RAML LAB

Happy Canada Day from all of us at RAML Lab! 🇨🇦

Today, we celebrate the people, diversity, and shared values that make Canada such a vibrant place to live, learn, and innovate. We’re grateful to be part of this community and look forward to continuing our work in responsible and applied machine learning.

Wishing everyone a wonderful Canada Day filled with joy, celebration, and time with loved ones.

Happy Canada Day! 🍁

🎉 Exciting News from RAML Lab!
We are thrilled to share that our Director, Dr. Blessing Ogbuokiri, is part of the interdisciplinary team awarded a $250,000 New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF) – Exploration Grant from the Government of Canada for the project: “Healing Algorithms: Decolonizing AI for Health Equity in Indigenous and Black Communities”, alongside Dr. Betty Ombuki-Berman, Dr. Lyn Trudeau, and Dr. Valerie Michaelson. This innovative research seeks to reimagine the role of AI in healthcare by centering equity, community voices, and decolonized approaches to AI design and governance. The team will explore how AI systems can be developed and deployed to advance health equity for Indigenous and Black communities while addressing longstanding challenges related to bias, fairness, and representation in AI-driven healthcare.

This award highlights the power of interdisciplinary collaboration in building responsible, inclusive, and community-centered AI systems that benefit all members of society. Congratulations to the entire team, and thank you to the Government of Canada and the NFRF program for supporting high-risk, high-reward research with the potential for transformative societal impact.
Learn more: https://brocku.ca/brock-news/2026/05/federal-funding-opens-new-frontiers-in-brock-technology-chemistry-research/

Federal funding opens new frontiers in technology, chemistry research There’s an expression Beatrice Ombuki-Berman sometimes uses when she discusses artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms: “technology is never neutral.” This is particularly true in the health-care sector, says the Professor and Chair of the Department of Computer Science, where algorithms ...

Celebrating 50 Years of Canadian AI

It was a privilege to be part of the Canadian AI 50th Anniversary Gala, recognizing five decades of research, innovation, and community that have helped shape the AI landscape in Canada and beyond.

The evening brought together generations of researchers, students, and leaders whose contributions continue to advance the field and inspire the next wave of discoveries.

The gala served as a reminder of the remarkable progress achieved over the past 50 years and the importance of continued collaboration, mentorship, and knowledge sharing in shaping the future of AI.

We are grateful for the opportunity to participate in this celebration and learn from one of Canada’s premier AI research communities.

Brock University students at Canadian AI 2026 🇨🇦

Led by our Director, Dr. Blessing Ogbuokiri, students from the Department of Computer Science and members of RAML Lab participated in Canadian AI 2026 (AI/CRV 2026), one of Canada’s leading AI research conferences.

From research presentations and technical discussions to networking sessions and community events, students had the opportunity to share their work, learn from fellow researchers, and engage with the broader AI research community.

Experiences like these help foster the next generation of researchers advancing artificial intelligence, machine learning, and responsible innovation.

Students featured:
David Martin, Hridoy Rahman, Rimon Paul, Rasa Khosrowshahi, Victoria Udechukwu, Rishi Modi, Ray Huang.

Our Director, Dr. Blessing Ogbuokiri, attended Canadian AI 2026 (AI/CRV 2026) alongside members of the RAML Lab research team, including Hridoy Rahman, David Martin, and Rimon Paul.

Over the course of the conference, the team participated in research presentations, technical discussions, networking sessions, and community events that brought together researchers from across Canada and beyond.

Beyond showcasing innovative work in AI fairness, interpretable machine learning, and responsible AI, Canadian AI 2026 provided valuable opportunities to exchange ideas, build new connections, and engage with a vibrant community of scholars advancing the field.

Conferences such as these remind us that scientific progress is driven not only by research outcomes, but also by collaboration, mentorship, and the conversations that inspire future discoveries.

We are grateful for the opportunity to contribute to and learn from one of Canada’s premier AI research gatherings.

We thank our Director, Dr. Blessing Ogbuokiri, and the RAML Lab team for their continued guidance, collaboration, and support.

Congratulations to Rimon Paul on presenting his research at Canadian AI 2026!

Rimon, an incoming MSc student in the Department of Computer Science and a member of RAML Lab at Brock University, presented his poster, “Interpretable Dynamic Rule Attention for Medical Coding,” at Canadian AI 2026, held at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia.

Rimon’s work explores the development of more interpretable AI methods for medical coding, an important step toward building trustworthy and transparent machine learning systems for healthcare applications. His research reflects the growing importance of explainability in AI-driven decision-making and demonstrates the impact that emerging researchers can make in this space.

Presenting at Canadian AI 2026 provided an excellent opportunity to share these findings with the broader AI research community and engage in discussions on the future of interpretable machine learning for healthcare.

We are proud of Rimon’s dedication, hard work, and commitment to advancing research in responsible and interpretable AI. We look forward to seeing the continued impact of his work.

We thank our Director, Dr. Blessing Ogbuokiri, and the RAML Lab team for their guidance and support.

Congratulations, Rimon!

Congratulations to David Martin on presenting his research at Canadian AI 2026!

David, an MSc student in the Department of Computer Science and a member of RAML LAB at Brock University, presented his poster, “Reducing Representation Bias through Fairness-Driven Sampling in Contrastive Learning,” at Canadian AI 2026, held at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia.

David’s research addresses one of the most important challenges in modern AI: ensuring that learned representations are fair and inclusive. His work investigates how fairness-driven sampling strategies can be incorporated into contrastive learning frameworks to reduce representation bias without relying on explicit demographic labels. By promoting more balanced representation learning, this research contributes to the development of trustworthy, equitable, and responsible AI systems.

Presenting at Canadian AI 2026 provided an excellent opportunity to share these findings with the broader AI research community and engage in discussions on the future of fairness-aware machine learning.

We are proud of David’s dedication, hard work, and commitment to advancing research in responsible AI. We look forward to seeing the continued impact of his work.

We thank our Director, Dr. Blessing Ogbuokiri, and the RAML Lab team for their guidance and support.

Congratulations, David!

Congratulations to Hridoy Rahman on presenting his research at Canadian AI 2026!

Hridoy, an MSc student at Brock University and a member of RAML LAB, presented his poster, “Uncovering Latent Subgroups: Spectral Clustering for Fairness Analysis in Contrastive Embeddings,” at Canadian AI 2026, held at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia.

His research explores how spectral clustering can help identify hidden subgroups within learned representations, contributing to ongoing efforts to develop more trustworthy, fair, and responsible AI systems.

Presenting at a national conference is an important milestone, and we are proud to celebrate Hridoy’s achievement and growing contributions to AI fairness research.

We thank our Director, Dr. Blessing Ogbuokiri, and the RAML Lab team for their guidance and support.

Congratulations, Hridoy!

At RAML Lab, we are committed to advancing responsible and applied machine learning research that creates meaningful impact. Our mission is to develop AI systems that are trustworthy, fair, and socially responsible while bridging the gap between cutting-edge research and real-world applications.

We envision a future where ethical AI innovation drives positive change across academia, industry, and society.

Proud moment for the RAML Lab at Brock University 🎉
Congratulations to our MSc student, Victoria Udechukwu, on receiving the 2025–26 Horizon Graduate Student Scholarship. Victoria’s research focuses on detecting and mitigating bias in AI systems, helping ensure that machine learning models are fair and responsible. Her work aims to develop mathematical tools to assess fairness in AI, particularly when training data lacks labels. Beyond her research, Victoria is also passionate about supporting greater representation of women in technology. Well deserved recognition! 👏Read more in Brock News:
[https://brocku.ca/brock-news/2026/03/horizon-scholar-tackles-technology-biases/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20The%20Brock%20News&utm_content=Daily%20The%20Brock%20News+CID_b63165a3a4673cdc159ea978aca34722&utm_source=Campaign%20Monitor%20MARCOM&utm_term=Horizon%20Scholar%20tackles%20technology%20biases]

Thanks to our director, Dr. Blessing Ogbuokiri for the guidance, and the members Hridoy Rahman, David Martin, Rimon Paul, Loic Wedji, Ray Huang, Rishi Modi, and David Shodipo for your support.

Horizon Scholar tackles technology biases NOTE: This is one in a series of articles on Brock’s 2025-26 Horizon Graduate Student Scholarship recipients. Read other stories in the series on The Brock News. Victoria Udechukwu was often the only woman in the room while working ...