The UPEI Black Student Association and the Black Cultural Society of PEI have coordinated a raising of the Pan-African flag at the flag plaza between Kelley Memorial Building and the W.A. Murphy Student Centre on Friday, February 2, at 2:00 pm. All are welcome!

The Faculty of Science Graduate Studies Committee invites the campus community to the next presentation of the Environmental Sciences & Human Biology seminar series on Friday, February 2, 2024, at 12:30 pm in the Duffy Science Centre, Room 204. 

Dr. Xiuquan Wang, School of Climate Change and Adaptation, will present “Building climate resilience for Prince Edward Island.”

All are welcome.

The 2024-2025 MSSU Trainee Support Program is now accepting applications. This funding opportunity is open to trainees engaged in patient-oriented health research and entering or enrolled in a master’s, doctoral, or post-doctoral fellow program at universities in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island.

Funding amounts and duration:

Non-renewable awards will be available in the following amounts:

• Master’s level – $10,000 for 1 year
• Doctoral level – $15,000/year for 2 years
• Post-doctoral level – $20,000/year for 2 years

Deadline to apply: March 22, 2024, at 2 pm AT

Information session: February 22, 2024, at 3 pm AT

Join the information session about the requirements and process: https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07ek6x8aj0ff533bed&oseq=&c=&ch=  

In the meantime, visit the MSSU website for a program overview with more details, including links to the online application forms.

If you have any questions or would like to register for the information session, please email  Sharon.Skaling@nshealth.ca.

Following her award-winning film Ice Walk, Abegweit's Eliza Knockwood is back with another cinematic experience. In her docuseries Gina' matimg: A Time For Learning, viewers will follow four youths from Epekwitk who are tasked with seeking knowledge that will assist them in a 24-hour survival challenge. What will the elders and allies teach them, and will it be enough to survive the challenge? Who will make it to the end?

The UPEI Department of Music is pleased to present the 2024 Dr. Frances Gray Music Performance Competition, featuring five finalists selected in a preliminary round:

Devyn Collette, alto saxophone
Dre Knowles, piano
Timothy Luk, piano
Janey-Lynn Perrier, soprano
Jacob Reddin, trombone

The annual Dr. Frances Gray Performance Competition is a public recital that showcases five of the UPEI Music Department’s outstanding emerging artists. The top awards include a cash prize, and will be chosen by an adjudication panel consisting of distinguished members of PEI's musical community. We gratefully thank this year's adjudicators – Lindsay Connolly, Mark Parsons, and Heather Taves.

This event will take place on February 2 at 7:30 pm on the SDU Stage, Dr, Steel Recital Hall. Admission is by donation at the door (suggested: $20 adults, $10 students).

The Robertson Library invites the campus community to two candidate presentations for the permanent-track position of One Health & Scholarly Communications Librarian. 

Candidate: Keri McCaffrey, MLIS

Title: What can the Library do to support scholarly communications at a university like UPEI?

When: Monday, February 5, 2024, 10:45 AM

Where: AVC 287N

Keri earned her Master of Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University. She is currently a Legislative Research Analyst with the Government of Prince Edward Island.

Candidate: Dan Phillips, MI, MREM

Title: What can the Library do to support scholarly communications at a university like UPEI?

When: Monday, March 4, 2024, 2:45 PM

Where: AVC 286

Dan Phillips earned his ALA-accredited Master of Information and Master of Resource and Environmental Management from Dalhousie University. He is currently a Clinical Librarian with the Saskatchewan Health Authority. 

Learn the basics of zine-making from Ch'town Zine Fest organizers Jordan Beaulieu and Evan Furness at a workshop from 1:00 to 3:00 pm on February 16. The workshop will outline a brief history of zines, their uses in the classroom, and different approaches to making them, including a hands-on component in which participants will be provided materials and instructions to make their own zines.

Limited seats are available.

Register here: https://forms.office.com/r/VcPDbfvEJU

If you have any questions, contact Kristy at kmckinney@upei.ca.

UPEI annually acknowledges individuals for their outstanding contributions to the success of the University. The awards are valued at $1,000 each and given in recognition of excellence of faculty, librarians, clinical veterinary professionals, clinical nursing instructors, sessional instructors, and staff.

Nominations are open and must be submitted to universityawards@upei.ca by the last Friday in February each year. This year, nominations close on Friday, February 23, 2024. 

For further details about the awards and the nomination process, please visit https://www.upei.ca/president/university-awards-of-excellence

There will be a basic biosafety training session on February 14, 2024, at 9:00 am in AVC 287N. Topics will include basic biosafety principles and how they are applied at the University of Prince Edward Island, as well as biosecurity training. This session is open to everyone, including graduate students.

To attend, you must pre-register by contacting Jacky Buell by the end of the day on February 7, 2024, by email (hse@upei.ca) or by phone (902-566-0901). Please provide your name, department, your supervisor’s name (if applicable), if you are a graduate student, email address, and phone number in your email or voice message.

NOTE: An online basic biosafety training refresher course is available for those who need it. 

The Faculty of Science Graduate Studies Committee invites the campus community to the next presentation of the Environmental Sciences & Human Biology seminar series on Friday, February 2, 2024, at 12:30 pm in the Duffy Science Centre, Room 204. 

Dr. Xiuquan Wang, School of Climate Change and Adaptation, will present “Building climate resilience for Prince Edward Island.”

All are welcome.

Are you looking for talented and motivated students or recent graduates to join your team? If so, don’t miss the chance to register as an employer for the 2024 UPEI Summer Job and Career Fair!

The Summer Job and Career Fair is a great opportunity for UPEI departments to connect with potential employees or interns. You will be able to meet with hundreds of students and alumni from various disciplines and backgrounds and promote your department’s employment opportunities.

The fair will take place on March 13 (storm date: March 14, same time) from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm at the W.A. Murphy Student Centre.

Space at the fair is limited and restricted to employers hiring for 2024 summer jobs or looking to hire May 2024 graduates or recent grads. Registration is FREE for all UPEI departments, but you need to register by February 26 at 4:00 pm to secure your spot.

To register, please fill out this 👉registration form.

Registration includes a folding table, two chairs, electricity (upon request), and wireless internet.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Community and Industry Outreach Coordinator Diego Figueroa at careerfair@upei.ca or at (902) 894-2817.

We hope to see you at the fair!

Following her award-winning film Ice Walk, Abegweit's Eliza Knockwood is back with another cinematic experience. In her docuseries Gina' matimg: A Time For Learning, viewers will follow four youths from Epekwitk who are tasked with seeking knowledge that will assist them in a 24-hour survival challenge. What will the elders and allies teach them, and will it be enough to survive the challenge? Who will make it to the end?

The UPEI Department of Music is pleased to present the 2024 Dr. Frances Gray Music Performance Competition, featuring five finalists selected in a preliminary round:

Devyn Collette, alto saxophone
Dre Knowles, piano
Timothy Luk, piano
Janey-Lynn Perrier, soprano
Jacob Reddin, trombone

The annual Dr. Frances Gray Performance Competition is a public recital that showcases five of the UPEI Music Department’s outstanding emerging artists. The top awards include a cash prize, and will be chosen by an adjudication panel consisting of distinguished members of PEI's musical community. We gratefully thank this year's adjudicators – Lindsay Connolly, Mark Parsons, and Heather Taves.

This event will take place on February 2 at 7:30 pm on the SDU Stage, Dr, Steel Recital Hall. Admission is by donation at the door (suggested: $20 adults, $10 students).

The Robertson Library invites the campus community to two candidate presentations for the permanent-track position of One Health & Scholarly Communications Librarian. 

Candidate: Keri McCaffrey, MLIS

Title: What can the Library do to support scholarly communications at a university like UPEI?

When: Monday, February 5, 2024, 10:45 AM

Where: AVC 287N

Keri earned her Master of Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University. She is currently a Legislative Research Analyst with the Government of Prince Edward Island.

Candidate: Dan Phillips, MI, MREM

Title: What can the Library do to support scholarly communications at a university like UPEI?

When: Monday, March 4, 2024, 2:45 PM

Where: AVC 286

Dan Phillips earned his ALA-accredited Master of Information and Master of Resource and Environmental Management from Dalhousie University. He is currently a Clinical Librarian with the Saskatchewan Health Authority. 

Colleagues at Brock University are pleased to co-host the virtual book launch for Perspectives on Indigenous Pedagogy in Education: Learning From One Another on February 6 from 12:00 - 1:30 EASTERN. This session will feature the authors and editors, Dr. Sheila Cote-Meek and Taima Moeke-Pickering, discussing the book as a whole. Non-Brock registrants are invited to register using this online form.  

Sign up for 12 Gentle Yoga classes on Saturdays starting on February 3 and ending on April 20. The classes will take place each Saturday from 10-10:45 am in Studio One, Chi Wan Young Sports Centre. The cost is only $45 for full-time students and $55 for UPEI staff and faculty (less than $5 a class!), and $115 for other participants. This class will start your day and set the tone to help you build strength, increase flexibility, and find focus. During this "all levels" class focusing on alignment, beginners will safely learn the basics while more experienced yogis can take postures to a deeper level. 

How to register for a specialty fitness class:

Go to recreation.upei.ca. UPEI students/faculty/staff: Click on the green UPEI LOGIN button and sign in with your UPEI email address and password. You will need to use your UPEI ID number. Community members can sign in using their email or username in the Community sign-in box.

Once you are signed in, click on the Fitness Programming ICON and then the Specialty Fitness Class icon. Select the class you would like to register for, sign the online waiver, and click on the checkout button, Add your credit card information for payment online, and click on the pay now button. When the proceed to checkout button pops up, click on checkout. You are now registered for the specialty class you selected.

A reminder that the deadline for the 2nd Semester (Winter) Award Cycle is Thursday, February 1, 2024, at 11:59 pm.

Applications are accepted electronically through the Scholarship and Award Application portal. Click the link provided or find the link listed on your MyUPEI account in the UPEI Forms section.

Be sure to submit your application to be considered for numerous scholarships and awards!

For more information, please contact scholarships@upei.ca. Best of luck to all who apply!

Discover sustainable fashion at Stitch&Switch, a hands-on workshop where participants learn clothing mending and upcycling techniques. The event promotes eco-conscious practices, fostering a community of like-minded individuals committed to mindful consumption and contributing to a greener wardrobe.

Join us on February 8 from 5:30-7:00 pm at UPEI’s Faculty of Sustainable Design Engineering, Room 205, for a transformative experience in sustainable style. Limited sewing supplies and pizza will be available!

Presented by the UPEI Engineering Society and the UPEI Environmental Collective.

This event is made possible by the Atlantic Council for International Cooperation (ACIC) and Global Affairs Canada through the International Development Week 2024: Youth Funding for Events.

Interested in learning about machine learning, natural language processing, or a second programming language like C? More training from ACENET for the winter semester is now open for registration. Sessions are online and free of charge.

If you have questions about upcoming training or ACENET services at UPEI, contact Kaitlin Newson.

Big Data Analysis with Spark

February 20 and 22, 2024, 1:00--4:00pm

Apache Spark is a user-friendly open-source platform for large-scale data processing, analytics, and parallel computing. Using Apache Spark and Python (PySpark), this workshop is aimed at analyzing data sets that are too large to be handled and processed by a single computer. With hands-on guided examples, the workshop covers the basics of Spark and Resilient Distributed Datasets (RDD) high-level architecture. The examples are mainly written in Python, hence the APIs covered are the ones available in PySpark, including Spark Core API (RDD API), Spark SQL, and Pandas on Spark. Participants learn how to import data, use functions to transform, reduce, and compile the data, and produce parallel algorithms that can run on Alliance clusters.

Prerequisites: ACENET Basics or equivalent, and how to write functions in Python.

The Why's and How's of Machine Learning

March 5, 2024, 1:00--3:00 pm

How can you make smart decisions about setup and execution of a machine learning project? How should you hire and support the staff working on the project? We hope to provide clear, thoughtful answers to these, and other common questions to get you thinking about whether machine learning is a technology that you and your company or group should think about investing in. We will discuss topics like data collection, the trade-offs involved in choosing a model, and what to expect from a successful project, as well as how to salvage useful by-products and skills when projects don’t go as planned.

This is a beginner session oriented to business owners and project managers curious to learn more about machine learning, or who may have an idea that involves machine learning and want to know where to begin.

C as a Second Language

Mar ch13, 2024, 10:00 am--4:00 pm

A great deal of high-performance computing software is written in C, but few universities offer courses in the language any more. If you have to work with "legacy code" written in C, adding features, porting to a new machine, or patching errors, or if you need to write user-defined functions for engineering packages such as Fluent, then this workshop is for you.

Prerequisites: Familiarity with some other programming language.

Machine Learning Basics

March 19, 2024, 1:00--3:00pm

Are you curious about machine learning, but not sure where to start, or if the discipline is for you? Join ACENET for a survey and explanation of several methods used to make machines learn. From simple models like Naive Bayes, Regression, and Decision Trees to an introduction to Support Vector Machines and Feed-Forward Neural Networks.

This talk is geared to be approachable to a novice audience, curious about machine learning, but not necessarily math or computer science majors. Methods and techniques will be explained using metaphors, examples, and clear language, without diving too deeply into the math and calculus on which these techniques are based.

C++ as a Second Language

March 27, 2024, 10:00 am--4:00 pm

A great deal of high-performance computing software is written in C++, but few universities offer courses in the language any more. If you have to work with "legacy code" written in C++, adding features, porting to a new machine, or patching errors, or if you need to extend packages like OpenFOAM which are written in C++, then this workshop is for you.

C++ was designed as an extension of the C language but has its own distinct idiom or style. This workshop assumes that you already know C to the level reached in the ACENET workshop, "C as a Second Language."

Prerequisites: "C as a Second Language" or prior experience with C programming.

Introduction to Neural Network Architecture

April 2, 2024, 1:00--4:00 pm

Have you wondered how machine learning models can suddenly do so many different types of work? How is it that machines can learn things like language, vision, and translation in such a short amount of time, and what has helped drive these kinds of improvements? The obvious answers--big data and big processors--are only part of the story, and to understand the full picture, we need to take a closer look at the models driving the AI revolution. This talk is aimed at people who are familiar with the basics of feed-forward neural networks, and will involve an in-depth explanation of how information is represented for machines to learn on, how machines can make sense of information, and the challenges presented.

Prerequisite: Familiarity with feed-forward neural networks.

Introduction to Natural Language Processing

April 16, 2024, 1:00--4:00 pm

How do computers understand language? It seems impossible that zeroes and ones could ever add up to words that humans can understand, but machine language has come a long way in the past few years. Let us take you behind the code to explain how machines simulate language comprehension, and why it’s a far more complicated problem than “bonjour = hello.” This talk is aimed at an audience who is not necessarily familiar with computers or language comprehension, but would like a primer to the field, and what it can realistically do. We will explain natural language processing from the perspective of machines that cannot understand words, but capture semantic meaning by processing data.

Fortran as a Second Language

April 24, 2024, 10:00 am--4:00 pm

Fortran, one of the initial high-level programming languages, continues to be an excellent option for high-performance computing due to its superb performance. The newer versions offer many modern features, including object-oriented programming capabilities to programmers. This course will cover some of these features.

Prerequisites: Familiarity with another programming language.

The UPEI Department of Music is pleased to present the 2024 Dr. Frances Gray Music Performance Competition, featuring five finalists selected in a preliminary round:

Devyn Collette, alto saxophone
Dre Knowles, piano
Timothy Luk, piano
Janey-Lynn Perrier, soprano
Jacob Reddin, trombone

The annual Dr. Frances Gray Performance Competition is a public recital that showcases five of the UPEI Music Department’s outstanding emerging artists. The top awards include a cash prize, and will be chosen by an adjudication panel consisting of distinguished members of PEI's musical community. We gratefully thank this year's adjudicators – Lindsay Connolly, Mark Parsons, and Heather Taves.

This event will take place on February 2 at 7:30 pm on the SDU Stage, Dr, Steel Recital Hall. Admission is by donation at the door (suggested: $20 adults, $10 students).