The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) is a Canadian-based global research organization that brings together teams of top researchers from around the world to address important and complex questions. It was founded in 1982 and is supported by individuals, foundations and corporations, as well as funding from the

Government of Canada The government of Canada (french: gouvernement du Canada) is the body responsible for the federal administration of Canada. A constitutional monarchy, the Crown is the corporation sole, assuming distinct roles: the executive, as the ''Crown ...

and the provinces of

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

and

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

Operations

CIFAR staff supports more than 400 researchers from 22 countries and more than 130 institutions. Approximately half of the researchers are based in Canada and half are located abroad. The President and CEO is directly responsible to the

Chair A chair is a type of seat, typically designed for one person and consisting of one or more legs, a flat or slightly angled seat and a back-rest. They may be made of wood, metal, or synthetic materials, and may be padded or upholstered in vario ...

and the

Board of Directors A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit organiz ...

, who are responsible for funding allocation and approval of research programs. In May 2012,

Alan Bernstein Alan Bernstein (born June 25, 1947) is president and CEO of Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, CIFAR (the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research). He is recognized as a leader in health research, science policy, mentorship and organizati ...

became president and CEO. William L. Young is the chair of CIFAR's Board of Directors. CIFAR receives funding from a blend of governments, partnerships (research organizations and universities), private sector (corporations, foundations and individuals) and investment income. CIFAR's annual budget in 2018 was $30M. In 2017, CIFAR was chosen to develop and lead the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy.

Research programs

As of 2019, CIFAR supports research in 13 major multidisciplinary areas, grouped into four themes: Individuals & Society * Boundaries, Membership & Belonging (established 2019) * Innovation, Equity & the Future of Prosperity (established 2019) * Azrieli Program in Brain, Mind & Consciousness (established 2014) * Child & Brain Development (formerly known as Experience-based Brain and Biological Development, established 2003) Life & Health * Fungal Kingdom: Threats & Opportunities (established 2019) * Humans & the Microbiome (established 2014) Earth & Space * Earth 4D: Subsurface Science & Exploration (established 2019) * Gravity & the Extreme Universe (established 1986) Information & Matter * Bio-inspired Solar Energy (established 2014) * Learning in Machines & Brains (formerly known as

Neural Computation Neural computation is the information processing performed by networks of neurons. Neural computation is affiliated with the philosophical tradition known as Computational theory of mind, also referred to as computationalism, which advances the th ...

& Adaptive Perception, established 2004) * Quantum Information Science (established 2002) * Quantum Materials (established 1987) Past programs: *

Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

and

Robotics Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrat ...

(formerly known as Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and

Society A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Socie ...

, established 1983, closed 1995) *

Population Health Population health has been defined as "the health outcomes of a group of individuals, including the distribution of such outcomes within the group". It is an approach to health that aims to improve the health of an entire human population. It ha ...

(established 1983, closed 2003) *

Evolutionary Biology Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes (natural selection, common descent, speciation) that produced the diversity of life on Earth. It is also defined as the study of the history of life fo ...

(established 1986, closed 2007) * Laws and the Determinants of

Social Order The term social order can be used in two senses: In the first sense, it refers to a particular system of social structures and institutions. Examples are the ancient, the feudal, and the capitalist social order. In the second sense, social order ...

(established 1986, closed 1996) *

Economic Growth Economic growth can be defined as the increase or improvement in the inflation-adjusted market value of the goods and services produced by an economy in a financial year. Statisticians conventionally measure such growth as the percent rate of ...

and

Policy Policy is a deliberate system of guidelines to guide decisions and achieve rational outcomes. A policy is a statement of intent and is implemented as a procedure or protocol. Policies are generally adopted by a governance body within an organ ...

(established 1991, closed 2002) * Earth System Evolution (established 1992, closed 2014) *

Human Development Human development may refer to: * Development of the human body * Developmental psychology * Human development (economics) * Human Development Index, an index used to rank countries by level of human development * Human evolution, the prehistoric ...

(established 1993, closed 2003) * Science of Soft Surfaces and Interfaces (established 1993, closed 2000) *

Nanoelectronics Nanoelectronics refers to the use of nanotechnology in electronic components. The term covers a diverse set of devices and materials, with the common characteristic that they are so small that inter-atomic interactions and quantum mechanical p ...

(established 1999, closed 2013) * Genetic Networks (established 2002, closed 2020) * Successful Societies (established 2002, closed 2019) * Institutions, Organizations & Growth (established 2004, closing 2020) * Social Interactions, Identity & Well-Being (established 2005, closed 2017) * Integrated Microbial Biodiversity (established 2007, closed 2017) * Molecular Architecture of Life (established 2014, closing 2020)

Process

CIFAR (pronounced "see-far") works with researchers around the world to identify major new areas of scholarship where Canada has the potential to lead. The organization assembles diverse groups of scholars in its programs, many of whom are established leaders in their fields, and others who are promising early-career researchers. The CIFAR research model relies on deep collaboration at regular program meetings. These meetings bring together researchers from different countries, institutions, disciplines and levels of experience, who might not otherwise meet. By building long-term, interdisciplinary, global communities, CIFAR provides researchers with an environment of trust that inspires risk-taking and new directions of inquiry. Each research program also develops a knowledge mobilization strategy that includes roundtables, panel discussions, and workshops to bring researchers together with experts outside academia in order to enrich research and stimulate social, economic and technical innovations. Periodically, CIFAR will refresh its portfolio by initiating a Global Call for Ideas and inviting the global research community to submit proposals for new programs that address complex, fundamental questions of importance to the world. After a rigorous process involving workshops, interviews and consultations with expert panels, new programs are selected. Programs are run on five-year renewal cycles.

History

CIFAR was founded in 1982. The original idea for an institute for advanced studies came from John Leyerle, a professor of

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

and dean of the School of Graduate Studies at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

who began rallying support for the concept in 1978. The centre would serve to "foster basic, conceptual research of high quality at an advanced level across the full spectrum of knowledge in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and life sciences." Fraser Mustard, a medical doctor and researcher in early childhood development, was appointed as founding president of CIFAR in January 1982. The first 25 years of its history is covered in the book ''A Generation of Excellence'' by Craig Brown. CIFAR fellows published several papers in 1994, including "Why are some people healthy and others not", that argued policies driven by population health could address

health disparities Health equity arises from access to the social determinants of health, specifically from wealth, power and prestige. Individuals who have consistently been deprived of these three determinants are significantly disadvantaged from health inequiti ...

. They named 10 determinants of health, listing socio-economic status as the most influential. The government adopted the term population health and renamed a branch of the

Public Health Agency of Canada The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC; french: Agence de la santé publique du Canada, ASPC) is an agency of the Government of Canada that is responsible for public health, emergency preparedness and response, and infectious and chronic dis ...

"Population and Public Health." In 2004,

Geoffrey Hinton Geoffrey Everest Hinton One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: (born 6 December 1947) is a British-Canadian cognitive psychologist and computer scientist, most noted for his work on a ...

began leading CIFAR's Neural Computation & Adaptive Perception program. Its members included

Yoshua Bengio Yoshua Bengio (born March 5, 1964) is a Canadian computer scientist, most noted for his work on artificial neural networks and deep learning. He is a professor at the Department of Computer Science and Operations Research at the Université ...

and

Yann LeCun Yann André LeCun ( , ; originally spelled Le Cun; born 8 July 1960) is a French computer scientist working primarily in the fields of machine learning, computer vision, mobile robotics and computational neuroscience. He is the Silver Professor ...

, among other neuroscientists, computer scientists, biologists, electrical engineers, physicists, and psychologists. Together, they confirmed Hinton's conviction about the power of neural networks when they created computing systems that mimicked human intelligence. Today, the three are widely acknowledged as the pioneers of

deep learning Deep learning (also known as deep structured learning) is part of a broader family of machine learning methods based on artificial neural networks with representation learning. Learning can be supervised, semi-supervised or unsupervised. De ...

. In 2019, the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...

(ACM), named Hinton, Bengio and LeCun as recipients of the 2018 ACM A.M. Turing Award for conceptual and engineering breakthroughs that have made deep

neural network A neural network is a network or circuit of biological neurons, or, in a modern sense, an artificial neural network, composed of artificial neurons or nodes. Thus, a neural network is either a biological neural network, made up of biological ...

s a critical component of computing. In April 2012, the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...

Sustainable Development Solutions Network published the first

World Happiness Report The World Happiness Report is a publication that contains articles and rankings of Gross National Happiness, national happiness, based on respondent ratings of their own lives, which the report also correlates with various Quality of life, (qualit ...

co-authored by CIFAR Senior Fellow John F. Helliwell at the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public university, public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks a ...

; Lord

Richard Layard Peter Richard Grenville Layard, Baron Layard FBA (born 15 March 1934) is a British labour economist, currently working as programme director of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics. Layard was Senior Research ...

, Director of the Well-Being Programme at

LSE LSE may refer to: Computing * LSE (programming language), a computer programming language * LSE, Latent sector error, a media assessment measure related to the hard disk drive storage technology * Language-Sensitive Editor, a text editor used ...

's Centre for Economic Performance; and Professor

Jeffrey Sachs Jeffrey David Sachs () (born 5 November 1954) is an American economist, academic, public policy analyst, and former director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, where he holds the title of University Professor. He is known for his work ...

, Director of

The Earth Institute {{Infobox organization , name = The Earth Institute , image = Ei blue1.gif , map_size = , map_alt = , map_caption = , map2 = , type = , tax_id ...

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

, Director of the SDSN, and Special Advisor to the

UN Secretary General The secretary-general of the United Nations (UNSG or SG) is the chief administrative officer of the United Nations and head of the United Nations Secretariat, one of the six principal organs of the United Nations. The role of the secretary-g ...

. In 2017, the Government of Canada renewed and enhanced its funding for CIFAR, investing $35 million over the next five years. The government also announced that CIFAR will administer a $125 million Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy for research and talent. Since the institute's inception, 20 Nobel laureates have been associated with CIFAR. *

George A. Akerlof George Arthur Akerlof (born June 17, 1940) is an American economist and a university professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University and Koshland Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. ...

Sidney Altman Sidney Altman (May 7, 1939 – April 5, 2022) was a Canadian-American molecular biologist, who was the Sterling Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and Chemistry at Yale University. In 1989, he shared the Nobel Prize in ...

Philip W. Anderson Philip Warren Anderson (December 13, 1923 – March 29, 2020) was an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate. Anderson made contributions to the theories of localization, antiferromagnetism, symmetry breaking (including a paper in 1 ...

Kenneth Arrow Kenneth Joseph Arrow (23 August 1921 – 21 February 2017) was an American economist, mathematician, writer, and political theorist. He was the joint winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with John Hicks in 1972. In economics ...

* Willard Boyle *

Walter Gilbert Walter Gilbert (born March 21, 1932) is an American biochemist, physicist, molecular biology pioneer, and Nobel laureate. Education and early life Walter Gilbert was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 21, 1932, the son of Emma (Cohen), a ...

Leland H. Hartwell Leland Harrison (Lee) Hartwell (born October 30, 1939 in Los Angeles, California) is former president and director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington. He shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine wit ...

Daniel Kahneman Daniel Kahneman (; he, דניאל כהנמן; born March 5, 1934) is an Israeli-American psychologist and economist notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making, as well as behavioral economics, for which he was award ...

Brian Kobilka Brian Kent Kobilka (born May 30, 1955) is an American physiologist and a recipient of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Robert Lefkowitz for discoveries that reveal the workings of G protein-coupled receptors. He is currently a professor in ...

* Robert B. Laughlin *

Anthony J. Leggett Sir Anthony James Leggett (born 26 March 1938) is a British-American theoretical physicist and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Leggett is widely recognised as a world leader in the theory of low-temperatur ...

* Art McDonald * Roger B. Myerson * James Peebles * John C. Polanyi * Richard J. Roberts *

Paul Romer Paul Michael Romer (born November 6, 1955) is an American economist and policy entrepreneur who is a University Professor in Economics at New York University. Romer is best known as the former Chief Economist of the World Bank and for co-recei ...

* Michael Smith *

Eric Wieschaus Eric Francis Wieschaus (born June 8, 1947 in South Bend, Indiana) is an American evolutionary developmental biologist and 1995 Nobel Prize-winner. Early life Born in South Bend, Indiana, he attended John Carroll Catholic High School in Birming ...

David Wineland David Jeffrey Wineland (born February 24, 1944) is an American Nobel-laureate physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) physics laboratory. His work has included advances in optics, specifically laser-cooling trap ...

Notes

External links