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Newtrax partners with world-leading AI research center to discover new insights in underground hard rock minesMONTREAL, March 1, 2017 /CNW Telbec/ - Newtrax Technologies Inc. ('Newtrax') – the leading provider of safety and operations management systems for underground hard rock mines announced it has partnered with the Montreal-based Institute for Data Valorisation (IVADO). Together, they will create new value for existing customers with the big data generated from Newtrax systems installed around the world.
Jean-Marc Rousseau, Director of Technology Transfer for IVADO, said "the customer problems Newtrax is trying to solve and the datasets they have are a perfect fit for the expertise of our deep learning and operational research hubs". Deep learning, the subset of artificial intelligence focused on teaching machines to find and classify patterns in mass quantities of data is now the cornerstone of growth for Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and a host of other Silicon Valley companies. The world's largest concentration of independent artificial intelligence (AI) researchers and several of their pioneers happen to be based in Montreal, Quebec. Momentum is building for the city to become the global hub for deep learning expertise. In 2016 alone, the Canadian government and the Quebec government, together with the private sector community, announced investments of more than $230 million in Montreal universities to create a learing hub to explore AI and big data. Google also recently opened a deep learning & AI research group in Montreal linked to its Google Brain group in Mountain View, California. Shibl Mourad, the head of engineering for Google's Montreal office, says the company hopes to help turn the city into a "super-cluster" of AI knowledge that will attract corporate investors, burgeoning startups, and researchers. He said much of the credit goes to Yoshua Bengio and his colleagues, whose research over the last decade has put the city ahead of its competitors. Alexandre Cervinka, CEO of Newtrax, said "since our headquarters are in the middle of what is becoming the Silicon Valley of AI with the world's largest number of independent data scientists a stone's throw away from our R&D center, we are well positioned to leverage locally what globally is a very scarce talent pool". Breakthroughs in AI have historically been constrained by the absence of high-quality training datasets, not by algorithmic advances. Rapid progress in machine vision, language translation, and games only occurred after relevant and specialized big data became available. In this context, Newtrax and IVADO are confident the combination of high-quality datasets with world-class AI expertise will deliver powerful decision-making tools for the underground hard rock mines of the future. About Newtrax Newtrax customers are the largest producers of metals in the world and their underground mines rely on Newtrax systems to save lives, decrease unproductive time and increase productivity with unprecedented levels of real-time data from machines, people and the environment. The MineFace and MineProx flagship solutions are the corporate standard for several of the largest mining companies in the world. About IVADO IVADO aims to bring together industry professionals and academic researchers to develop cutting-edge expertise in data science, operational research and artificial intelligence. IVADO members provide data management methods and inform decision making for optimal resource use. In essence, IVADO creates opportunities for knowledge exchange and collaborations between the specialists, partners, researchers and students in its network. The objective of IVADO is to be the link between academic expertise and the business needs of organizations, from international corporations to start-ups. With over 900 affiliated scientists (researchers, post-docs, PhD candidates and research associates), IVADO is an advanced multidisciplinary centre for knowledge in sectors including statistics, business intelligence, deep learning, applied mathematics, data mining and cybersecurity. The institute therefore supports the development of processes to extract trends, metrics and concrete information from the jumble of big data.
SOURCE Newtrax Technologies Inc. 
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