Winnipeg Data Science Meet-Up (September 2025)

Featured Presentation: Talk Data to Me: Wawanesa’s Chatbot

Discover how Wawanesa's AI-powered Chatbot is transforming information access through intelligent search. We'll share our journey to MVP and beyond, including the data, architecture, quality, governance, controls, and a live demo. Learn how this tool is enhancing user experience across Wawanesa.

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Agenda:

5:30 pm - Registration
6:00 pm - Networking
6:45 pm - Welcome & Introductions
7:00 pm - Featured Presentation
7:45 pm - Q&A
8:00 pm - Closing Remarks & Adjournment

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Featured Speakers:

• Ben Tallin
MLOps Engineer

Ben graduated from the University of Manitoba in 2018 with a degree in Actuarial Mathematics. He has been with Wawanesa's Advanced Analytics department since then, working in several roles and now serving as an MLOps Engineer. Ben has lent his domain knowledge to the Chatbot project, contributed to planning activities, and developed key pieces of infrastructure code. In his free time, Ben enjoys cycling and alpine skiing.

• Hoora RezaeiMoghaddam
MLOps Engineer

Hoora joined Wawanesa's Advanced Analytics team in April 2024 as an MLOps Engineer. She works on everything from deploying machine learning models to building out the infrastructure that supports our Chatbot and LLM projects. Before joining Wawanesa, she spent a few years working on NLP and conversational AI. She holds a Master's degree in Applied Computer Science from the University of Winnipeg. Outside of work, Hoora enjoys hiking, listening to audiobooks, and getting creative with Lego builds.

• Olex Ostrovskyy
Senior MLOps Engineer

Olex is a Senior MLOps Engineer at Wawanesa with over nine years of experience building scalable AI and cloud-based solutions. He is a certified ML/MLOps and Cloud Solutions Architect, and has contributed to projects for organizations including Deloitte, Canadian Tire, and Toyota. At Wawanesa, Olex played a key role in the Chatbot project, designing a multi-agent system with memory, developing an automated testing framework, and authoring several AWS CDK stacks for deployment. He is passionate about the interaction of AI and cloud innovation; and shares his work and insights at alexostrovskyy.com.

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Event Corporate Sponsors:

• Wawanesa Insurance

• Canada Computing

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Important to know:

• Free attendance.

• Students are encouraged to join the Winnipeg Data Science Meet-Up Group and interact with the many professional Data Scientists, Data Engineers, Data Analysts and hiring managers at this event.