CIFAR Names Seven AI Chairs in First Cohort Under AI for All

Canada’s national AI research network grew again on October 6. CIFAR, which runs the Canada CIFAR AI Chairs program, named seven researchers to it: six new appointments and one renewal. The cohort is backed by nearly $4.5 million in total allocated funding from the Government of Canada, according to CIFAR’s announcement distributed through PressReleasePoint.

The timing matters as much as the size. CIFAR says this is the first cohort released since Ottawa launched its AI for All strategy, and it is funded under Phase II of the national AI strategy. The new chairs join the 149 already appointed at the three National AI Institutes: Amii in Edmonton, Mila in Montréal and the Vector Institute in Toronto. CIFAR plans to grow the program to close to 200 chairs under AI for All.

Five of the seven are attached to Mila. Felix Dangel of Concordia University works on faster, more interpretable ways to optimize neural networks. David Meger of McGill University focuses on physical AI and robots that learn in the field, while his McGill colleague AJung Moon studies robot ethics and human-robot interaction, with an eye to practical governance frameworks. Eva Portelance of HEC Montréal works where AI, linguistics and cognitive science meet. Amir-massoud Farahmand of Polytechnique Montréal was renewed for his research on agents that keep improving as they interact with their environment. On the Amii side, Martin Ester of Simon Fraser University is building scientific AI agents and generative molecular models for precision medicine, and Peter West of the University of British Columbia studies the limits of large language models and of alignment through human feedback.

What it means in practice

Chairs are the long game of Canadian AI policy: they pay to keep senior researchers, and the students they train, in the country. CIFAR says the program graduates 250 highly qualified trainees every year. “This group of researchers represent the exceptional talent driving Canada’s continued global leadership in artificial intelligence,” said Elissa Strome, executive director of the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy at CIFAR.

The appointments add to a busy season for talent spending, from the $162 million Mitacs AI Advantage placement program to Ontario’s $30 million for the Vector Institute. The cohort’s focus on robotics and governance also lines up with the safety questions handed to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s new national council on AI.

What to watch: whether the next cohort includes chairs based at the Vector Institute, how quickly the program moves toward its 200-chair goal, and whether AI for All funding keeps Canadian offers competitive for senior researchers.