Graham W. Taylor

Graham W. Taylor is a Professor at the University of Guelph, holding the Canada Research Chair in Machine Learning and Canada CIFAR AI Chair. He leads the Machine Learning Research Group and serves as Academic Director at NextAI, with affiliations to the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

• PhD in Computer Science from University of Toronto (2009)
• Postdoc at Courant Institute, New York University (2010-2012)

His research focuses on deep learning with emphasis on human-centred AI systems, generative modeling, graph representation learning, and sequential decision making. Applied projects leverage computer vision to address biodiversity loss, leading to datasets like BIOSCAN-5M and BIOSCAN-1M. Recent work explores state space models, transformers, and token clustering in vision transformers.

Key scientific contributions recognized through Canada's Top 40 under 40 (2018) and Canada CIFAR AI Chair (2019). His group has received NSERC and OGS funding, with students winning awards like the Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplement and NSF + NSERC grant for biodiversity projects.

Former students include PhD graduates like Angus Galloway, Boris Knyazev, and Kristina Kupferschmidt, alongside Master’s students such as Rylee Thompson, Sara El-Shawa, and Mahmoud Gamal. Current advisees include PhD student Kristina Kupferschmidt and Master’s students Tiancheng Gao and Mohamed Mostafa.

• Co-founder of Deep Biologics
• Current advisor to 17+ students and postdocs
• Formerly at Google Brain (2018-2019)