Amy Awad
Nominated Award: Women in AI Person of the Year
Linkedin profile of Person: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-awad/
Overview: 10+ years in Artificial intelligence working with simulating human cognition in computerized models. Doctor of Philosophy – PhD AI/Cognitive Science UCD. An ambitious AI professional with leadership proficiency and extensive AI Project Manager and Consultant experience. As a women in STEM, LGBT, and a person of Colour, the road to recognition and success was not paved with roses. Strong research professional career in cognitive science and the application of AI in the mental health sector. Experienced in the application of AI to real world problems and their positive impact on productivity and efficiency. She is driven to help people towards a better quality of life by using purposeful and ethical AI and always use AI for social good.
Reason for Nomination
Background:
Currently, she is a Senior AI/ML Consultant in the AI and Emerging Technology Team at EY and The Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer at Opa Mind. Technical / Scientific/ Societal Achievement and global/local recognition: Her unrelenting focus on results has allowed her to accomplish ambitious goals such as co-founding a Health-tech company (Opa Mind) focusing on using Voice technology to build an AI-powered solution that assist people with their mental health pressure. She successfully lead the projects to build Opa Mind AI-Based product. In this role, she was able to successful in gaining global recognition: The Opa Mind AI Solution won the ((Top innovator)) award in the Youth Mental Health Challenge from the World Economic Forum’s UpLink innovation network.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/these-14-innovations-are-tackling-youth-mental-health-challenges/
Please see article in Silicon republic highlighting the innovative approach in Opa Mind solution:
https://www.siliconrepublic.com/start-ups/opa-mind-dcu-insight-world-
economic-forum-uplink-mental-health
She was also interviewed by Niall Kitson at TechCentral / RTE radio: about how AI is helping mental health in the workplace using the Opa mind platform.
https://www.techcentral.ie/opa-minds-amy-awad-on-how-to-protect-your-
mental-health/
and the link for the interview on SoundCloud below:
https://soundcloud.com/techcentral-radio/opa-minds-amy-award-on-how-to-
protect-your-mental-health
Opa mind is a personalised voice-tech platform designed to reduce the stigma around addressing mental health issues and available for everyone. Allowing clients to tell their own story through a voice diary, Which empowers them with knowledge about themselves and take them in a journey of healing and self-discovery. This help achieving our mission in Breaking Stigma, Empowering People and using AI for good. The reflection metrics enable employees to gain understanding about their issues, gain confidence & empowerment. Happier & healthier employees, Happier employer (Increase productivity & profit).
During her role as the AI-Project Lead at Insight Centre in DCU under the leadership of the excellent PI Prof. Tomas Ward, she was able to lead the team to building The AI Model for her start-up OPA Mind.
https://www.dcu.ie/computing/news/2022/jun/opa-mind-recognised-top-innovator-world-economic-forum
This project involved collaboration with various stakeholders and careful management of time and recourse, under a short 8-month contract to complete the whole project. In parallel, she was running the rest of the projects at OPA to complete the development of the rest of the components of the AI-based platform. She is restless and a true hustler, by being able to visualize success and identify unconventional yet highly effective strategies to achieving it. No matter how difficult it can get.
Opa mind solution is the only App offering voice analysis AI directly to the end user. Only 6 American companies worldwide use voice but mostly targeting clinicians. It offers A state-of-the-art AI Solution with Voice-Driven Multimodal Sentiment Analysis and Emotion Recognition , which Enables the AI to reach a great level of emotional intelligence . It also provide support for Mental & Cognitive Health and delivering ‘Reflection Report’ metrics developed in the School of Psychology at DCU under the leadership of Dr. Darragh McCashin. This multidisciplinary effort encompasses Linguistic and Acoustic features, Multiple Machine Learning Models for Prediction, Emotion Recognition and Sentiment Analysis , Speech Processing + Text.
In her previous role as a Lecturer in the Engineering and Computer Science Department at PSAU, she won the Vice Rector award and the rector Award for Excellence in Scientific Research as the supervisor of two the university electronic Map project and university electronic Schedule system.
During her PhD in AI, she also worked as a Lab Demonstrator\TA in the Computer Science department at UCD, she delivered practical lectures and taught CS students programming and practical exercises for a range of courses. For example, Artificial Intelligence, Software Engineering, Algorithms and Problem Solving, Robotics, Programming with Python, and Android programming.
During her PhD in AI, her research focused on applying Artificial Intelligence in the area of Cognitive Computing modelling and successfully developed a Cognitive AI model that simulate human cognition and presented/published scientific papers in local and international Conferences (CogSci’19: 41st Annual Conference on Cognitive Science/Canada, ASCI’17: The 25th Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science, AALTD’18: Learning from temporal data: feature formation and prediction for categorical time series). In addition, she was one of the winner in the UCD ThesisIn3 Competition 2021.
She also passionate about encouraging other women to pursue a career in AI and was a speaker at the IEEE’10: The EEE Workshop For Promoting Computer Science Careers Among Female High School Students in Saudi Arabia. She believes that in order to Combat stereotypes about gender and intellect, strong mentorships and role models can promote and encourage girls at a young age to at least consider STEM as a possible career path.