An amazing trip from Nice to Vancouver that allowed HPC-AI students to discover the north American AI & HPC ecosystem and exchange with business and academic experts.

Vancouver was the best choice for us as a destination. Besides being an amazing city, it hosted the notorious AAAI conference during this time. Indeed, Canada is considered the first country to have a national AI strategy. Over 30 years development of AI and AI + X with the early pioneers like Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio or Richard Sutton, the country has built a data-driven research ecosystem fostering the business creation with start-ups implementing AI in many fields such as fintech, life sciences, robotics and art.

During this full week visit we met great people from academia, government and companies. We visited labs at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Simon Frazer University (SFU), research infrastructure centers such as ARC, Research Computing facilities, DataHub and companies like Uber AI.

We had the chance to learn more about ComputeCanada program bringing together the largest Canadian supercomputers, the large scale HPC simulations carried out by scientists from different fields in the labs of UBC and SFU. The AI, in particular ML/DL methods, is also combined with HPC as a data-driven modeling  approach to speed-up physical-based simulations, establish data-driven closures or calibrate parameters. We were lucky enough to attend great seminars on AI core and  applications of AI: robotics, life sciences, creative music and movement to name a few.

Many thanks to all the wonderful people who hosted us and facilitated the all visits we made during our fantastic stay in Vancouver.