About
Appointed Canada CIFAR AI Chair – 2025
Kelsey Allen is a Canada CIFAR AI Chair at the Vector Institute and an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia. Her research tackles a fundamental aspect of human and machine intelligence: how we understand and interact with the world. Humans intuitively solve many problems, from simple tasks like using a broom to get something from underneath a couch to grand engineering challenges like designing wind turbines. Replicating this ability in machines remains a major hurdle. Her research program develops a new approach by building AI that learns “world models” much like humans do by developing advanced simulators trained on real-world data. This research will unlock new possibilities in human-AI interaction, robotics, design and beyond.
Awards
- Glushko International Dissertation Prize, Cognitive Science Society, 2022
- Best Paper Award, Robotics: Science and Systems, 2018
- Postgraduate Scholarship – Doctoral Program, NSERC, 2016
Relevant Publications
- Allen, K., Brändle, F., Botvinick, M., Fan, J. E., Gershman, S. J., Gopnik, A., ... and Schulz, E. (2024). “Using games to understand the mind.” Nature human behaviour, 8(6), 1035-1043.
- Allen, K. R., Rubanova, Y., Lopez-Guevara, T., Whitney, W. F., Sanchez-Gonzalez, A., Battaglia, P., and Pfaff, T. (2023). “Learning rigid dynamics with face interaction graph networks.” The Eleventh International Conference on Learning Representations.
- Allen, K., Lopez-Guevara, T., Stachenfeld, K. L., Sanchez Gonzalez, A., Battaglia, P., Hamrick, J. B., and Pfaff, T. (2022). “Inverse design for fluid-structure interactions using graph network simulators.” Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 35, 13759-13774.
- Allen, K. R., Smith, K. A., and Tenenbaum, J. B. (2020). “Rapid trial-and-error learning with simulation supports flexible tool use and physical reasoning.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(47), 29302-29310.
- Toussaint, M. A., Allen, K. R., Smith, K. A., and Tenenbaum, J. B. (2018). “Differentiable physics and stable modes for tool-use and manipulation planning.” Robotics: Science and Systems.