Catherine Régis
Appointment
Co-Director, Canadian AI Safety Institute Research Program (CAISI) at CIFAR
Canada CIFAR AI Chair
Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
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About
Appointed Canada CIFAR AI Chair – 2023
Catherine Régis is Full Professor at the Faculty of Law of Université de Montréal (UdeM), an Associate Academic Member at Mila, the Director of Social Innovation and International Policy at IVADO as well as an Intellectual Forum Senior Research Associate at Jesus College in the University of Cambridge. She holds a Canada CIFAR AI Chair and a Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy. From 2021 to 2023, she was UdeM’s Associate Vice-Rector for Strategic Planning and Responsible Digital Innovation.
Most of her work explores how to best regulate AI at the national and international levels and to build responsible AI governance approaches more broadly. She is especially interested in guiding the development of norms for the health care sector to ensure that AI is accessible and safe for patients and health care professionals. She is also focusing on a better integration of human rights perspectives throughout the entire AI life cycle. She leads or collaborates on various research and applied policy projects which build on such perspective. As illustrations, she works on the development of AI Human Rights Impact Assessments as well as AI policies for gender equality and diversity, fair elections processes, sustainable cities and global governance.
Prof. Régis is active on the international scene. In 2022, she was appointed Cochair of the Working Group on Responsible AI of the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI), which comprises 29 member states (including Canada, France, Germany, India, Japan and the USA) for a period of two years. From 2020 to 2024, she led the Working Group on Responsible Digital Innovation and AI of the U7+ Alliance, which includes more than 50 universities from around the world. In 2022, she was a selected Fellow for the UN’s Institute for Training and Research’s program (UNITAR) in Science Diplomacy, and, in 2024, she became part of the Technical Committee for UNESCO’s AI and the Rule of Law Program. She has presented her work at various major institutions (such as the OECD, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, the Alan Turing Institute, the Supreme Court of Canada, the Aspen Ministers Forum) as well as in high-level conferences (including the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in 2023 and NeurIPS). She is involved in the development of Science Diplomacy, which aims at building leadership and communication skills to bridge science and diplomacy in policymaking at the national and international levels. She participated in the elaboration of the Montreal Declaration on Responsible AI.
Awards
- Co-Chair of the Working Group on Responsible AI, Global Partnership on AI (GPAI) (2022-2024)
- Selected Fellow for the Science Diplomacy training program, United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) (2022)
- Recipient of a Canada Research Chair, Government of Canada, Canada Research Chairs Program (2013-2024)
Relevant Publications
- Régis, C. et al. (eds.) (2024). Human-Centered AI: a Multidisciplinary Perspective for Policy- Makers, Auditors and Users, Routlegde Press, UK.
- Prud’Homme, B., Régis, C. & Farnadi, G. (eds.) (2023). Missing links in AI Governance, UNESCO press., 471 p
- Régis, C. & Gaumond, E. (2023). “Assessing The Impacts of AI on Human Rights”, National, The Canadian Bar Association, available online: https://nationalmagazine.ca/en-ca/articles/law/in- depth/2023/evaluer-les-impacts-de-l-ia-sur-les-droits- fondamentaux?_ga=2.182625510.1965932232.1678289019- 1423263494.1678289019&_gl=1*1ukbvo5*_ga*MTQyMzI2MzQ5NC4xNjc4Mjg5MDE5*_ga_YT MHKDEBK2*MTY3ODI4OTAxOS4xLjAuMTY3ODI4OTAxOS4wLjAuMA..
- Koseki, S., Jameson, S., Farnadi, G., Rolnick, D., Régis, C., & Denis, J-L. (2022). AI & Cities: Risks, Applications and Governance, White paper for United Nations Habitat (UN-Habitat) available online : https://unhabitat.org/sites/default/files/2022/10/artificial_intelligence_and_cities_risks_applica tions_and_governance.pdf
- Flood, C. & Régis, C. (2021). “Artificial intelligence and Health Law” in Scassa, T. & Marin- Bariteau, F. (eds..), Artificial Intelligence and the Law in Canada, Lexis Nexis, pp. 205-227.