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Canada CIFAR AI Chairs

Canada is recruiting and retaining top AI research talent.

The Canada CIFAR AI Chairs program is the cornerstone of the CIFAR Pan-Canadian AI Strategy.

Its goal is to recruit the world’s leading AI researchers to Canada, while retaining our existing top talent. The program provides long-term, dedicated research funding to support their research programs and help them train the next generation of AI leaders.

Canada CIFAR AI Chairs advance research in a range of fundamental and applied AI topics from drug discovery and machine learning for health, autonomous vehicles, materials discovery, human-AI interaction, natural language processing, and more. They are based at Canada’s three AI Institutes: 
Amii in Edmonton, Mila in Montreal, and Vector Institute in Toronto.

Featured Canada CIFAR AI Chairs news

Strengthening Canada’s AI talent ecosystem

April 16, 2025

Three new Canada CIFAR AI Chairs appointed, seven renewed.

Richard Sutton

March 10, 2025

Canada CIFAR AI Chair at Amii Richard Sutton wins the Turing Award

catalyst-grant-1600x900-1

March 4, 2025

CIFAR funds seven new AI Catalyst Grants

Recent research news

Alán Aspuru-Guzik

Toronto AI drug developer Intrepid launches with US$7M in seed funding. | The Logic

Yoshua Bengio

The catastrophic risks of AI — and a safer path | TED Talks

Bo Wang

How artificial intelligence is transforming pathology | Nature

Alán Aspuru-Guzik

Conversational agent can create executable quantum chemistry workflows | Phys.org

David Rolnick

AI has untapped potential to advance biodiversity conservation | ScienceDaily

Jeff Clune

AI masters Minecraft: DeepMind program finds diamonds without being taught | Nature

Meet Canada’s AI leaders

CIFAR recruits some of the top AI talent in Canada and the world to be Canada CIFAR AI Chairs at our three National AI Institutes across Canada. Watch as they explain the most interesting concepts in machine learning, share helpful advice for next-generation researchers and more!

Show Transcript

For the BIOSCAN project,
we're trying to use machine learning
for helping biodiversity monitoring,
and the focus there is really on insects.
So you may wonder, why insects?
Because there's a lot of other animals,
which are like pandas and tigers,
which are, I think, much more exciting.
But insects are really,
really very useful,
and they do actually
form quite a large amount
of the biomass. But there's
also quite a lot of challenges
with insects, because
there's so many of them,
and many of them are very similar-looking,
so from a machine learning perspective,
it's actually quite challenging.

Show Transcript

So, in my lab, we do both
fundamental research
and applied research,
but I highly encourage every
student who is doing fundamental
research to do at least
one applied machine
learning project
because that is where the real impact is.
Like, so, you can develop new algorithms,
new optimization methods,
but then you can also see
how that impacts the real problem, right?
Moving forward, this is where the largest
impact of AI is going to be in,
like, so in healthcare, in basic sciences,
et cetera. So it is important that
students develop this background 
and get trained to do these
interdisciplinary research.

Show Transcript

So I'm really excited by the idea
that we could train AI systems
to understand the structure
of neural activity,
the patterns of neural activity,
in the same way that we
train a large language model
to understand the underlying syntax
and semantics of language.
So we could potentially
train a large model
to understand the underlying syntax
and semantics of neural computation.
And if we could do that,
I think it would unlock many potential
medical applications and
neurotechnology applications.

Watch the Video Series

Canada CIFAR AI Chairs

About Mohamed Abdalla

Mohamed Abdalla

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Amii
University of Alberta
Canada
About David Ifeoluwa Adelani

David Ifeoluwa Adelani

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
McGill University
Mila
Canada
About Aishwarya Agrawal

Aishwarya Agrawal

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
DeepMind
Mila
Université de Montréal
Canada
About Kelsey Allen

Kelsey Allen

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
University of British Columbia
Vector Institute
Canada
About Tal Arbel

Tal Arbel

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
McGill University
Mila
Canada
About Alán Aspuru-Guzik

Alán Aspuru-Guzik

Program Co-Director
Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Accelerated Decarbonization
Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Acceleration Consortium
University of Toronto
Vector Institute
Canada
About Abigail R. Azari

Abigail R. Azari

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Amii
University of Alberta
Canada
About Pierre-Luc Bacon

Pierre-Luc Bacon

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
IVADO
Mila
Université de Montréal
Canada
About Dzmitry Bahdanau

Dzmitry Bahdanau

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
McGill University
Mila
ServiceNow
Canada
About Marc G. Bellemare

Marc G. Bellemare

Associate Fellow
Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Learning in Machines & Brains
Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Google Brain
McGill University
Mila
Reliant AI
Canada
About Shai Ben-David

Shai Ben-David

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
University of Waterloo
Vector Institute
Canada
About Yoshua Bengio

Yoshua Bengio

Advisory Committee Chair
Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Learning in Machines & Brains
Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
IVADO
Mila
Université de Montréal
Canada
About Glen Berseth

Glen Berseth

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Mila
Université de Montréal
Canada
About Michael Bowling

Michael Bowling

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Amii
DeepMind
University of Alberta
Canada
About Michael Brudno

Michael Brudno

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
University Health Network (UHN)
University of Toronto
Vector Institute
Canada
About Dieter Büchler

Dieter Büchler

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Amii
MPI for Intelligent Systems
University of Alberta
Canada
About Neil Burch

Neil Burch

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Amii
Sony AI
University of Alberta
Canada
About Danilo Bzdok

Danilo Bzdok

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
IVADO
McGill University
Mila
Canada
About Sarath Chandar

Sarath Chandar

Canada CIFAR AI Chair
Solution Network Member

Integrated AI for Health Imaging
Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
École Polytechnique de Montréal
Indian Institute of Technology Madras
Mila
Université de Montréal
Canada
About Angel Chang

Angel Chang

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Amii
Simon Fraser University
Canada
About Laurent Charlin

Laurent Charlin

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
HEC Montréal
Mila
Université de Montréal
Canada
About Mo Chen

Mo Chen

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Amii
Simon Fraser University
Canada
About Wenhu Chen

Wenhu Chen

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
University of Waterloo
Vector Institute
Canada
About Jackie Chi Kit Cheung

Jackie Chi Kit Cheung

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
McGill University
Microsoft
Mila
Canada
About Jeff Clune

Jeff Clune

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Google DeepMind
University of British Columbia
Vector Institute
Canada
About Aaron Courville

Aaron Courville

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Mila
Université de Montréal
Canada
About Marc-Antoine Dilhac

Marc-Antoine Dilhac

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Mila
Université de Montréal
Canada
About Christophe Dubach

Christophe Dubach

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
McGill University
Mila
Canada
About Audrey Durand

Audrey Durand

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Mila
Université Laval
Canada
About David Duvenaud

David Duvenaud

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
University of Toronto
Vector Institute
Canada
About Murat Erdogdu

Murat Erdogdu

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
University of Toronto
Vector Institute
Canada
About Golnoosh Farnadi

Golnoosh Farnadi

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
McGill University
Mila
Canada
About Sanja Fidler

Sanja Fidler

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
NVIDIA
University of Toronto
Vector Institute
Canada
About David Fleet

David Fleet

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
University of Toronto
Vector Institute
Canada
About Alona Fyshe

Alona Fyshe

Fellow
Canada CIFAR AI Chair
CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar 2016-2018

Learning in Machines & Brains
Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Amii
University of Alberta
Canada
About Christian Gagné

Christian Gagné

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Mila
Université Laval
Canada
About Gauthier Gidel

Gauthier Gidel

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Mila
Université de Montréal
Canada
About Anna Goldenberg

Anna Goldenberg

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Hospital for Sick Children
University of Toronto
Vector Institute
Canada
About Russell Greiner

Russell Greiner

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Amii
University of Alberta
Canada
About Roger Grosse

Roger Grosse

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Anthropic
University of Toronto
Vector Institute
Canada
About Yuhong Guo

Yuhong Guo

Canada CIFAR AI Chair
National Program Committee member

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Amii
Carleton University
Canada
About Matthew Guzdial

Matthew Guzdial

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Amii
University of Alberta
Canada
About Gillian Hadfield

Gillian Hadfield

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Schwartz Reisman Institute
University of Toronto
Vector Institute
Canada
About Xi He

Xi He

Canada CIFAR AI Chair
National Program Committee member

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
University of Waterloo
Vector Institute
Canada
About Nidhi Hegde

Nidhi Hegde

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Amii
University of Alberta
Canada
About Jacob L. Jaremko

Jacob L. Jaremko

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Amii
University of Alberta
Canada
About Bei Jiang

Bei Jiang

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Amii
University of Alberta
Canada
About Samira Ebrahimi Kahou

Samira Ebrahimi Kahou

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
McGill University
Mila
University of Calgary
Canada
About Gautam Kamath

Gautam Kamath

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
University of Waterloo
Vector Institute
Canada
About Foutse Khomh

Foutse Khomh

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
IVADO
Mila
Polytechnique Montréal
Canada
About Linglong Kong

Linglong Kong

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Amii
University of Alberta
Canada
About Rahul G. Krishnan

Rahul G. Krishnan

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
University of Toronto
Vector Institute
Canada
About Simon Lacoste-Julien

Simon Lacoste-Julien

Associate Fellow
Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Learning in Machines & Brains
Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Mila
Samsung SAIT AI Lab in Montreal
Université de Montréal
Canada
About Guillaume Lajoie

Guillaume Lajoie

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Mila
Université de Montréal
Canada
About Levi H. S. Lelis

Levi H. S. Lelis

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Amii
University of Alberta
Canada
About Kevin Leyton-Brown

Kevin Leyton-Brown

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Amii
University of British Columbia
Canada
About Xiaoxiao Li

Xiaoxiao Li

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
University of British Columbia
Vector Institute
Yale University
Canada
About Shuang Li

Shuang Li

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
University of Toronto
Vector Institute
Canada
About Renjie Liao

Renjie Liao

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
University of British Columbia
Vector Institute
Canada
About Bang Liu

Bang Liu

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Mila
Université de Montréal
Canada
About Lei Ma

Lei Ma

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Amii
University of Alberta
Canada
About Marlos C. Machado

Marlos C. Machado

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Amii
University of Alberta
Canada
About Chris J. Maddison

Chris J. Maddison

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
DeepMind
University of Toronto
Vector Institute
Canada
About Rupam Mahmood

Rupam Mahmood

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Amii
University of Alberta
Canada
About Sheila McIlraith

Sheila McIlraith

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society
University of Toronto
Vector Institute
Canada
About Joseph Ross Mitchell

Joseph Ross Mitchell

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Amii
University of Alberta
Canada
About Ioannis Mitliagkas

Ioannis Mitliagkas

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Mila
Université de Montréal
Canada
About Lili Mou

Lili Mou

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Amii
University of Alberta
Canada
About Parvin Mousavi

Parvin Mousavi

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Queen's University
Vector Institute
Canada
About Eilif B. Muller

Eilif B. Muller

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
CHU Sainte-Justine Research Center
Mila
Université de Montréal
Canada
About Martin Müller

Martin Müller

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Amii
University of Alberta
Canada
About Derek Nowrouzezahrai

Derek Nowrouzezahrai

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
McGill University
Mila
Canada
About Timothy O’Donnell

Timothy O’Donnell

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
McGill University
Mila
Canada
About Adam Oberman

Adam Oberman

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
McGill University
Mila
Canada
About Christopher Pal

Christopher Pal

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Mila
Polytechnique Montréal
Canada
About Nicolas Papernot

Nicolas Papernot

Co-Director, Canadian AI Safety Institute Research Program (CAISI) at CIFAR
Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Schwartz Reisman Institute
University of Toronto
Vector Institute
Canada
About Courtney Paquette

Courtney Paquette

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
McGill University
Mila
Canada
About Mijung Park

Mijung Park

Canada CIFAR AI Chair (on leave)

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Amii
University of British Columbia
Canada
About Liam Paull

Liam Paull

Canada CIFAR AI Chair
National Program Committee member

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Mila
Université de Montréal
Canada
About Gennady Pekhimenko

Gennady Pekhimenko

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
University of Toronto
Vector Institute
Canada
About Patrick M. Pilarski

Patrick M. Pilarski

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Amii
University of Alberta
Canada
About Joelle Pineau

Joelle Pineau

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
McGill University
Mila
Canada
About Toniann Pitassi

Toniann Pitassi

Canada CIFAR AI Chair (on leave)

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
University of Toronto
Vector Institute
Canada
About Geoff Pleiss

Geoff Pleiss

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
University of British Columbia
Vector Institute
Canada
About Pascal Poupart

Pascal Poupart

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
University of Waterloo
Vector Institute
Canada
About Doina Precup

Doina Precup

Associate Fellow
Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Learning in Machines & Brains
Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
DeepMind
McGill University
Mila
Canada
About Reihaneh Rabbany

Reihaneh Rabbany

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
McGill University
Mila
Canada
About Guillaume Rabusseau

Guillaume Rabusseau

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Mila
Université de Montréal
Canada
About Colin Raffel

Colin Raffel

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Hugging Face
University of Toronto
Vector Institute
Canada
About Siamak Ravanbakhsh

Siamak Ravanbakhsh

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
McGill University
Mila
Canada
About Siva Reddy

Siva Reddy

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
McGill University
Mila
Canada
About Catherine Régis

Catherine Régis

Co-Director, Canadian AI Safety Institute Research Program (CAISI) at CIFAR
Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Mila
Université de Montréal
Canada
About Blake Richards

Blake Richards

Fellow
Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Learning in Machines & Brains
Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
McGill University
Mila
Canada
About Irina Rish

Irina Rish

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Mila
Université de Montréal
Canada
About Elina Robeva

Elina Robeva

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Amii
University of British Columbia
Canada
About Geoffrey Rockwell

Geoffrey Rockwell

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Amii
University of Alberta
Canada
About David Rolnick

David Rolnick

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
McGill University
Mila
Canada
About Adriana Romero-Soriano

Adriana Romero-Soriano

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
FAIR (Meta AI)
McGill University
Mila
Canada
About Daniel Roy

Daniel Roy

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
University of Toronto
University of Toronto Scarborough
Vector Institute
Canada
About Frank Rudzicz

Frank Rudzicz

Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Dalhousie University
Vector Institute
Canada
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