Executive Director
Digital Technologies
Dr. Sevgui Erman joined the NRC as Executive Director of the Digital Technologies Research Centre in early 2022. She holds a Ph.D. in Systems Control and Signal Processing from the Université Paris-Saclay and has published peer-reviewed papers in journals and books, including the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the American Mathematical Society and Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Before joining the NRC, 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 digital technologies and leading-edge methods. For this work, she was awarded Statistics Canada's Excellence in Service Delivery Award.
Under Dr. Erman's leadership, natural language processing, image processing and predictive analytics have been used to deliver timelier, more granular and cost-efficient statistical products. While at Statistics Canada, Dr. Erman also launched and led the Data Science Network for the Federal Public Service, which supports data science capacity-building within the Government of Canada. The network currently has more than 2,400 members.
Dr. Erman is passionate about technology, big data and artificial intelligence, and their use for public good. She has a background in engineering, math and IT, with extensive experience in developing algorithms, models and systems in the private, public and academic sectors. For example, Dr. Erman managed the features integration and verification of the LTE TDD solution developed by Ericsson 4G Wireless. She also worked at Nortel Networks in wireless and optical communications R&D, in project management, system performance and forward-error correction algorithms positions. She holds patents in real-time electro-optical system performance optimization.
Over the course of her career, Dr. Erman has worked on diverse transformative initiatives, such as the redesign of the Consumer Price Index system. She has served in leadership roles in information technology and subject matter areas, and has a solid track record in building high-performance teams and delivering results in fast-paced environments.