Blog Posts

Welcome to the DeepSense blog

Here you will find curated blog posts about Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning Frameworks, Machine Learning, Mentorship, Student Experience, and so much more!

DeepSense works with students and industry professionals by continuing to contribute to our growing blue economy.

Interested in improving your written communication skills and writing a blog for DeepSense? Contact info@deepsense.ca

Oceans Week 2024: Catalyzing Action for Our Ocean and Climate in Halifax 

As Ocean Week 2024 unfolds, the world turns its gaze to the vast blue expanse that cover our planet. This year’s theme, “Catalyzing Action for Our Ocean and Climate,” underscores the urgent need for proactive measures to safeguard our ocean. Halifax, a city deeply intertwined with the Atlantic, stands as a hub for innovation. Here,

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Navigating the Future: Emerging Trends in AI and Data Science in 2024 

The landscape of the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data Science is constantly evolving. In recent years the increased availability of greater computation power has allowed for training and deployment of larger, more complex models than ever before. The past couple years have been revolutionary for AI, especially in the field of generative AI

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Celebrating International Women’s Day

Every March 8, we celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD) to celebrate the achievements of women. IWD was created to celebrate women, raise awareness about discrimination, and work towards bridging the gender gap. This year, the theme of IWD is Investing in Women to Accelerate Progress. The United Nations have highlighted five key areas needing action

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Navigating AWS Services – Static Storage

When you are trying to deploy an application to the Cloud, there are so many choices! Honestly, I was overwhelmed by them the first time I came across them because of the sheer number of options I had. In this series of blog posts we will discuss factors that can help you decide which type

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Charting a Path to Success: Highlights from a Successful Ocean Industry Crawl and Networking Event

On November 17th DeepSense teamed up with SURGE Innovation, Centre for Ocean Ventures and Entrepreneurship (COVE), SEATAC, Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC), Ocean Technology Council of Nova Scotia (OTCNS), and the Port Innovation Engagement Research (PIER) to host the first-ever Ocean Industry Crawl. The idea was to introduce students to the ocean technology sector in

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Will AutoML be the Game Changer? 

In this rapidly evolving era of machine learning (ML) and AI, the demand for efficient model development has led to the emergence of a transformative concept – Automated Machine Learning (AutoML). AutoML streamlines the end-to-end process of building machine learning models, providing developers and data scientists with a powerful set of tools to simplify complex

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A Guide to Setting Up HPC Cluster on Cloud

Introduction High-Performance Computing (HPC) clusters play a pivotal role in advancing scientific and computational research, powering simulations, data analysis, and complex calculations that traditional computing infrastructure may struggle to handle. As the demand for faster, more scalable, and efficient computing resources continues to grow, researchers and organizations are increasingly turning to cloud platforms to meet

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ZooSegNet: An Ensemble of Zooplankton Classification and Segmentation for Optimal False Positive-False Negative Trade-Off

By: Mayank Anand *, Natasha Hynes, Amit Baroi, Alex Pottier, Kim Davies Abstract In the realm of oceanic ecosystems, the vital role of zooplankton in maintaining equilibrium and facilitating essential Earth processes has garnered significant attention. Addressing the intricate challenge of accurately recognizing zooplankton is essential for scientific studies and measurements. However, the manual identification

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The Strategic Importance of Cybersecurity in AI and Cloud Integration

By: Alyssa Jones In a world of ever-growing interconnectivity, where industries intertwine and borders blur, the maritime sector emerges as a towering sentinel, a vital cornerstone of global trade and transportation. From cargo ships to offshore platforms, vessels fuel international commerce. However, as technology continues to revolutionize the maritime sector, a new set of challenges

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Deep Dive: H2O Conference & Demo Day Recap

Written by: Abby Jonah, Brigitta Zhao, and Tyson Cato H2O Conference Recap What defines the ocean sector? The ocean sector can be a scary term, but in hindsight it’s not scary at all! The ocean sector simply includes anyone learning about, working with, or interested in the ocean! When we, as DeepSense interns, were invited

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International Day of Women and Girls in Science Day 

Every February 11th, we celebrate International Day of Women and Girls in Science (IDWGIS) to help celebrate those working in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields around the world. IGWGIS was created to bring light to the gender gap that exists in the STEM world, where even though we have made great strides, women

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How I Got to Know the Ocean Sector!

My name is Sakshi, and I am currently pursuing my second master’s at Dalhousie University. I am in the final year of my Master of Information program. I love my program as it is a combination of management and technology. Prior to this, I completed my master’s in business administration in finance and marketing from

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Mentoring Matters: STEM Connector

Mentoring Matters: STEM Connector By Laura Eamon and Sarah Kilford Meet Sarah and Laura, two of the three co-op students gaining work experience in Halifax’s ocean industry this summer. Having already completed a Bachelor of Arts in Sustainability, Sarah is now a computer science student at Dalhousie University. Laura is an economics student at Saint

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A Guide to this Year’s Ocean Celebrations

Happy World Ocean Day, Ocean Week Canada, Ocean Festival, and Ocean Decade!   Annually on and around June 8, millions of people from 150+ countries participate in countless ways to take action on behalf of our shared ocean, such as organizing school events, aquatic cleanups, and community engagement through science and art.   What’s happening globally

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Part 3: Data Volume, Cleaning and Documentation

This it the final part of a three part series of how to build a dataset ofr machine learning.  Find the previous parts below: Part 1: https://deepsense.ca/2022/02/09/blog-building-your-own-dataset-for-machine-learning/  Part 2: https://deepsense.ca/2022/02/17/part-2-acquiring-external-data/ Watch Amit’s Discovery Session on how to build an image based dataset: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TT4hySJVvA  ~~~~~~~ How much data is enough?  Web scrapping is actually quite fun and

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Part 2: Acquiring external data

Find Part 1 of the blog series here: https://deepsense.ca/2022/02/09/blog-building-your-own-dataset-for-machine-learning/  Watch Amit’s Discovery Session on how to build an image based dataset: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TT4hySJVvA  Here are a few of the most relevant libraries for web scrapping:  Requests: a python library for making http request such as GET, POST etc. It is much simpler and easy to use than

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Part 1: Building your own dataset for machine learning

The following blog is Part 1 of a 3 Part Blog Series! Find Part 2 here: https://deepsense.ca/2022/02/17/part-2-acquiring-external-data/  Watch Amit’s Discovery Session on how to build an image based dataset: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TT4hySJVvA  We live in the information age. It is said to be a period in human history characterized by a shift from industrial production to one based

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Don’t be afraid of taking chances!

Before I joined IBM, I was working in a different field (DevOps, System Administration, Server Administration) which suited my passions well. But once I joined IBM, I was first asked to take up a project completely different from what I have done so far, a very intimidating situation. But, through the guidance and motivation from those

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From Data Challenge to Productionized Ideas using Dash Plotly

‘Would you be interested in writing a short blog we can post, to help other students try new things?’ ‘Yes, definitely’ It has been some days after the first Ocean of Data Challenge came to an end. For a quick recap, the challenge was to use open-source ocean data to explore the opportunities with the

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Time and memory-efficient computation: problems and solutions

One of the most common challenges anyone working on a machine learning or data science project faces is the computing time and memory problem of using a vast amount of data. Huge data requires huge computing resources to save time and memory.   We worked on a project related to fish tracking. A fish tag,

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Deep Learning Frameworks

Keras is an open-source framework that provides high level APIs for large machine learning applications such as neural networks. These APIs can run on top of the backend engines such as TensorFlow, CNTK (Cognitive Toolkit), Theano, MXNet and PlaidML. Its simple and easy-to-use architecture facilitates fast development of models. It is most suitable for Rapid

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Creating a Data Dictionary

A crucial step in data management is the creation of a data dictionary.  In general, a data dictionary is a central location where information about data is stored.  This can be defined quite formally, but its implementation doesn’t need to be.  Really, you just want a place to store information for future users of data.   

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Why GitHub is important to know?

GitHub is a code hosting platform that helps programmers and developers to keep their files at remote repositories and could work together on the same project from any location. It is a critical interesting concept to know for those who want to pursue their career in IT industry or who already are in IT whether they are programmers, developers, testers or data scientists.    GitHub provides the following features:  Version Control 

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Choosing the right algorithm

Artificial Intelligence (AI) helps a computer to mimic humans with the help of Machine Learning (ML) algorithms. ML is the branch of AI that enables the machine to make predictions or classifications based on the data it has been trained on. Deep learning (DL) is the subset of machine learning that uses neural networks, works

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What does my data need to look like to do AI/ML?

Do you have data, but are unsure if it is suitable for AI/ML?  There are many different types of data, but they generally boil down to a few categories.  Typically, your data will be: numerical categorical time series text Numerical Numerical data can also be called quantitative. It can be a continuous variable, like temperature

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Can AI/Machine Learning solve all of your data problems?

One big hurdle that we often run into when trying to work with a company, is that they may not know what to do with the data they are collecting.  Often, they will be collecting data over time, but when they need to make a decision, they may only use the real time data, without

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How do I start working with a new type of data?

I recently completed an MSc in Computer Science at Dalhousie University. For my thesis, I analyzed sets of AIS* data I had not used before starting my Master’s degree. I want to share some lessons I learned about how to start working with unfamiliar data.  *AIS: Automatic identification system is an automatic tracking system for

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Are GPUs better for Machine Learning?

Graphical Processing Units or GPUs are popular among data scientists for use in training machine/deep learning models. But what is the difference between GPUs and their companions, central processing units (CPUs)?   There are several aspects of GPUs that differ from CPUs. GPUs and modern CPUs have various cores, rather than one. A core is

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How much data do I need for AI/Machine Learning?

We are often asked how much data one needs when using artificial intelligence/machine learning techniques. Unfortunately, there is no simple answer. It will depend highly on what type of data you have, and what methods you are employing.  Is it possible to have too little data? Yes, but there can be some easy fixes. The

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What is HPC?

HPC stands for High Performance Computing. It can also be used as a synonym for supercomputing. An HPC infrastructure has the following characteristics: A huge amount of computation resources Advanced computation capabilities Fast interconnections Parallel processing CPU/GPU computation Advanced file systems Enhanced securities Large storage. HPC is widely used for scientific computation, application development, machine

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Introducing our Executive Director

A drive to see Atlantic Canada succeed in the ocean’s sector combined with a desire to help companies use their data to grow, places Jennifer LaPlante in good standing to oversee DeepSense as Executive Director. “DeepSense really brings this together,” says LaPlante. “I’m looking forward to helping companies in this space with their decision making.”

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