Coding in Colour Team

Dr. Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed 

University of Toronto

• ​Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto

• • The Department of Computer Science (DCS) at the University of Toronto is ranked among the top computer science departments in the world, and offers a wide array of research opportunities and programs of study. Courses Dr. Ahmed teaches include:

  • Undergraduate: CSC 300: Computer and Society (160 students)​

  • Graduate: CSC 2612: Computing and Global Development

  • Undergraduate: CSC 300: Computer and Society (160 students)​

  • Graduate: CSC 2513: Critical Thinking for HCI

  • Undergraduate: CSC 300: Computer and Society (160 students)​

  • Graduate: CSC 2612: Computing and Global Development​

  • Undergraduate: CSC 300: Computer and Society (160 students)​

  • Graduate: CSC 2513: Critical Thinking for HCI ​

• PhD in Information Science from Cornell University

• Most of his research focuses on studying, analyzing, and designing computing technologies with marginalized populations around the world through this lens. He draws heavily on political philosophy, critical theory, social science, anthropology, and STS literature in his work. He designs, develops, deploys, and evaluates technologies that connect theories from these disciplines to mobile and ubiquitous computing, natural language processing, social media, and machine learning Research Publications:

  • AI, Ethics, and the "others"

  • Gender, Identity, Harassment, and Social Justice

  • Migration and Mobilities

  • Privacy and Security

Luay Kawasme 
Head of Amazon Simple Queue Services 

• Head of Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)

  • Over a decade experience in developing large scale enterprise applications which generated over than hundred million dollar yearly revenues.

  • Held senior roles throughout the product life-cycle in multi-site, cross-continent projects.

  • Performed technical due diligence on acquisitions that resulted in multi-million dollar deals.

  • Architected new products and successfully carried existing products through their “next-gen” phase.

  • Delivered large scale enterprise application frameworks that leveraged latest technology including Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Web Services, and Composite Application Block (CAB).

• University of Victoria Masters Degree in Science

• Co-Founder Codify Academy

  • We are a group of Software Engineers with more than half a century of combined Software Development experience in the Vancouver hi-tech scene. Our team held senior engineering roles at Fortune 500 companies such as Amazon and Salesforce. Our team has a track record in building highly scalable enterprise applications that are used by millions of users across the world. We are passionate about sharing our experience with future generations by offering courses in emerging technologies such as Robotics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Machine learning with a focus on Computer Science fundamentals in Coding, Data structures and Algorithms.

  • At Codify Academy we believe that building a strong foundation in technology education paves the path to develop new tech leaders. All Canadians and their children, particularly kids with multiple barriers such as refugees and immigrants, need access with hands-on experience to recent technology developments.

Sabrina Smai

Microsoft Inc.

• Microsoft Applied Machine Learning Engineer

• • Applied ML Engineer in the Commercial Software Engineer (CSE) team working with partners to solve their business problems using Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. In CSE, we code with partners, perform Architecture Design Sessions, and help deploy to production. CSE focuses on implementing cutting-edge solutions with high profile customers and partners by coding side-by-side with their engineers. This may be through coding technical spikes with the partner, removing technical blockers, or upskilling their staff through Microsoft's Open Hack model.

• CTO and Co-Founder of CLAIRE

  • CL.AI.RE (formerly known as E-Terview) is a cloud-based application evaluation platform that's utilizing Artificial Intelligence to eliminate phone screening interviews in recruiting for large corporations.

  • The interviewer records his or her questions over video and sends them over to candidates with an established deadline. After applicants have responded recruiter can view meaningful insights on the behavioral performance of the candidate like body language and quality of speech. Recruiters can then rank, share, and compare the results to skip or invite them to an on-site interview in 3 minutes than the average 30 mins.

• University of Toronto, Bachelor of Science.

  • Teachers Assistant for:

  • CCT261 Information Architecture and Usability

  • CCT361 Programming for Management

  • CCT461 Advanced Emerging Technologies

  • CCT356 Online Marketing and Advertising

• Founder of University of Toronto Women In Tech Club

• International Hackathons 1st Place:

  • Stanford University: TreeHacks at Stanford

  • Princeton University: HackPrinction

  • University of Maryland: Technical Hacks for LeARn

  • University of North Carolina: PearlHacks for Econre

  • University of British Columbia: Hackaton for Humanity

Masood Hassan |
Oracle Corporation

• 25 Year Software Engineer with Oracale Corproation

• • Technical Specialist for OBAMACARE (Affordable Care Act). Impacting 200 million Americans by delivering design blueprints & implementation for the integration and customization of Oracle Middleware Fusion 11gR2 based solution.

  • Integration for PRIME Project for BC Ministry of Health to provide, Enrollment, single sign-on, ID proofing and Authentication/Authorization services to end users.

  • Implementation of fraud prevention TOTP for Ontario provincial government health care provider.

  • Technical Lead responsible fo roptimization of Oracle Unified Directory for a for major retail chain grossing over $40 billion US in 2017.

  • Lead Architect, design and implementation of Identity Management solution for major Insurance Provider. Several millions users supported.

  • Technical design architect for the integration of PharmaCare Domain with British Columbia’s Health Information Access Layer (HIAL).

  • Technical Specialist for the initial deployment of the Identity and Access Management solution for ovell eDirectory across 37 colleges and universities with for 410,000 active users.

• Consultant for Dubai Ports World & KKT

  • Consultant for the DP World, Canada project, focused on the service oriented architecture, b2b exchanges, supply chain management and workflow integration. Responsibilities included:

  • requirements analysis, design, implementation, systems integration, data migration, conversion of legacy applications, testing, and deployment of enterprise services.

Ali Serag El-Din  
Fostrum Inc. | University of British Columbia 

• Ali Serag - Co-Founder of Fostrum Inc. | University of British Columbia

• Co-Founder and CTO of Fostrum Inc.

• 2019 Techstars Tel Aviv Accelerator - raised $120,000 USD for FinTech Startup Fosturm Inc - creating an All in one money management for creators, influencers & solopreneurs.

• Software Developer iXP at SAP

  •  Work on the Predictive Analytics team developing Smart Discovery, a powerful feature within SAP Analytics Cloud.

  • First Place North America at the annual  Hackathon for an innovative SMS-based solution to address natural disasters and aid environmental refugees by utilizing NLP, the Google Maps API, Trello and automated responses.

  • First Place at the Vancouver D-Shop Make-athon by creating and presenting on a design for a Computer-Vision

  • Chair for the largest tech Intern Community in British Columbia organizing Career-development and Social programs, managing a budget & collaborating the Executive Leadership Team.

• Full Stack Web Application: - Designed a full stack web application for my 3rd year software engineering course covering: REST & Async Programming, Software Specifications, Agile Development, Design, Refactoring & Information Security Primary Tools: Typescript & Node.js

• Alpha-qwerty extended Vigenere Cipher

  • Customized cryptographic program which encrypts/decrypts a message through poly-alphabetic substitution

  • Robustness was ensured so that the program accepts non-alphabetical characters like numbers and punctuation

  • Comprehensive testing was performed by inputting encrypted output in order to get original decrypted message

  • Made ample use of the C++ standard library

  • Primary Tools: C++, Visual Studio

• Database Administrator- Native Fishing Association

  • -Develop database features suited for Benchmark Report of BC First Nations fisheries involvement and suggest design improvements while organizing and Cross-referencing Access database

  • Program VBA Macro to automatically track database edits/deletions/additions and store them to a table and Design user-friendly forms and SQL queries to easily retrieve and display needed data

Cindy Tu

Ping Identity Inc. | University of British Columbia

• Software Engineer with Ping Identity

•  Ping Identity platform provides a comprehensive suite of identity services that work in any cloud, hybrid and on-premise environment. From multi-factor authentication and single sign-on to data governance and intelligent API cybersecurity, our platform helps you optimize both security and convenience simultaneously.

  • Developed new product from scratch using Java and Rest APIs

  • Maintained existing code as well as developed new features on large scale Java-based systems

  • Ensured digital security of product with different authentication and authorization standard/framework including OAuth2 and OIDC

  • Worked on developing products with different social login cases

• University of British Columbia, Bachelors in Computer Science and UBC Teaching Assistant

  • Guided student learning by presenting thought-provoking questions and solving student confusion in a concise manner

  • Lead weekly labs of more than 25 students while teaching concept through discussion or laboratory material without supervision

  • Provided feedback for student assignments, projects, and exams in a professional and clear format

  • Practiced debugging skills while working through problems students encounter in a systematic format

  • An experienced TA with 5 terms of TA experience

Salman Alam

Fostrum Inc. 

• Co-founder and CEO of Fostrum Inc.

• The University of British Columbia, Bachelor of Applied Science (B.A.Sc.) in Electrical Engineering

• Associate Programmer Analyst at Broadridge  where we built a new blockchain prototype for reducing settlement times for securities which was a project in collaboration with RBC, BMO & DTCC. I also developed a new visualization and analytics dashboard for Broadridge’s major wealth management clients.

  • Developed key new features for the Digital Information Onboarding (Inform) platform team.

  • Developed a new product for wealth management clients, Inform MAX

  • Developed a new blockchain based system for reducing settlement times for securities in collaboration with Broadridge, DTCC, RBC & BMO.

  • Delivered 7 blockchain based workshops & trained over 30 engineers about blockchain technology.

  • Built a new analytics and visualization dashboard platform for wealth management clients.

• Co-Founder of Wearatlie

  • co-founded a social venture which promotes awareness about different social issues and empowers NGOs and local communities through designing scarves. We initiated an entrepreneurship workshop in Bungoma, Kenya in partnership with Red Cross Kenya and Africa Great Lakes Initiative.

  • My responsibility were forming partnerships with non profit organizations and local communities as well as manage the technology assets of the company.

  • Manage a team of 3 fashion designer, 2 web developers and 1 social media manager.

  • Develop business and partnership strategies with local NGO's and communities.

  • Develop a custom e-commerce store using existing content management system.

•  Work with front-end technologies such with JavaScript, Liquid, CSS 3, HTML 5, jQuery, AJAX and JavaScript.

Hafsa Zahid 
University of Toronto

• University of Toronto, PhD, Biomedical Engineering Student

  • University of Toronto Teaching Assistant and Instructor for:

  • CSC C11: Introduction to Machine Learning and Data Mining,

  • CSC 320: Introduction to Visual Computing,

  • CSC A08: Introduction to Computer Science,

  • APS 105: Computer Fundamentals,

  • CSC 207: Software Design

• University of British Columbia, Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.), Field Of Study Honours Physics and Computer Science

  • University of British Columbia Teaching Assistant and Instructor for:

  • CPSC 425: Computer Vision: Helping students make use of Python's cv2 package to perform desired image operations and build features such as object detection and classification

  • CPSC 110: Introduction to Programming. Guided student learning by presenting thought-provoking questions and solving confusions in a concise manner. Ensured that students adopted good coding habits by providing constructive criticism on their code

  • CPSC 221: Basic Algorithms and Data Structures. Taught students how to efficiently test and debug their programs. Encouraged them to look at the big picture and come up with software design before implementation, to ensure they choose the best data structures and algorithms for the job

• Software Engineer for BC Children's Hospital

  •  Extended fMRI-CPCA software to enable further constraints on data to extract functional brain networks

  • Enabled automatic network classifications by incorporating computer vision techniques for brain networks determined by fMRI-CPCA

  • Sped up data analysis performed at the lab by writing scripts to automate analysis and data processing steps

  • Updated the lab's data collection website to include extensions to a study

  • Under the supervision of Prof. Todd S. Woodward at the Cognitive Neuroscience of Schizophrenia Laboratory, UBC Psychiatry/BCCH Research Institute

Hudhaifah Zahid

Carmodity Inc. | University of British Columbia

• Co-founder and CEO of Carmodity: A peer-to-peer car rental and leasing platform. On one hand, that lets people rent out their cars to other, as well as offers crowdfund lease contracts using the Ethereum blockchain.

• • $260,000 in Assets Managed in 6 months

  • Developed Blockchain integration and investment payouts on Ethereum

  • Published White Paper of Asset Based Financing as a Replacement to Debt Based Financing.

• Engineering Partner at Commit: For Software Engineers, Commit is the remote-first community that delivers a lifetime of professional development, peer-to-peer support and access to the best startup opportunities so they have agency over their growth and impact because we’re designing a future of work that puts Engineers first.

• Co-founder of HyperVote: HyperVote aims to change the way we vote and bring the security of paper ballots to the comfort of our phones using blockchain technology. We are currently serving small clients as we build out our capability. I perform duties of technical lead on the project.

• Software Developer Blockchain Intelligence Group:  Reworked the Angular frontend of an internal CRUD tool then moved to work on the flagship product - QLUE.

• University of British Columbia | Bachelors of Arts in Cognitive Systems, Mind, Language, and Computation

  • President of UBC Bitcoin Club

  • Teaching Assistant: Cognitive Systems 200 course. The Cognitive Systems Program (COGS)  a multi-disciplinary undergraduate program involving four departments: Computer Science, Linguistics, Philosophy, and Psychology.

Marcia Nozick

EMBERS Canada

• Marcia has a Master’s degree in Urban, Community and Regional Planning. After teaching at SFU she Founded EMBERS in 2001 on the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, as a social enterprise with a mandate to create economic and employment opportunities for people living on low incomes and to build stronger, sustainable communities.

Naima Ali

BC Muslim Association | Horizons Science Academy

• Acting Principle – BC Muslim School

• Division Head + Science Teacher  - Horizons Science Academy 

• Masters of Education from Otterbein University 

• President of the Somali Canadian Society of BC 

• Provide and coordinate feedback on project from an intersectional lived experience perspective: Black, Women, Muslim, Refugee, Educator, Mother of 4 BIPOC youth, community leader.

Teresa Lindsay

The Duke of Edinburgh International Award 

• Facilitation of International framework: Leader Training - Presentations, Courses and Webinars

• Deliver Divisional Programming for World's Leading Youth Leadership Organization

• Public Speaking - Audience of Stakeholders; Principals, Cadet Co's, Youth Community program Managers, Teachers, and Executive Directors, Parents and Participants, Community Partners and Adventure Companies, Non-Profit Groups and Presidents and CEO's.

• Ensure quality delivery and creation of supportive program orientation materials.

• Leader Relationship Development.

• Improve Recruitment of Participants and Support to Leaders

• Introduce partnerships for the Duke of Edinburgh's globally recognized barrier-free, life changing youth Leadership framework with all youth organizations throughout British Columbia and Yukon.

Lynne Tapper

EMBERS Canada

• 20 years experience in running Learning and Development projects for youth and marginalized and racialized groups in both the UK and British Columbia.

• She also ran an environmental elementary schools program for Sainsbury's  building supply chain, part of their CSR agenda.

• She is currently overseeing 3 cost sharing training (STE/WDA) contracts with the Ministry of Advanced Education Skills and Training and over the last 3 ½ years has managed over $5 million dollars of Ministry contracts, resulting in EMBERS being on the Ministry’s Preferred Training Provider list.