Philippe Després Research Thrust 3 - Methods of Artificial Intelligence and Data Processing

Associate Professor, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Université Laval
Assistant Director, Big Data Research Center (CRDM)
Co-Leader of the Sustainable Health Axis, OBVIA
Data Architect, PULSAR
Chief Data Director in Health Sciences, CHU de Québec Research Centre

Philippe Després is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics, Engineering Physics and Optics at Université Laval. He is also a member of the Cancer Research Centre of Université Laval, as well as a Medical Physicist at CHU de Québec – Université Laval and a regular researcher of its affiliated Research Centre.

After receiving a Master’s degree from Université Laval (2000, Physics) and a Ph.D. from the Université de Montréal (2005, Physics), he completed a postdoctoral internship (2005-2007) at the University of California, San Francisco in the field of biomedical engineering and molecular imaging. His research projects focus on the hardware and software aspects of medical imaging modalities, notably on tomographic reconstruction. He pioneered high-performance computing (HPC) approaches with commodity graphics hardware (GPUs) that led to innovative applications in image processing/reconstruction and radiation dose calculations, including a fast GPU-based Monte Carlo engine to simulate energy transport in matter (GPUMCD). As a HPC expert, he is also involved in data-driven research approaches, data infrastructures and FAIR-compliant research data management. In this regard, he is the Chief Data Officer at CHU de Québec – Université Laval Research Centre and the Data Architect of the PULSAR health research platform,

He is also the Assistant Director of the Big Data Research Center (CRDM) at Université Laval, and the Co-Leader of the Sustainable Health axis of the International Observatory on the Societal Impacts of AI and Digital Technology (OBVIA).