of the project, they will research and develop AI solutions for airports to help minimize risk and better coordinate response and recovery operations to ensure timely medical intervention, evacuation and safety in a crisis.

“During a disruption, there is the potential for AI to allocate staff, reroute baggage flows, or simulate different recovery scenarios to help airports respond and recover quickly and in a coordinated way,” says Nayebi.

The project positions CIFAL 91��ɫ as a global leader in how airports prepare for these challenges together with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research’s Airports and Economic Development Global Training Programme, with AI as an important piece.

“AI can help minimize the risks, help airports prepare for emergencies, respond better to emergencies, and recover or continue their operations after the emergencies."

The professors believe AI can have a much deeper role in operations. “There are possibilities for predicting potential hazards, impacts on airport operations using AI analytics, for example, considering external factors like weather conditions,” says Asgary. He is part of 91��ɫ’s undergraduate and graduate in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies and Faculty of Graduate Studies – the only graduate program of its kind in Ontario and one of only two in Canada.

“AI can help minimize the risks, help airports prepare for emergencies, respond better to emergencies, and recover or continue their operations after the emergencies. In our view, because airports have robust data collection for many of their functions, they are ideal when it comes to implementing AI analytics to help with solutions.”

Although last winter the emergency was a plane crash, it could have been a hurricane, flood, earthquake, tornado or fire. A crisis could also include a strike by airline workers or a cyber attack. These types of internal, external and regional crises can affect airport operations as well as the larger community. The capabilities of AI in airport operations goes far beyond that of a chatbot for communicating with passengers or fixing baggage snags.

“The research teams have demonstrated that the true pain points lie deeper in the coordination of systems and actors that make an airport run. A digital interface may reassure passengers, but without integrated operations behind it, the experience remains broken. The research is instead focusing on AI for coordination of systems to connect airlines, ground handlers, security and local authorities to act faster and smarter together,” says Nayebi of 91��ɫ’s Lassonde School of Engineering.

“Airports today are more than transit hubs, they are miniature cities with complex infrastructures, vast workforces, massive temporary users and immense economic influence. They are critical infrastructures that must continue to function in the face of pandemics, extreme weather, system disruptions and large-scale events such as the FIFA World Cup.”

AI can be used to predict and mitigate weather disruptions to flights and help coordinate the movement of planes and people inside and outside, as well as identify how resources will be impacted and what will be needed.

Using internal data as well as external emergency preparedness data, AI models and simulations can help anticipate and alleviate the impact on airports and passengers when incidents happen by ensuring airports can respond better during a crisis. This could mean evacuating the airport, deploying fire, police and other emergency crews, crowd management or acting as a hub for aid distribution.

“Using tools such as cameras with AI-based computer vision, airports can now detect a lot of potential hazards on the runway, such as birds, cracks, snow and animals, to prevent a crash. These tools, for example, can detect or identify a wrong person coming into the terminal or understand how passengers will react to a particular incident, like a fire,” says Asgary. “In risk and emergency response, there’s a whole lot AI can do.”

GenAI tools can be used to inform passengers during normal operations, but also in emergencies. With airports being a multicultural and multi-language hub, that information could be translated into each passenger’s first language and sent to their cell phone. “You can’t expect people to respond or react if the emergency is only broadcast in one language,” says Asgary.

“The goal,” says Nayebi, “is to equip airports over the next two to three years with AI-enabled resilience strategies to improve reliability, coordination and ultimately public trust in these vital infrastructures.”

These could include evidence-based guidance for governments and airport authorities, AI systems that anticipate disruptions and optimize airport-wide responses, tools that use data and simulation to support crisis decision-making, and training programs to help decision-makers adopt these tools responsibly and effectively.

Safer, smarter, more resilient airports are possible, says Nayebi. “For governments, the message is clear: supporting innovation in airports is not just about better travel, it is about building national resilience, economic opportunity and public trust.”

CROWD CONTROL

Countless people have died the world over in crowd crush incidents, whether at political rallies, sporting events or concerts, including in Canada, Germany, India, the United States and Ghana.

Concert goers this summer at the Rogers Stadium in Toronto got first-hand experience in the messiness and potential danger of crowds, with some commenting after the first couple of events about the need for better planning, particularly as people were leaving the busy venue. As Toronto and Vancouver prepare to host several FIFA World Cup matches in 2026, averting disaster through proper crowd management is top of mind for Asgary and Nayebi, whose work also includes crowd disaster mapping and simulation.

“Crowd management at large gatherings has become a major focus at various levels,” says Asgary. “While large sports events are common in major Canadian cities, the crowd typical of the World Cup is unfamiliar to crowd managers in Canada.”

“Crowd management is no longer just about counting people; it’s about understanding patterns, predicting risks and adapting in real time."

Nayebi and Asgary say that new and emerging technologies can not only help prepare for crowd management in advance but also provide support during events. They are now integrating these tools with AI and drone technologies to enhance crowd emergency management.

“We tested some of these integration efforts in summer 2025 during the Canada Day event in Vaughan, where our AI and drone-based crowd monitoring team was embedded within the Emergency Management team,” says Asgary. “Our ability to dynamically count and measure crowd behaviour in time and space is a crucial part of crowd management. Using a combination of drone, AI, virtual reality, digital twin and simulation tools, crowd management can be significantly improved.”

With these new technologies, a virtual representation of a concert or sporting event can be created, allowing for a more in-depth view of how to improve crowd management at specific venues.

“Crowd management is no longer just about counting people; it’s about understanding patterns, predicting risks and adapting in real time. By integrating machine learning and simulation with affordable technologies like drones and digital twins, we can design software-driven systems that help prevent tragedies before they unfold,” says Nayebi.

With a recent Global Research Excellence Seed Fund grant from 91��ɫ International, Asgary and Nayebi will also focus on helping multiple African countries by using more affordable technologies like drones and AI for crowd monitoring. In collaboration with Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana and the Africa Council of the International Association of Emergency Managers, the team hopes to develop a lasting partnership focused on research, training and knowledge exchange to reduce the occurrence and impact of crowd disasters.

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Professor Lora Appel is producing 360-degree experiences that simulate environments that make people anxious, then leveraging VR to immerse them in those situations in a controlled way, allowing the person to confront and overcome their fears in a safe space.

The scene could be a party, a busy shopping mall, a bus or the subway where someone with epilepsy might worry they will lose control if they have a seizure. It could be a podium in a packed lecture hall where an anxious student is expected to present a paper.

“If something causes anxiety in an individual, exposing them to this scenario gradually allows them to habituate and get used to it so that they can manage their emotions and deal with the situation,” says Appel of 91��ɫ’s School of Health Policy & Management, Faculty of Health.

“More and more, we’re considering health to be the ability to manage with your current situation. You might have cancer or you might be bipolar, but if you are able to manage your condition well, you can describe yourself as healthy – that’s the best-case scenario.”

With her team at 91��ɫ’s PrescribingVRx lab, Appel piloted a VR exposure therapy program for people with epilepsy and completed a randomized controlled trial at Toronto Western Hospital. The same platform is now being provided to people with dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, experiencing anxiety, apathy and aggression. For older adults with mental health issues, Appel is leading a University Health Network team to create soothing or engaging experiences patients can access through VR to improve their well-being.

The benefits for VR therapy are substantial and their potential applications enormous, says Appel.

VR can also be a valuable addition to clinical therapy and serve as a drug-free alternative treatment. It has the potential to be self-administered, a game changer in a health-care environment where people with mental health issues can wait months or years to see a therapist. VR can recreate anxiety-producing worlds for people with post-traumatic stress disorder that would be unsafe for them to return to. For example, rescue missions led by firefighters and first responders, and conflict zones experienced by soldiers.

If the anxiety can be controlled, says Appel, a world of new possibilities opens up for people who often avoid situations that are fear-inducing for them. Otherwise, they can become isolated from life, sometimes missing out on job and life experiences that would be rewarding.

Appel says artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to combine with VR to generate customized exposure therapy.

“As AI advances and VR headsets become more affordable, I can imagine a world where the technology would create customized videos for people to upload from their personal library, put on their headsets and use them for self-therapy,” says Appel.

91��ɫ’s anxiety research is supported by Beneva, a Canadian mutual insurance company focused on anxiety prevention.

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These are the sorts of questions that tickle the mind of 91��ɫ PhD Candidate Hana Holubec in the Science & Technology Studies program in the Faculty of Graduate Studies.

“That’s my fascination. How do you take something so absolutely dynamic and complex and nuanced, and render it technological, which operates on binaries that require categorizations and taxonomies. It’s this moving target that changes across time and culture. One of my favorite things about laughter is that it defies classification,” says Holubec.

A trainee at the 91��ɫ-led Connected Minds, which explores human-technology interactions and their societal impacts, Holubec’s research looks into the development of AI algorithms to imitate humour and laughter in social robots. She does this work under the supervision of Glendon Campus Associate Professor of the Department of Global Communications and Cultures, director of the .

“Laughter can engender social cohesion, but what type of laughter is being prioritized in AI or social robotic development and what types of laughter are being ignored or erased? That’s my big interest."

“There are aspects of humour that are relatively easy to render technologically. Joke generation has a computational quality and can be quite formulaic, especially wordplay or knock-knock jokes.” But that is only one aspect of humour.

One of the major focuses of social robotics research is programming humour beyond puns and basic jokes, and mimicking human laughter, body movements and facial expressions.

“Social robotics and communicative AI research with the use of laughter is intended to make the user feel like they are interacting in a natural way, in a very human-like way,” says Holubec, who is also a comedy writer and an arts-based instructor within the disability community.

There are ethical and moral concerns. As with any AI algorithms, inequities or harmful class, gender and racial stereotypes are at risk of being propagated in this fast-growing field.

Holubec’s most recent research – Laboratory Laugh: the production of laughter in the ERICA project – studies how researchers in Japan are incorporating AI and humour in their android robot Erica, which currently titters demurely. But who decides how Erica, or any other social robot, laughs and at what?

“Laughter can engender social cohesion, but what type of laughter is being prioritized in AI or social robotic development and what types of laughter are being ignored or erased? That’s my big interest,” says Holubec.

“Within my project at Connected Minds, what I really want to work on is developing a critical humour and laughter database, which anyone who is working on the development of communicative AI and social robotics could access.”

Currently, programmers and developers are drawing from neuroscience, psychology and linguistics, but not feminist and historical methodologies, literature and critical race theory, which Holubec says is an issue. “There’s a very rich breadth of information within those disciplines on humour and laughter that could help mitigate the socio-cultural effects that come with the computational flattening of laughter into AI and robotics.”

Although not the primary focus of her research, an additional concern is the potential for harm. “If the robot laughed a really big, mirthful laugh when a user was telling a disappointing story, this could have a detrimental effect. Essentially, they would feel laughed at.”

And that is no laughing matter.

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While that might not seem like a big deal when talking about writing assistance or entertainment, such as the use of GenAI for a building collapse in a Netflix sci-fi series, AI is rapidly becoming integrated into some of the country’s most critical systems – health care, power grids, nuclear power and transportation – and hackers are taking note. AI-enabled cyber threats are capitalizing on vulnerabilities in AI algorithms.

As director of the Behaviour-Centric Cybersecurity Centre (BCCC) at 91��ɫ, Associate Professor , Canada Research Chair in Cybersecurity, is developing vulnerability detection technology to protect network systems against cyberattacks.

“By linking scientific innovation, creative outreach and international collaboration, we ensure advances in AI-driven cybersecurity contribute to a safer, more informed and globally connected digital society.”

“We are using artificial intelligence both to secure critical technologies and to ensure AI itself remains trustworthy. Our AI-powered models are applied to connected and autonomous vehicles, smart devices, decentralized finance systems and the cloud, where they learn patterns of normal behaviour and flag anomalies before harm occurs,” says Lashkari of the School of Information Technology, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.

“This means detecting malicious signals that could compromise road safety, identifying data leaks from smart homes and detecting fraudulent blockchain transactions across large financial networks.”

Most people will interact with AI via large language models like ChatGPT and Google Gemini, and GenAI platforms, but these systems are increasingly vulnerable to adversarial attacks, data poisoning and malicious misuse.

“Our work develops methods to harden these models, improve their transparency and ensure they remain resilient when deployed in real-world settings. In this way, we are working on both sides of the challenge – using AI to protect people, while also protecting AI from manipulation.”

As a leading cyber threat intelligence centre, the BCCC team investigates innovative ways to secure digital infrastructure by detecting, analyzing and mitigating these threats through real-world challenges.

"We are using artificial intelligence both to secure critical technologies and to ensure AI itself remains trustworthy."

The work is shared in accessible and innovative ways through the Understanding Cybersecurity Series, a global knowledge mobilization program, through books, blogs, open datasets, analytics platforms, workshops and even the international Cybersecurity Cartoon Award. The initiatives are strengthened through national and international collaborations, including with the National Cybersecurity Consortium, research partnerships with Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, academic and industry partners in the United States and ongoing work with research teams in Europe, including Ireland, Germany and Italy.

“By linking scientific innovation, creative outreach and international collaboration, we ensure advances in AI-driven cybersecurity contribute to a safer, more informed and globally connected digital society,” says Lashkari.

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AI can analyze huge, data-rich medical images and enormous quantities of data much faster than a human, but also sometimes better, observing the tiniest of details or changes that doctors cannot see, but that could necessitate a different course of patient treatment. These AI tools can also provide outstandingly accurate predictive analyses.

When it comes to cancer and liver transplant patients, it could mean the difference between a poor outcome and a higher survival rate. 91��ɫ researchers of the Lassonde School of Engineering and Divya Sharma of the Faculty of Science are developing AI tools for specific tasks that in some cases give clinicians information they otherwise would not have, with real-world implications for patients.

An associate professor, Sadeghi-Naini is developing AI tools coupled with imaging for brain, ovarian and breast cancers to characterize, monitor and predict different biological processes.

“We can scan these patients ahead of time using state-of-the-art ultrasound..."

He is the principal investigator of a new research project in collaboration with Women’s College Hospital with funding from the New Frontiers in Research Fund to develop a cost-effective, accessible AI platform to analyze the digital pathology images of ovarian cancer. The goal is to determine whether the patient has a genetic condition called homologous recombination deficiency without performing expensive genomic testing.

“It is an important factor in determining if the patient can benefit from available targeted therapies or not, but currently it requires genomic instability analysis to find out that is costly and not always accessible,” says Sadeghi-Naini, director of the Quantitative Imaging and Biomarkers Laboratory at 91��ɫ. That project is just beginning.

“I am also leading projects in collaboration with Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre to develop AI frameworks that analyze digital pathology images of routine biopsy samples to predict treatment outcomes for individual breast cancer patients before they go through chemotherapy, to predict their response to treatment. It shows very promising results.”

Innovation 91��ɫ and Sunnybrook, where Sadeghi-Naini is a cross-appointed scientist, are currently in partnership to commercialize a couple of those tools for use.

In about 30 per cent of cases, chemotherapy does not work to shrink tumours effectively, as is the case with some high-risk breast cancers, but currently this is often determined months later after the completion of chemotherapy. “We can scan these patients ahead of time using state-of-the-art ultrasound to acquire raw signal data that after signal processing will generate quantitative ultrasound parametric images.”

The tool can then analyze those images deeper, faster and in more detail, as well as predict patient response to chemo before or shortly after it starts. It is important information that would allow oncologists to choose different treatment options if a chemo regimen is predicted not to work, which could significantly alter the survival rate of those patients who do not respond well.

“Studies show that the response of patients to upfront chemotherapy is linked to survival. Good responders show significantly better survival compared to poor responders,” says Sadeghi-Naini.

He is also working on an AI solution to a different problem, this time for brain cancer patients.

Following stereotactic radiotherapy for brain tumours, there is an up to 25 per cent chance a patient will experience radiation necrosis, a complication that can occur months to years later and is difficult for doctors to discern from brain tumour recurrence or progression.

“The problem here is that on the standard anatomical imaging, they appear very similar to each other,” he says. “That’s a challenge because radiation necrosis and tumour progression are two quite different things with different treatment approaches.”

In a recent study involving more than 90 patients with 230 brain tumours, Sadeghi-Naini and the team developed an AI platform that can analyze images of the brain using a new advanced MRI technique. Manually analyzing tumours on this multi-channel MRI is complicated, but with AI-guided methods it is much easier to distinguish between radiation necrosis, tumour progression or tumour recurrence.

“Our AI tools will not only help to predict but also improve long-term health outcomes for transplant patients by reducing disparities.”

He also leads development of an AI system to streamline analysis of repeated MRI scans for each brain cancer patient, a faster process that can better monitor and categorize tumour changes from one scan to another. In addition, he is working on an AI platform that can analyze early imaging of brain tumours and detect features invisible to the human eye, but that can provide information on the long-term outcome of the tumour, which may require a change in treatment.

“These are all cost-effective AI decision support tools for oncologists that inform personalized treatments and streamline their daily workflow, ultimately contributing to better patient care,” says Sadeghi-Naini. His research has garnered funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the National Research Council of Canada, the Terry Fox Foundation and others.

Sadeghi-Naini does not think AI can replace oncologists or radiologists, but says, “it can provide valuable complementary information, improve accessibility to precision therapeutics, save time and resources, and streamline and triage more complicated cases for expert review,” all providing added benefits to patients.

Sharma, an assistant professor and co-principal investigator on two recent CIHR project grants worth close to $3 million, is creating more equitable access to liver transplants through a national framework and developing a multimodal AI tool to improve success rates following liver transplantation.

The goal of the five-year national framework project with the University Health Network (UHN) and others is to understand the roadblocks to preventing fair access for all patients on the liver transplant waitlist, create an ethical, data-driven AI model framework to ensure equal access to donor organs going forward, and improve post-transplant outcomes.

“As part of developing an equitable AI-driven framework, we will include diverse voices in its development process. We will also analyze data on liver disease and transplants for all patients, regardless of race, socioeconomic status, sex and gender, to identify and address inequalities,” says Sharma, who leads 91��ɫ’s IMPACT-AI lab and is a scientist at UHN.

“Our AI tools will not only help to predict but also improve long-term health outcomes for transplant patients by reducing disparities.”

Some three million Canadians from all sectors of society are affected by liver disease. Although transplants can be life saving for those with end-stage liver disease, access is not equal and about 5,000 patients die from end-stage liver disease annually.

“Building trust and understanding around the new AI technology is an important piece of our project. By talking with patients, doctors and technology experts about what our AI model will do and how it can improve the process and the outcome, it can help ensure the adoption and clinical success of the framework,” says Sharma, who earned a 2025 Petro-Canada Emerging Innovator Award and a New Frontiers in Research Fund grant to develop genomic data-driven generative AI for pancreatic cancer.

“Ensuring the framework model is ethical from the beginning is key in reversing inequities to liver transplants some patients currently experience across Canada.”

"We will also analyze data on liver disease and transplants for all patients, regardless of race, socioeconomic status, sex and gender, to identify and address inequalities."

However, once a patient receives a liver transplant there is a high potential for serious complications. Up to 25 per cent of recipients will develop graft fibrosis or scarring from immunosuppressant medications or through organ rejection. Sharma’s second five-year project with UHN hopes to address this by developing a multimodal AI tool to predict patients at high risk of graft scarring.

“Our AI tools will not only help to predict but also improve long-term health outcomes for transplant patients by reducing disparities.”

Sharma says they previously used clinical and laboratory data from about 2,000 transplant recipients to develop a mathematical model to diagnose the condition. They will now expand the model’s capabilities using pathology and ultrasound imaging data so that it can also predict the future risk of scarring. The hope is it will lead to earlier diagnosis, and the development of better prevention and treatment strategies to improve outcomes.

The work of both projects are designed to have clinical benefits in hospitals and transplant centres that will result in improved and more equitable patient care. Sharma is also co-first author on a recent paper in the journal , which highlights the team’s work with GraftIQ, a neural network model designed to be a non-invasive diagnostic tool for liver graft injury.

These are some of the ways 91��ɫ researchers are capitalizing on the ability of well-designed, ethical and safe AI tools to provide real health benefits to patients, now and into the future.

The post Tools of the trade appeared first on Ascend Magazine.

It’s been over a year since President and Vice-Chancellor Rhonda Lenton and Vice-President Research and Innovation Amir Asif  had received $105.7 million from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF), the “largest single federal grant ever awarded to 91��ɫ.”

The cutting-edge program aims to bring together experts across eight 91��ɫ Faculties and three Queen’s Faculties to examine the ways in which technology is transforming society – dubbed the “techno-social collective” – and will work to balance both the potential risks and benefits for humanity. Some of the program’s proposed projects include explorations into a more inclusive metaverse, virtual reality and community organizing, neurotechnologies for healthy aging, Indigenous data sovereignty and how human brain function changes when people interact with artificial intelligence (AI) versus each other.

Since the funding announcements in early 2023, Connected Minds – the biggest  in the University’s history – has been busy.

“As founding scientific director, it’s incredibly gratifying see the progress we have made this first year, thanks to the very hard work of our leadership team, dedicated staff and the support of our board of directors,” says Doug Crawford, who is also a Distinguished Research Professor and Canada Research Chair in visuomotor neuroscience.

In addition to seed grants and PhD awards given out, over the past 12 months, Connected Minds has expanded its roster of experts by onboarding 14 research-enhanced hires across 91��ɫ and institutional partner Queen’s University.

The new additions are part of the program’s efforts to attract and retain the best talent, as well as a fulfillment of its commitment to add 35 strategic faculty hires, research Chairs or equivalent levels of support to its interdisciplinary research ecosystem. The new Connected Minds members will benefit from support that includes $100,000 in startup research funding, salary top-up and/or teaching release, and a research allowance of $25,000 per year.

Connected Minds’ progress was also successfully commended by the Tri-agency Institutional Programs Secretariat – which administers the Canada First Research Excellence Fund – during a site visit showcasing the various research units affiliated with the program, and the progress its made.

To further demonstrate the program’s – and 91��ɫ’s – leadership in socially responsible technology, Connected Minds has also been organizing events, like the Introductory Meeting on Law and Neuroscience in Canada, which united experts from Canada and the United States for in-depth discussions on socially responsible research at the intersection of law and neuroscience at the renowned Monk School of Global Affairs in Toronto.

Connect Minds also hosted an event marking the culmination of its inaugural year: the Connected Minds Annual Research Retreat in February 2024. The retreat united members across diverse disciplines – including arts, science, health, law and more – to collectively shape the future of socially responsible technology. The goal was to help provide networking opportunities for members to get to know each other better and form the teams that will apply to grants and achieve the program’s long-term goals. It aimed to do so through information sessions, active participation in shaping Connected Minds’ Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) action plan, and highlighting research-enhanced hires, who delivered big-idea talks during the retreat.

The retreat also marked another notable milestone: a transition in leadership. Crawford will be succeeded by Professor Pina D’Agostino, founder and former director of IP Osgoode and co-director of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence & Society, where her expertise is frequently sought by government bodies to address the evolving intersection of AI and the law. Now, it will be applied to leading Connected Minds into what will promise to be another year of accomplishments.

“I am thrilled to be taking the program to the next level by building on the strong foundation we now have and engaging with all of our incredible partners and communities to work towards our goals of a healthy and just society,” says D’Agostino, looking ahead to how Connected Minds will continue to thrive and make contributions to interdisciplinary research.

The post Connected Minds: one year later appeared first on Ascend Magazine.

A considerable feat, given the fact that satellites transmit signals from more than 20,000 kilometres away in space and smartphone reception can be quite weak (a phone’s antenna costs less than a dollar to manufacture).

“Because these satellites are so high in orbit and a consumer product like a smartphone uses low-grade and low-cost hardware, the great engineering challenge is to find ways to make everyday technology more precise,” explains Sunil Bisnath, a professor of geomatics engineering, whose research team also includes PhD students Yi Ding and Jiahuan Hu.

For the trio, that meant “squeezing” as much information from the satellite data as possible, and as much as a smartphone’s computing processor could handle.  

“Professional-grade GPS equipment that can measure millimetre distances costs tens of thousands of dollars. Smartphones are not designed to function at such a high level,” said Bisnath. “Our positioning technique to fill in missing data gaps was able to significantly improve the accuracy and quality of the measurements.”

Their findings, published this year in , detail their method, which involved manipulating specific types of satellite data called pseudorange and carrier-phase measurements, multiplying the speed of light by the time these signals have taken to travel from the satellites to the smartphone receiver.

The researchers used 91��ɫ’s Keele Campus as a living lab to test their work, mounting a GPS-enabled smartphone on a car dashboard and driving on various roads at and around the University and on 400-series highways.

Currently, Bisnath and his team continue to refine their technique, working to enhance its precision even further, while exploring potential partnership interest from industry.

This latest innovation builds on more than 30 years of research by Bisnath, who began studying GPS in the early 1990s upon the suggestion of one of his professors.

“I didn’t know what GPS was at the time, but now it’s become so pervasive in our daily lives,” said Bisnath. “From getting your dinner delivered on an app to following package deliveries online to conducting transactions with your bank card, GPS plays an integral role in how modern society works.

“So what I thought was a one-time project turned out to be an entire career.”

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Recently, the clinic partnered with the Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation (VPRI) to offer streamlined services and a more efficient pathway for faculty to bring their product or service to market.  

This new partnership enhances the clinic’s ongoing contributions to the business development of dozens of startups.  

Spotlighted below are three ventures that credit the clinic for helping them reach new levels of success. 

NURO 

Founded in 2017,  is a health-care technology company that uses neurotechnology to create a form of communication for incapacitated patients who suffer from conditions such as stroke, trauma and neurodegenerative diseases.  

NURO’s second patented technology, The PAD, used for the detection and continuous monitoring of Alzheimer’s disease.

When the startup was first established, founder and CEO Francois Gand was referred to the IP Innovation Clinic to protect his intellectual property.  

“This collaboration empowered us to assess and prioritize crucial aspects of our work with the aid of talented scholars, allowing for a much more intricate and in-depth organization of our IP portfolio,” says Gand.  

The clinic provided pro bono patent searching that helped NURO assess the relevant patent landscape related to its technologies and helped the company begin the patent application process, resulting in NURO securing a patent and its IP more broadly.  

Skygauge Robotics 

Skygauge Robotics was founded by a trio of then-students, now 91��ɫ alumni, including two who were featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list: Nikita Illiushkin (BBA ’16) and Linar Ismagilov (BA ’18). Their company uses drones to create a workforce in the sky.  

The drones do physical work for remote inspection and maintenance and can be used for painting, pressure washing, cleaning and even ultrasonic testing, which is used when inspecting large infrastructure like ships, bridges and piping.  

The IP Innovation Clinic helped Skygauge Robotics secure their IP, which later contributed to them obtaining $3.3 million in funding led by BDC’s Industrial Innovation Venture Fund.  

“What really set us apart from other companies competing for funding was the fact that we had our technology patented,” says Illiushkin. “We credit the IP Innovation Clinic for their guidance and support in the IP process and the expertise of the supervising legal team who continue to advise us today.” 

Indigenous Friends Association 

The Indigenous-led, not-for-profit organization created by then-student, now 91��ɫ alumnus Alejandro  Mayoral-Baños (PhD ’21) first began as an app to connect and support Indigenous youth. Mayoral-Baños turned to the IP Innovation Clinic to understand how to best protect his IP, develop essential contracts and become incorporated.  

The clinic was instrumental in helping evolve the app into other projects and gain access to more funding, notably a $210,000 grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation.  

“Working with the clinic was a transformative journey in turning vision into reality,” says Mayoral-Baños. “It enabled me to critically navigate the complexities of IP, leading to the creation of real-life solutions that have propelled the Indigenous Friends Association forward.” 

The  now provides educational programs for Indigenous youth looking to enter the technology sector across the globe. 

The IP Innovation Clinic continues to offer tailored support for inventors and entrepreneurs looking to protect and commercialize their ideas.  

Backed by the expertise of the clinic and VPRI teams, these services give inventors and entrepreneurs the peace of mind that their intellectual property is protected. Clients can simplify a complicated process, avoid errors that can delay their journey to market, avoid costly lawyer or patent agent fees, and save valuable time.  

Services offered by the clinic can include: 

• guidance on how to identify and protect assets, best practices and information surrounding freedom to operate; 
• patent searches and prior art searches;  
• trademark searches; 
• IP Agreement review; and 
• IP Application drafting and review. 

Those looking to bring their product or service to market or protect their idea can schedule free one-on-one consultations with the clinic by emailing ipinnovationclinic@osgoode.yorku.ca.

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