Vector Institute boosts AI faculty roster, gets $30M funding to get more master’s students to go into AI

The Vector Institute in Toronto is doubling its team of experts in artificial intelligence with 10 new faculty members joining its roster. The not-for-profit group — launched by the Univ of Toronto and an impressive group of AI companies — also announced that it is managing new funds from the Ontario government that will help boost more talent to advance Canada’s lead in AI. The 10 new faculty members to be joining Vector Institute for 2017-18 are mostly PhD graduates with mutli-disciplinary expertise and experience in Canada and beyond the borders. They are experts in deep learning, machine learning, natural language processing, machine vision, quantum computing research, health care and music. Vector Institute, which was set up this year and has received plenty of support from government and industry, says it is attracting some top talent because of opportunities to collaborate to do research and launch a startup. The new faculty members are: Jimmy Ba; Juan Felipe Carrasquilla; Murat  Erdogdu; David J Fleet; Marzyeh Ghassemi; Anna Goldenberg; Alireza Makhzani; Sageev Oore; Pascal Poupart; and Frank Rudzicz. Vector Institute is also using the new $30 million in funding it is managing from the Ontario government to help get new master’s students into AI and related disciplines. The funds are intended to graduate 1,000 Applied Master’s students in AI and related fields per year within five years. Details on funding for master’s students will be available soon.