Room: International AB
Sponsor(s)
 
Session Description
Building the Ecosystem: AI and Transit
Stream: Leadership Stream
Moderator: Philippe Bellon, National Lead, Bus Transit Engineering, AtkinsRéalis
1. Durham Region’s AI Management System – An Overview
Speaker: Stephanie Jones – Durham Region
Discover how the Region of Durham established an AI Enablement Group and built an AI Management System (AIMS) to support responsible, enterprise?wide AI adoption. This session shares lessons learned, governance approaches, and practical insights for enabling AI at scale.
2. AI Transit Town
Speaker: Professor Amer Shalaby – University of Toronto
We’ll learn about AI Transit Town, a cloud-based environment for developing and promoting AI solutions to pressing transit challenges through collaboration, innovation, data infrastructure, education and technology transfer.
3. Leveraging AI from the perspective of a municipal IT professional
Speaker: Igor Zaslavsky – York Region
Igor will join the Q&A panel and share how York Region is building a connected transit ecosystem through asset management, telematics, and customer information systems – leveraging AI from the perspective of a municipal IT professional and deliver better service outcomes.
Speaker(s) / Presenter(s)
Stephanie Jones – Manager, Applications and GIS & Data Analytics, The Regional Municipality of Durham
Bio:
Stephanie Jones is the Manager of Applications, GIS, and Data Analytics at the Region of Durham and Chair of the Region of DurhamÂ’s AI Enablement Group. With over 22 years of experience in the public sector, she leads responsible AI, technology, and data initiatives that support practical, ethical, and service-focused adoption. Her work focuses on translating emerging technologies into real-world value, strengthening governance and organizational readiness, and enabling teams to use technology, data, and AI to improve decision-making and public service delivery.
Amer Shalaby – Director of UTTRI, University of Toronto
Bio:
Amer Shalaby is Professor and Bahen/Tanenbaum Chair in Civil Engineering at the University of Toronto. He is the Director of the University of Toronto Transportation Research Institute (UTTRI), founding Director of the Transit Analytics Lab (TAL) and Co-Director of the Centre for Automated and Transformative Transportation Systems (CATTS). Dr. Shalaby is specialized in transit planning and scheduling, intelligent transit systems, transit operational management, transit system resilience, automated and connected transit technologies, and AI applications to transit.
Dr. Shalaby is an elected Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and Canadian Society of Civil Engineering, the recipient of the CSCE Sandford Fleming Award, ThinkTransit Award of Excellence in Innovation and TRB William Millar Award. He was associate editor of the Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering, and he sits on the editorial board of several international journals. Dr. Shalaby has also served on advisory panels of multiple transportation projects in Canada and internationally.
Igor Zaslavsky – Manager, Transit Management Systems, York Region
Bio:
Igor Zaslavsky, Manager, Digital Transit, has worked for over 21 years in various roles in the Digital Transit group in York Region.
As a Manager of Digital Transit group, he is responsible for research, design and implementation of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), management of system maintenance contracts as well as operations, maintenance and support for the existing Transit ITS programs.
Igor has led the successful implementation of various Intelligent Transportation Systems projects for York Region Transit.
Some of those major projects include Computer Aided Dispatch and Automatic Vehicle Location (CAD/AVL), Charge Management, Fuel Management, Vehicle Health Monitoring, Mobility On Request platform, scheduling and trip planning applications, interactive voice response (IVR) systems, security camera systems, distributed antenna systems, collision avoidance and pedestrian warning system, passenger information displays, etc.
He has over 27 years of experience with Information Technology industry, previously working at the Regional Municipality of York, Nortel Networks and CIBC bank.
Moderator(s)
Philippe Bellon РNational Lead, Bus Transit Engineering, AtkinsR̩alis