Patricia Thaine is a Computer Science PhD Candidate at the University of Toronto and a Vector Institute alumna doing research on privacy-preserving natural language processing, with a focus on applied cryptography. She also does research on computational methods for lost language decipherment. Patricia is a recipient of the NSERC Postgraduate Scholarship, the RBC Graduate Fellowship, the Beatrice “Trixie” Worsley Graduate Scholarship in Computer Science, and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship. She has eight years of research and software development experience, including at the McGill Language Development Lab, the University of Toronto’s Computational Linguistics Lab, the University of Toronto’s Department of Linguistics, and the Public Health Agency of Canada.

Pieter Luitjens has a Bachelor of Science in Physics and Mathematics and a Bachelor of Engineering from the University of Western Australia, as well as a Masters from the University of Toronto. He worked on software for Mercedes-Benz and developed the first deep learning algorithms for traffic sign recognition deployed in cars made by one of the most prestigious car manufacturers in the world. He has over 10 years of engineering experience, with code deployed in multi-billion dollar industrial projects. Pieter specializes in ML edge deployment & model optimization for resource-constrained environments.