Dr. Anwar Haque is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Western University, Canada, and a Faculty of Science Distinguished Research Professor. He holds a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering and an M.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo. Prior to academia, he was Associate Director at Bell Canada. His research focuses on 5G networks, IoT, cybersecurity, AI, and autonomous systems, with over 100 peer-reviewed publications and $15M in collaborative grants. Dr. Haque leads the Western Information & Networking Group (WING) Lab and is the founder/CEO of Bamboo Innovations Inc., a tech startup developing socially responsible smart technologies. Leadership roles include industry expert-in-residence in the Faculty of Science, Undergraduate Chair of the Computer Science Department, and member of Western’s Senate. He has delivered over 30 keynote talks and media features include BBC Earth and The Globe and Mail. Awards include the IEEE CCECE Leadership Award and multiple grants from NSERC, MITACS, and Bell Canada. His work spans network reliability, smart grids, and cybersecurity, with industry partnerships like the Bell-Western 5G Research Centre.
Sheila McIlraith is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, holding the Canada CIFAR AI Chair at the Vector Institute and serving as Associate Director and Research Lead at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. Her research spans AI safety, ethics, reinforcement learning, and knowledge representation, with a focus on human-compatible AI and long-term societal impacts. Her career includes six years as a Research Scientist at Stanford University and a year at Xerox PARC. McIlraith’s work has been recognized through ACM and AAAI fellowships, as well as prestigious awards like the SWSA 10-Year Award (2011) and the CAIAC Lifetime Achievement Award (2024). Research Interests: AI Safety and Alignment Human-Compatible AI Reinforcement Learning with Ethical Constraints Semantic Web Services Cognitive Robotics and Diagnostic Systems Probabilistic and Logical Reasoning Recent Contributions: Her work emphasizes ethical AI integration, such as the Embedded Ethics Education Initiative (E3I), and addresses challenges in long-term AI risks, multi-agent systems, and interpretable decision-making frameworks. Awards and Honors: ACM Fellow AAAI Fellow 2023 IJCAI-JAIR Best Paper Prize 2024 CAIAC Lifetime Achievement Award Labs and Teams: McIlraith leads initiatives at the Schwartz Reisman Institute and contributes to the Vector Institute, focusing on societal and ethical dimensions of AI technology.
Tim G. J. Rudner is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistical Sciences at the University of Toronto, a Faculty Member at the Vector Institute, and a Title A Fellow at Trinity College, University of Cambridge. He was previously an Assistant Professor and Faculty Fellow at New York University. University: University of Toronto School: Faculty of Arts and Science Department: Department of Statistical Sciences Affiliation: Vector Institute, Trinity College (Cambridge) He holds a PhD in Computer Science and an MSc in Statistics from the University of Oxford, where he was advised by Yee Whye Teh and Yarin Gal, and a BS in Applied Mathematics and Economics from Yale University. PhD: Computer Science, University of Oxford MSc: Statistics, University of Oxford BS: Applied Mathematics and Economics, Yale University His research focuses on building robust, transparent, and trustworthy machine learning systems, particularly for high-stakes applications. He develops probabilistic models that improve generalization under distribution shifts, provide reliable uncertainty estimates, and enable fair and interpretable predictions. His work spans generative models, large language models, healthcare, and biomedical discovery. The recent publications highlight a strong trend toward function-space modeling, Bayesian regularization, and AI safety. Tim's work emphasizes principled uncertainty quantification, robustness to subpopulation and semantic shifts, and the development of frameworks for AI governance and specification. His research bridges theoretical advances with real-world applications, especially in safety-critical domains like medicine and defense. Tim has received numerous accolades including being named a Rhodes Scholar, Qualcomm Innovation Fellow, and 2024 Rising Star in Generative AI. He was awarded a $700,000 Foundational Research Grant and a $30,000 Apple Seed Grant for improving LLM trustworthiness. Rhodes Scholar Qualcomm Innovation Fellow AISTATS Notable Paper Award (2024) Outstanding Paper Award, ICLR GenAI4DM Workshop (2024) Apple Seed Grant ($30,000) Foundational Research Grant ($700,000) NeurIPS Spotlight Talk 2024 Rising Star in Generative AI He actively mentors students, particularly first-generation and low-income scholars, and has contributed to major policy frameworks including the OECD AI Classification Framework and a series of CSET issue briefs on AI safety. His work demonstrates a strong commitment to responsible AI development, combining technical rigor with societal impact. Tim leads research efforts at the intersection of machine learning theory and practical deployment, with ongoing projects in generative modeling, reliable LLMs, and AI governance. His lab produces high-impact work regularly published at top-tier conferences such as NeurIPS, ICML, and AISTATS.
Qianwen Wang is a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Computer Science department at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Her research combines interactive visualization with interpretable machine learning to foster intuitive, efficient, and reliable Human-AI collaboration. She actively seeks motivated students, research assistants, and interns to join her dynamic research team at UMN CS. Dr. Wang's research focuses on three primary themes: Human-AI Collaboration, where she designs tools to facilitate Human-AI interaction; Automatic & Intelligent Visualization, where she develops techniques to make visualizations accurately interpreted and easily used; and VIS+(X)AI in Biomed/Healthcare, where she studies how visualization and explainable AI can promote scientific discoveries in biomedicine and healthcare. Her work has made significant contributions to visualization, human-computer interaction, and bioinformatics, with particular applications in biomedical knowledge graphs and single-cell omics analysis. Her recent publications demonstrate a strong trend toward integrating visualization with large language models and graph neural networks for biomedical applications. She has published extensively at top venues including IEEE VIS, ACM CHI, and Nature Medicine, with a focus on making AI systems more interpretable and useful for domain experts, particularly in healthcare contexts. Her work often bridges theoretical advances in visualization with practical applications in genomics and healthcare. Two IEEE VIS Honorable Mention Awards (2022, 2024) Best Paper Award from IMLH@ICML 2021 Two Best Abstract Awards from BioVis ISMB (2021, 2022) HDSI Postdoctoral Research Fund Award Research covered by MIT News and Nature Technology Features Dr. Wang actively contributes to the academic community through service roles including General Chair for ISMB BioVis, VisNotes and Poster Chair for IEEE PacificVis, and Program Committee member for IEEE VIS, ACM CHI, and ACM IUI. Her research has been supported by various grants that enable her team to develop innovative visualization techniques and explore their practical applications in biomedical domains. Her research group maintains an active presence in the visualization and HCI communities, with members participating in major conferences and workshops. The lab focuses on creating tools that bridge the gap between complex AI models and human understanding, with particular emphasis on making these technologies accessible and useful for domain experts in biomedical research.
Geoffrey Pleiss is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of British Columbia's Faculty of Science. He is also a CIFAR AI Chair at the Vector Institute and an inaugural member of CAIDA's AIM-SI (AI Methods for Scientific Impact) cluster. His work bridges statistical theory, machine learning, and computational methods with applications across various scientific domains. Pleiss received his PhD from the Computer Science department at Cornell University in 2020, where he was advised by Kilian Weinberger and worked closely with Andrew Gordon Wilson. Prior to his faculty position at UBC, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University with John P. Cunningham. His research focuses on the intersection of deep learning and probabilistic modeling, particularly on developing heuristic and approximate notions of uncertainty from machine learning models. His work has significant implications for reliable and optimal decision-making in experimental design and scientific discovery. Major research thrusts include neural network uncertainty quantification, Bayesian optimization, Gaussian processes, and ensemble methods. Pleiss develops theoretical frameworks while maintaining strong connections to practical applications across scientific domains. An analysis of his recent publications reveals a strong focus on uncertainty quantification in deep learning models, with particular attention to the limitations and capabilities of ensemble methods in the era of overparameterized models. His work increasingly addresses practical challenges in Bayesian optimization for scientific discovery, especially in materials science. There's also a growing emphasis on computational efficiency in Gaussian process methods, reflecting his commitment to making advanced statistical techniques accessible for real-world applications. CIFAR AI Chair Pleiss currently advises several graduate students including Donney Fan (PhD, Computer Science), Tim G. Zhou (MSc, Computer Science), Zachary Lau (MSc, Statistics), Nathan Cantafio (BSc, Statistics), and Tristan Cinquin (Research Intern at Vector Institute). His research is supported by multiple funding sources including his CIFAR AI Chair position, which provides significant research resources for advancing machine learning methodologies with scientific impact. Pleiss co-created and maintains GPyTorch, a highly efficient and modular implementation of Gaussian processes in PyTorch designed for speed, modularity, and prototyping. He is also involved with CoLA (Compositional Linear Algebra), a library for structured linear algebra operations in JAX and PyTorch that enables fast linear algebra computations by automatically exploiting matrix structure.
Ming Hu is a Professor and University of Toronto Distinguished Professor of Business Operations and Analytics at Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. He serves as Area Coordinator for the Operations Management & Statistics Area and holds editorial leadership roles including Editor-in-Chief of Naval Research Logistics and Associate Editor for multiple top journals. MS in Applied Mathematics, Brown University (2003) PhD in Operations Research, Columbia University (2009) His research focuses on sharing economy , social operations , and platform economics , examining how operational decisions can maximize societal benefit. Key areas include crowdfunding , two-sided markets , crowdsourcing , and group buying , with applications to DEI , sustainability , and AI-empowered operations . Recent work analyzes spatial operations in delivery systems, algorithmic fairness , and climate change adaptation in agricultural supply chains. His publications span top journals like Management Science and Operations Research , covering topics from blockchain traceability to quantum-inspired optimization . Scientific recognitions include: Wickham Skinner Early-Career Research Award (2016) Best Operations Management Paper in Management Science (2017) 2018 Poets & Quants Best 40 Under 40 MBA Professors As an Amazon Scholar (2022–) and Chair of Chain Analytics Institute (2023–), he bridges academic research with industry applications in AI-driven logistics and sustainable operations.
David B. Lindell is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, with affiliations to the Vector Institute and AXL. He is a founding member of the Toronto Computational Imaging Group. His research focuses on physically based intelligent sensing, integrating physical models, signal processing, and AI to advance sensing systems. Notable projects include imaging around corners, through scattering media, and developing machine learning algorithms for 3D scene reconstruction. Education: Ph.D. in Computational Imaging from Stanford University (advisor: Gordon Wetzstein). Awards include the 2024 Ontario Early Researcher Award and the Best Student Paper at CVPR 2025. His work combines computational imaging with applications in computer graphics and autonomous systems. Research interests span non-line-of-sight imaging, single-photon sensing, and neural representations. Key contributions include the Light-Cone Transform (Nature 2018), confocal diffuse tomography (Nature Communications 2020), and AutoInt (CVPR 2021). His lab develops systems for 3D reconstruction, transient imaging, and photon-efficient sensors. Selected grants and support: NSF CAREER Award, DARPA REVEAL program, and KAUST Visual Computing Center funding. Active collaborations with industry and academic institutions on autonomous driving and medical imaging applications.
Mark Crowley is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo, with a cross-appointment in the Cheriton School of Computer Science. He is a member of the Waterloo Artificial Intelligence Institute (WAII) and the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation (WICI), and serves as National Secretary of the Canadian Artificial Intelligence Association (CAIAC). His educational background includes a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of British Columbia, where he worked in the Laboratory for Computational Intelligence, and a B.A. in Computer Science from York University. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Oregon State University working with Tom Dietterich's machine learning group. Crowley's research focuses on developing dependable and transparent algorithms to augment human decision-making in complex domains with multiple agents, spatial structure, or uncertainty. His work spans Reinforcement Learning , Deep Learning , Ensemble Methods , and Manifold Learning . He frequently collaborates with researchers in applied fields including Computational Sustainability, Sustainable Forest Management, Autonomous Driving, Medical Imaging, and Material Design. His research is motivated by both theoretical opportunities and real-world challenges such as forest fire management, automotive applications, and medical imaging. His recent publications demonstrate a strong focus on addressing challenges in reinforcement learning, particularly around observation costs, multi-agent systems, and causal representation learning. His work on ChemGymRL provides a significant contribution to digital chemistry and material design through reinforcement learning frameworks. The textbook Elements of Dimensionality Reduction and Manifold Learning represents a major contribution to the theoretical foundations of machine learning. Crowley actively supervises graduate students, with recent thesis completions including Shayan Shirahmadi Gale Bagi (PhD, Feb 2025) and Oleksandra Nahorna (MASc, Dec 2024). His lab, UWECEML (Waterloo ECE Machine Learning Lab), focuses on developing new algorithms at the intersection of Machine Learning, Optimization, and Probabilistic Modeling. He teaches courses including ECE 457C (Reinforcement Learning), ECE 657A (Data & Knowledge Modelling & Analysis), and ECE 457B (Fundamentals of Computational Intelligence). His blog Computationally Thinking explores AI, machine learning, and the societal impact of these technologies.
Mikhail (Misha) Belkin is a Professor at the Halicioglu Data Science Institute (HDSI) at the University of California San Diego , with an affiliated appointment in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering . He is also an Amazon Scholar , reflecting his impactful industry collaboration. Since January 2024, he has served as the Editor-in-Chief of the SIAM Journal on Mathematics of Data Science (SIMODS) . Research Interests: Belkin's research centers on the theoretical foundations of machine learning, particularly the mathematical understanding of modern deep learning. His work investigates interpolation , over-parameterization , and feature learning in neural networks. He is renowned for introducing the double descent risk curve, which reconciles classical bias-variance trade-offs with the success of overfitted models. His recent work identifies the Average Gradient Outer Product (AGOP) as a fundamental mechanism of feature learning, applicable across architectures like CNNs and transformers. Scientific Contributions and Trends: His recent publications, appearing in Science , PNAS , and NeurIPS , demonstrate a strong trend toward unifying theories of generalization and optimization in over-parameterized systems. He explores how interpolating models can be statistically optimal, how gradient descent converges in non-convex landscapes via the PL* condition, and how kernel methods can be enhanced to perform feature learning. ACM Fellow (2023) Editor-in-Chief, SIAM Journal on Mathematics of Data Science (2024–present) Advising and Grants: Belkin actively mentors students and collaborators such as Adityanarayanan Radhakrishnan , Daniel Beaglehole , and Chaoyue Liu , who are frequent co-authors. He is a Principal Investigator (PI) in the Collaboration on the Theoretical Foundations of Deep Learning , funded by the NSF and Simons Foundation. He is also an external collaborator with the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center at the Broad Institute and part of the NSF-funded TILOS AI Institute . Laboratories and Teams: While not explicitly named, his research group at UCSD is deeply involved in theoretical machine learning, focusing on the intersection of statistics, optimization, and deep learning. His work often involves large-scale collaborations and is closely tied to initiatives like SIMODS and TILOS.
David Duvenaud is an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto , holding a Canada Research Chair in Generative Models and a Schwartz Reisman Chair in Technology and Society . He is cross-appointed to the Department of Computer Science and Department of Statistical Sciences . A Sloan Research Fellow and founding member of the Vector Institute , his work bridges deep probabilistic models , AI safety , and scientific computing . PhD in Machine Learning (University of Cambridge, 2014) Postdoc in Hyperparameter Optimization (Harvard University, 2016) Co-founded Invenia (energy forecasting company) His research spans foundational Neural Ordinary Differential Equations (NeurIPS 2018 Best Paper) and Automatic Chemical Design (ACS Central Science 2018) to recent work on AGI governance (2025) and AI safety (2024). Key contributions include stochastic variational inference , implicit differentiation frameworks , and antisymmetrization layers for quantum Monte Carlo. Recent publications (2024-2025) focus on systemic existential risks from AI , many-shot jailbreaking attacks , and epistemic uncertainty quantification . His group trains energy-based models with scalable MCMC samplers and develops invertible neural architectures (e.g., Residual Flows NeurIPS 2019). He also explores human-AI alignment through LLM Processes (NeurIPS 2024) and Sycophancy in Language Models (ICLR 2024). Canada Research Chair (2025) NSERC Grant (2025) Sloan Research Fellow (2021) Schwartz Reisman Chair (2021) Best Paper Award (NeurIPS 2018) Distinguished Paper Award (ICFP 2021) His students include James Requeima , Jesse Bettencourt , and Raymond Douglas . He teaches courses on Statistical Methods for Machine Learning and Differentiable Inference . Current work (2025) investigates systemic human disempowerment through incremental AI capabilities and sabotage risk mitigation via hyperparameter-aware evaluations.
Hugo de Lasa is a Full Professor at the Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Western Ontario. He holds a Bachelor in Chemical Engineering (1968) from Universidad Nacional del Sur, Argentina, and a Doctoral degree (1971) from Université de Nancy, France. Research Focus: Catalysis, Photocatalysis, Chemical Reactor Engineering, Fluidization, Biomass Gasification Awards: Research Excellence Prize (1998), Fellow of the Chemical Institute of Canada (2000), Medal of Research and Development (2000), Doctor Honoris Causa (2004, 2018) His work spans chemical reactor design , photocatalytic hydrogen production , and fluidized bed technologies . Recent publications highlight machine learning applications in chemical equilibrium modeling and CO2 capture using microalgae. He founded the Chemical Reactor Engineering Centre (CREC) and Recat Technologies Inc. , a university spin-off commercializing reactor innovations. Awards include the Vanguard Award (2019) and Commemorative Issue in Catalysts Journal (2020). His research has generated 389 peer-reviewed publications , 14 patents , and over 10,000 citations .
Freda Shi is an Assistant Professor at the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo and a Faculty Member at the Vector Institute, where she holds a Canada CIFAR AI Chair. She joined the University of Waterloo in July 2024 after completing her Ph.D. at the Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago. Educational Background: Ph.D. in Computer Science, Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago (2024), advised by Professors Karen Livescu and Kevin Gimpel Bachelor's degree in Intelligence Science and Technology (Computer Science Track) with a minor in Sociology, Peking University (2018) Dr. Shi's research focuses on computational linguistics and natural language processing, particularly on deeper understandings of natural language and the human language processing mechanism. She is especially interested in learning language through grounding, computational multilingualism, and related machine learning aspects. Her work aims to inform the design of more efficient, effective, safe, and trustworthy NLP systems. She leads the CompLING Lab at the University of Waterloo, which investigates how language models process spatial relationships and acquire linguistic structures through grounded experiences. Her publication record shows a consistent trajectory of high-impact research, with recent work focusing on spatial reasoning in vision-language models, multilingual chain-of-thought capabilities, and grounded language acquisition. She has published in top-tier conferences including ACL, EMNLP, ICLR, and NAACL, with several papers receiving notable recognition including Best Paper Nominee status at multiple venues. Her research bridges theoretical linguistics with practical NLP applications, demonstrating how linguistic insights can improve AI systems. Scientific Recognition: Canada CIFAR AI Chair (2024) Google Ph.D. Fellowship Thesis of Distinction for her doctoral work Multiple Best Paper Nominee awards at major NLP conferences Dr. Shi teaches CS 784: Computational Linguistics and CS 486/686: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence at the University of Waterloo. She actively contributes to the NLP research community through conference participation, program committee service, and collaborative projects. Her research has significant implications for creating more robust, human-like language understanding systems and advancing the field of grounded language learning in artificial intelligence.
Amr Youssef is a Professor at the Concordia Institute for Information Systems Engineering, Concordia University. His research focuses on applied cryptography, network security, cyber-physical systems security, blockchain, and privacy. He has contributed extensively to securing smart grids, IoT devices, and web applications through cryptographic protocols and machine learning-driven solutions. His work addresses critical challenges in cybersecurity, including e-voting systems, fault-tolerant differential protection, and privacy-preserving communication protocols. He explores vulnerabilities in modern systems such as SSO permissions, JavaScript exploits, and stalkerware tools, while developing frameworks like MEGR-APT for APT detection and TEE-Receipt for non-repudiation. Youssef’s research integrates interdisciplinary approaches, combining cryptography with AI (e.g., vision transformers for power quality analysis) and leveraging trusted execution environments (TEE) for secure computing. His projects often involve collaboration with industrial standards (e.g., IEC 61850), emphasizing practical implementations in real-world systems.
Dr. Mi Jung Park is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia (UBC), part of the Faculty of Science. She is also a Canada CIFAR AI Chair at the Amii. Her research focuses on privacy-preserving machine learning, particularly differential privacy, synthetic data generation, and their applications in healthcare. She holds a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, supervised by Dr. Jonathan Pillow, and has held postdoctoral positions at the University of Amsterdam and University College London. Education : PhD, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Texas at Austin (2016) Master's, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Texas at Austin (2012) Bachelor's, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Hanyang University, Seoul, South Korea (2009) Research Interests : Her lab develops methods to balance privacy and accuracy in data analysis, emphasizing differential privacy's role in healthcare. Key areas include: Generating synthetic data with privacy guarantees Integrating fairness, interpretability, and causality into privacy-preserving models Bayesian techniques for model compression and uncertainty estimation Recent Work Trends : Her publications explore differential privacy in generative models (e.g., diffusion models, kernel methods) and neural network pruning. Recent work highlights privacy-preserving techniques for image classification, latent diffusion, and perceptual feature integration. Awards : Canada CIFAR AI Chair (2021). Advising & Grants : Supervises postdocs (e.g., Mingyu Kim), master's students (e.g., Amman Yusuf), and PhD candidates (e.g., Margarita Vinaroz). Her research is supported by the CIFAR AI Chair program and collaborations with institutions like the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. Labs & Teams : Leads the Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning Lab at UBC, advancing technologies to protect sensitive healthcare data while enabling clinical and research use.
Florian Kerschbaum is a Professor and NSERC/RBC Industrial Research Chair in Data Security at the Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo. His research focuses on data security and privacy, applied cryptography, and confidentiality in data science. Research interests span data collection/preparation management, secure multi-party computation, homomorphic encryption, differential privacy, and machine learning robustness/privacy. His work develops cryptographic solutions for practical data management challenges in distributed systems.
