FREE PUBLIC EVENT: The Vancouver chapters of the CSCA and of the Society of Catholic Scientists present a watch party of the American Scientific Affiliation’s 2025 Winter Symposium.
The Vancouver chapters of the CSCA and of the Society of Catholic Scientists present a watch party of the American Scientific Affiliation’s 2025 Winter Symposium, followed by a pizza lunch and in-person panel discussion with Vancouver area experts, Paul Bucci, Martin Ester, and Yuriko Ryan. The panel will be moderated by Arnold Sikkema, Professor of Physics at Trinity Western University and CSCA’s Executive Director. Join us as we dig into the topic of Artificial Intelligence and Christianity. All and welcome but advance registration is required. Read about our panelists below.
Note: Registration is Required
- Register here.
- 10-11:30am Webinar (more info.)
- 11:30-12:15pm Pizza Lunch
- 12:15-1pm Panel Discussion
Learn more about the webinar itself here. 
Paul Bucci is a startup-founder, researcher and interaction designer from Vancouver, BC. His research is on emotional interaction with machines, and has included building soft robots and sensors, building machine learning models of emotion based on biophysical signals, and qualitative sense-making with large-scale data. His design practice spans print, film, 2D and 3D interfaces, and large-scale interactive installations. Most recently, he has been working on commercializing his PhD research on large-scale data by founding a startup called Teleoscope. He teaches software engineering and cognitive systems at UBC and Corpus Christi College.
Martin Ester received a PhD in Computer Science from ETH Zurich, Switzerland, in 1989 with a thesis on knowledge-based systems and logic programming. He has been working for Swissair developing expert systems before he joined University of Munich as an Assistant Professor in 1993. Since November 2001, he has been an Associate Professor, now Full Professor at the School of Computing Science of Simon Fraser University. From May 2010 to April 2015, he served as the School Director. Dr. Ester has published extensively in the top conferences and journals of his field such as ACM SIGKDD, WWW, ICDM and AAAI. According to Google Scholar, his publications have received more than 66,000 citations. He received the KDD 2014 Test of Time Award for his paper on DBSCAN. Martin Ester’s research interests are in data mining and machine learning, with a current focus on causal discovery and causal inference and transfer learning. Dr. Ester is very interested in the translation of his research results into practical applications and has had many collaborations with partners in industry, science, and government. Last but not least, he cares about the integration of his science with his Christian faith. He has been a member of the CSCA since 2012 and part of a team that has been offering the “God and Reason” public lecture series at Simon Fraser University since 2011. He co-authored a chapter on AI in Brownnutt & Fox (eds.), Global Perspectives on Science and Christianity (Langham, 2024).
Yuriko Ryan is a bioethicist and gerontologist based in Vancouver, with an interdisciplinary background spanning business, academic research, and healthcare administration, holding a doctorate in bioethics (DBe) from Loyola University Chicago. Currently a contributing fellow at AI and Faith, she delves into the intricate relationship between artificial intelligence and Christianity. Passionate about public engagement, she actively fosters ethical reflections within the community, bridging complex concepts with accessible discourse.