March 31, 2021

By Ian Gormely

The Vector Institute is proud to announce the 2021 candidates for its Postgraduate Affiliate Program. The new cohort of 30 talented researchers is a combination of new and returning members to Vector’s growing community. Established in 2018, the program promotes engagement and collaboration among researchers in the AI community who are in the early stages of their careers. 

Made up of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, members of the 2021 cohort represent universities and institutions across Ontario. Their research areas span core machine learning, neuroscience, health, computational linguistics, natural language processing, computational biology, computer vision, fairness, photonics for AI, systems, and how people relate to and understand AI. 

They join the 16 Postgraduate Affiliates selected in 2020 who are completing the two-year term of their appointments as well as Vector’s vibrant and talented community of over 500 researchers.

New to the Program:

1. Morteza Babaie, University of Waterloo
2. Aaron Babier, University of Toronto
3. Gabriel Benigno, Western University
4. Jason Bernard, McMaster University
5. Hillary Dawkins, University of Guelph
6. Sriram Ganapathi Subramanian, University of Waterloo
7. Ali Hadizadeh, University of Toronto
8. Vinyas Harish, University of Toronto
9. Shivam Kalra, University of Waterloo
10. Matthew Kowal, Ryerson University
11. Ruofan Liang, University of Toronto
12. Bicky Marquez, Queen’s University
13. Evi Micha, University of Toronto
14. Jonathan Michaels, Western University
15. Parsa Mirdehghan, University of Toronto
16. Mina Mirjalili, University of Toronto
17. Bonaventure Molokwu, University of Windsor
18. Jingcheng Niu, University of Toronto
19. Danica Pawlick-Potts, Western University
20. Sean Robertson, University of Toronto
21. Pritam Sarkar, Queen’s University
22. Alina Selega, Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Sinai Health System
23. Nicholas Sharp, University of Toronto and Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences
24. Hughes Thomas, University of Toronto
25. Pashootan Vaezipoor, University of Toronto
26. Sonia Yasmin, Western University
27. Jason Yu, York University
28. Helen Zhu, University of Toronto

In addition to the 28 new Postgraduate Affiliates, Vector also welcomes back two current members:  Anastasiia Razdaibiedina from the University of Toronto and Amirul Islam from Ryerson University who will continue to work closely with Vector on various projects. 

Postgraduate Affiliates are selected through a competitive process; applicants are evaluated and selected based on the strength of their past research contributions and the alignment of their interests with Vector’s vision, mission, and research.

Congratulations to all!