Russ Erickson is the VP Partnerships at Amii (Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute). Amii is a non-profit AI research institute and one of the centres of AI excellence in the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy - the world's first national AI strategy. Amii funds and supports the advancement of the fundamental science of AI through research across domains, and partners with industry to accelerate adoption and commercialization of AI. Amii's Chief Scientific Advisor, Dr. Richard Sutton, recently received the Turing Award for his pioneering work in reinforcement learning.  Russ leads Amii's industry partnerships team, having been in the Alberta tech sector for 25+ years in various business development, strategic alliance and investment roles prior to Amii at Calgary-based SMART Technologies and Nureva.