Fellows & Advisors
ROLES
CIFAR fellows, scholars, and advisors advance knowledge across disciplines.
Researchers are invited to participate in CIFAR programs for their excellence in research and communication, as well as for how their expertise fits into the goals of a program.
Advisor
Preeminent scholars in their field are selected for their professional reputation and their capacity to provide guidance and advice to CIFAR and their research programs. Each program has approximately 6-8 advisors working as a committee.
Fellow
An outstanding researcher who is internationally recognized for conducting innovative studies that lead to high-impact advances in their fields. A fellow joins a program at the invitation of the program co-directors and advisors to provide research expertise to the program’s themes and goals. They receive annual unrestricted research support.
Associate Fellow
Outstanding, internationally recognized researchers who join a program at the invitation of the program co-directors and advisors to provide research expertise to the program’s themes and goals.
Program Director
A fellow who has a strong vision for the program and the ability to motivate and lead a multidisciplinary group of scholars to make progress toward the program’s transformative knowledge creation may be invited to serve as a program co-director.
Co-directors have demonstrated intellectual leadership and a willingness and openness to extend dialogue across traditional disciplinary boundaries. In some instances, a program may choose to appoint an associate director as a leadership opportunity for emerging scholars.
CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar
Outstanding early-career researchers, recognized as rising stars in their field for their potential as future research leaders. Representing a wide range of disciplines and countries, they are selected to participate for two years in one of CIFAR’s research programs and receive unrestricted research support.
Hiroaki Kitano
Advisor
The Systems Biology Institute
Dorit Aharonov
Advisor
Nausheen Hafeeza Anwar
Advisor
Fraser Armstrong
Advisor
Keith Banting
Advisor
Yoshua Bengio
Advisory Committee Chair
Canada CIFAR AI Chair
Pan-Canadian AI Strategy
Mila
Université de Montréal
Roger Blandford
Advisor
Martin Blaser
Advisory Committee Co-Chair
Gilles Brassard
Advisor
Kate Brown
Advisory Committee Co-Chair
Arturo Casadevall
Advisor
Richard Cogdell
Advisory Committee Chair
Elizabeth Croft
Advisor
Andrea Danese
Advisory Committee Chair
Catherine Dauvergne
Advisor
Kay Davies
Advisor
Stanislas Dehaene
Advisor
David Denning
Advisor
Stanislav Dusko Ehrlich
Advisor
Maryann Feldman
Advisor
Gabriela González
Advisor
Melvyn Goodale
Advisory Committee Chair
Alison Gopnik
Fellow
Advisor
Learning in Machines & Brains
Neil Gow
Advisor
Sarah Jane Gurr
Advisory Committee Chair
Maria J. Harrison
Advisor
Susan Helper
Advisor
National Bureau of Economic Research
Nigel Hussey
Advisory Committee Chair
University of Bristol
United Kingdom
Fumio Inagaki
Advisor
Shaffiq Jaffer
Advisor
Pavel Kabat
Advisor
Regine Kahmann
Advisor
Raymond Laflamme
Advisory Committee Chair
Hugo Larochelle
Advisory Committee Member
Mila
Université de Montréal
Yann LeCun
Advisor
Facebook Professor
New York University
Ulman Lindenberger
Advisor
Allan Macdonald
Advisor
Rafael Malach
Tanenbaum Advisor
Hazel Markus
Advisor
Successful Societies
