The Vector Institute is a private, non-profit artificial intelligence research institute in Toronto focusing primarily on machine learning and deep learning research. As of 2023, it consists of 143 faculty members and affiliates — 38 of which are CIFAR AI chairs — 57 postdoctoral fellows, and 502 students. Along with the University of Toronto, the Vector Institute is affiliated with faculty from universities across Ontario, as well as British Columbia and Nova Scotia. Along with Montreal's Mila and Alberta's Amii, the Vector Institute is a member of the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy.

History

Vector was established by

Brendan Frey Brendan John Frey FRSC (born 29 August 1968) is a Canadian-born entrepreneur, engineer and scientist. He is Founder and CEO of Deep Genomics, Cofounder of the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Professor of Engineering and Medicine ...

, Geoffrey Hinton, Raquel Urtasun in 2017 with the objectives of retaining and recruiting researchers in Toronto and encouraging companies to establish labs in the city. On January 2, 2018,

Garth Gibson __NOTOC__ Garth Alan Gibson is a computer scientist from Carnegie Mellon University. Gibson's developed the RAID taxonomy of redundant data storage systems, along with David A. Patterson and Randy Katz. Born in Aurora, Ontario, he holds a Ph. ...

became Vector's first president and CEO, and in 2023, was replaced by Tony Gaffney. The institute was housed in the MaRS Discovery District and, in 2024, moved to the Schwartz Reisman Innovation Center.

Funding

At the end of its founding, the Vector Institute received a combined total of $200 million CAD from private and public sectors. The sources of its private sector funding include, among others, Uber, Google, and Shopify. In 2019, the Government of Ontario cut its funding of CIFAR and the Vector Institute by $24 million CAD. As part of the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence strategy, the Vector Institute, Mila, and Amii received another $60 million CAD in 2021 from the Government of Canada.

Operations

The institute supports foundational and applied AI research, and mitigates brain drain in Canada. Their research priorities are: * Machine Learning *

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 ...

* AI for Science * AI for Health *

Trustworthy AI Trustworthy AI is a programme of work of the ITU (United Nations Specialized Agency for ICT) under its AI for Good programme. The programme advances the standardization of a number of Privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), including homomorphic ...

* Foundation Models One of the goals of the institute is to support AI adoption in industries. They have helped reduce energy consumption at Telus, built recommendation systems with Wahi, and partnered with Kids Help Phone to build tools that help guide councillors during conversations with children. They have built open source tools to monitor clinical models in production. The institute has given out $2 million CAD in masters scholarships, valued at $17,500 each.

Faculty

As of June 2024, Vector's research is led by Chief Scientific Advisor Geoffrey Hinton and Research Director Daniel Roy. Other faculty members include, among many others,

Alán Aspuru-Guzik Alán Aspuru-Guzik is a professor of chemistry, computer science, chemical engineering and materials science at the University of Toronto. His research group, the matter lab, studies quantum chemistry, AI for chemical and materials discovery, ...

Gillian Hadfield Gillian Kereldena Hadfield (born July 14, 1961) is a professor of law and of strategic management who is the inaugural Schwartz Reisman Chair in Technology and Society at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. She is also director of the Schwa ...

, and

Sheila McIlraith Sheila McIlraith is a Canadian computer scientist specializing in Artificial Intelligence (AI). She is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Canada CIFAR AI Chair (Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence), ...

Board of Directors

As of March 31, 2023, the Vector Institute's board of directors consists of: * Ed Clark * Janet Bannister * Charmaine Dean * Janet Ecker * Chaviva Hosek * Nadir Mohamed * Michael Serbinis * Terrence Sullivan * Melanie Woodin

References

{{coord missing, Ontario Research institutes in Canada Artificial intelligence laboratories University of Toronto Science and technology in Toronto 2017 establishments in Ontario