Executive Director, Digital Technologies Research Center, National Research Council of Canada
Dr. Sevgui Erman is the Executive Director of the Digital Technologies Research Centre at the National Research Council of Canada. She leads research in computer vision, natural language processing, advanced analytics, cybersecurity and quantum computing. Her team’s focus is on using AI and digital technologies to accelerate scientific discovery and innovation.
She holds a Ph.D. in system control and signal processing from the Université Paris-Saclay. She has a background in engineering, math and IT, with experience in developing algorithms and systems in the private, public and academic sectors.
Before joining the National Research Council, Dr. Erman was Chief Data Scientist and Senior Director of the Data Science Division at Statistics Canada. Since 2017, she led the agency’s data science strategy and engineering efforts, and she spearheaded the creation of the Data Science Accelerator (DSA) in 2018. The DSA operated as a start-up, entirely driven by business needs—taking advantage of best practices in entrepreneurship, catalyzing culture change through delivery of small wins, and building trust in new technologies and leading-edge methods. For this work, she was awarded Statistics Canada’s Excellence in Service Delivery Award. While at Statistics Canada, Dr. Erman launched and led the Data Science Network for the Federal Public Service, which supports data science capacity-building within the Government of Canada.
Dr. Erman has also worked in system design roles at Ericsson Wireless as well as Nortel Networks Optical R&D. She holds patents in real-time electro-optical system performance optimization.