A Review of The Canadian Science Policy Conference

Parliament Hill, Ottawa

I had the opportunity this past week, to attend the 3rd Canadian science policy conference  that was held in Ottawa. I attended to learn about science policy and explore what a career in science policy might look like.

Overall the conference was well done and very well attended. The speakers/attendees included the Minister of State for Science and Technology, the chief scientists of Australia and Quebec, the former Premier of British Columbia, other leading politicians with backgrounds in science, the heads of research councils such as CIHR, NSERC, MITACS, people from various Canadian agencies (health, environment, natural resources, atomic energy), journalists, and of course a good representation of academics (with quite a few postdocs) from various institutions.  

The conference looked at various topics, like the current Science, Technology and Innovation policy (STIC) in Canada, the recently released Jenkin's report on research and development

Welcome to The Spectator.

I have been wanting to write a blog for quite some time, and thought I'd finally take the plunge and get something going. I hope I will add posts regularly, mainly as a mechanism to exercise my writing skills, and to share my thoughts on various aspects of machine learning and statistics research, science communication, and reports on any other interesting events. Hopefully anyone who finds this will find something of interest.

As an aside, I use the title The Spectator, after the popular London newsletter that circulated between 1711-12. I think it's a great read, but I'll let wikipedia tell you more.