Translating AI ambitions into impact
Vector collaborates with industry and health partners to apply cutting-edge AI research, develop talent pipelines, and shape global AI strategy, helping Ontario organizations compete, grow the economy, and strengthen Canada’s leadership in responsible AI.
By the numbers: Empowering industry to apply AI
32
industry partners
10 Platinum sponsors
20 Gold sponsors
2 Silver sponsors
50,000+
hours of knowledge transfer to industry sponsors
14
new collaborations, ranging from AI Change Management to Retrieval-Augmented Generation, and more
160+
industry focused events and workshops; topics include IP, commercialization, and talent development
5,300+
participants upskilled or trained in Vector programming
Meet Vector’s sponsor community
Working with Vector enables industry sponsors to stay competitive through skills training, hands-on experiences, and access to top talent. Tapping into Vector’s technical expertise and cross-sector collaborations, industry sponsors can explore and develop AI solutions to address complex business objectives.
Unilever joins Vector’s vibrant industry community
In March 2025, Vector welcomed its newest Gold sponsor, Unilever. The partnership supports Unilever’s mission to scale AI and builds on its Horizon3 AI Innovation Labs in Toronto, the company’s new global hub for accelerating AI adoption.
Within a few short months of joining the Vector community, Unilever began to see benefits; tapping Vector’s pipeline of top-tier talent to hire an Applied AI intern has unlocked improvements in crucial business functions.
“Through Vector’s talent programming, I was able to quickly bring on a sharp PhD candidate with both strong research acumen and industry experience. Within just three months, he integrated seamlessly with the team and delivered a research breakthrough using GenAI to improve our forecasting accuracy by 13%.”
Xiaojun Su
Associate Director AI/Machine Learning Lead, Horizon3 AI Innovation Labs, Unilever
Founding sponsor CIBC expands its Vector relationship
In August 2024, CIBC announced an expanded relationship with Vector Institute. Since joining Vector as a founding sponsor in 2017, CIBC has participated in several collaborative projects.
With its new commitment as a Platinum sponsor, CIBC aims to accelerate its momentum in AI talent development, enhance technical learning, and advance its commitment to the AI ecosystem.
“CIBC’s collaborative work with the Vector Institute has helped to advance the principles of AI learning not just in Canada, but globally, which has positively influenced top talent in tech, ultimately helping make the ambitions of our clients and communities real. Deepening our relationship with Vector at this time is an important and proud next step in CIBC’s commitment to AI learning and research.”
Dave Gillespie
Executive Vice-President, Infrastructure, Architecture, and Modernization, CIBC
Winning with AI:
Vector’s sponsors excel among global peers
The 2024 Evident AI Index—an annual ranking of AI adoption and maturity across 50 leading banks in North America, Europe, and Asia—placed all five major Canadian banks in the top half of the Index. Vector is proud to support Canada’s financial sector through productive collaborations, innovative sandbox projects, workforce development, and access to top talent that help drive their business performance.
Driving innovations in global railway safety with AI: Hitachi Rail
When Hitachi Rail joined Vector Institute’s AI Model Deployment Bootcamp, they weren’t just learning about time series analysis; they were laying the trackwork for next-generation railway intelligence.
As a global leader in rail technology, Hitachi Rail collects vast streams of data from track monitoring systems, vehicle sensors, and infrastructure components, yet conventional analysis tools often struggle to transform these data into accurate, actionable insights for predictive maintenance and vital safety monitoring.
By participating in Vector’s Bootcamp, Hitachi Rail’s research team gained hands-on experience working with advanced time series anomaly detection techniques that involve cutting-edge neural network architectures. Using publicly available data similar to their own, they trained and deployed models, building practical skills in deploying them in cloud environments and acquiring valuable experience with the full AI deployment lifecycle.
The Hitachi Rail team now possesses crucial in-house expertise to develop better predictive maintenance and safety monitoring capabilities, and ultimately to scale AI across their global operations.
“Vector’s bootcamp approach allowed us to experiment with real sensor data in a risk-free environment while building the internal expertise we need for long-term innovation. With over 1,000 skilled engineers in Toronto who are delivering global rail projects, this innovation expertise is highly beneficial.”
Walter Kinio
VP, Research and Innovation, Hitachi Rail Corp.
Accelerating innovation to benefit pension plan members: OMERS
With more than $138 billion in net assets, OMERS is one of Canada’s largest pension plans, serving more than 640,000 members. As AI continues to shape the business landscape, OMERS continues to leverage its collaboration with Vector Institute to provide team members with training and insights in this rapidly evolving field. OMERS was the first pension plan to participate in Vector Institute’s financial services participant group.
Over 100 OMERS employees have attended Vector Institute sessions, with bootcamps offering in-depth exploration proving especially valuable. The most recent session provided an extended independent working period and guidance to explore the development of a language model gateway. “Vector supplied tailored materials and guidance suited to our technology environment, helping us generate relevant insights efficiently and avoid common challenges,” says Rodney Hill, Global Head of Technology, Data and Security, OMERS.
“When we formed this engagement in 2021, we recognized the importance of engaging a partner who had depth and breadth in the kind of innovation that would shape both business expectations and practices. The benefit of insights and expertise that Vector Institute provides has helped to inform our thinking about AI, shaping the way we work today and the potential for how we will work tomorrow in order to best meet the needs of our members.”
Rodney Hill
Global Head of Technology, Data and Security, OMERS
Expanding capabilities in advanced techniques ML and AI workload scaling: Accenture
Accenture participated in an AI bootcamp with Vector Institute to apply advanced ML Ops research and collaborate with leading experts in AI deployment and monitoring. The Accenture team, alongside Vector’s experts, implemented and evaluated state of the art ML Ops frameworks to standardize and automate deployment of ML and AI workload deployments to target platforms in a flexible, scalable and cost-effective manner. The bootcamp resulted in enhanced capabilities and development of best practices in the following areas:
- Advanced monitoring systems using state-of-the-art observability tools
- Automated evaluation pipelines that ensure consistent AI quality
- Scalable deployment architectures with intelligent auto-scaling
- Comprehensive analytics frameworks for continuous optimization
“Our collaboration with Vector Institute through this bootcamp enabled us to advance critical capabilities in AI workload optimization and cost management. The frameworks we developed for scaling, monitoring, and deploying enterprise AI solutions directly support our commitment to maximizing business ROI while maintaining operational excellence. As enterprise AI adoption accelerates globally, these capabilities position us at the forefront of delivering scalable, cost-effective AI transformations.”
Karthik Venkat
Lead, Centre for Advanced AI, Accenture Canada
Empowering Canada’s innovators with AI:
Vector’s FastLane program
More than 175 Canadian small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are accelerating their AI commercialization journey by participating in Vector’s FastLane program. Vector hosted more than 35 events and workshops for FastLane members and industry sponsors over the past year, addressing topics such as professional development, talent advisory, IP education, and AI commercialization to compete successfully in the global economy.
Evolving Intelligence
Harnessing AI to simplify global asset transfers
Canadian fintech startup Evolving Intelligence joined Vector’s FastLane community in 2024 to accelerate its AI-powered wealth management platform, which aims to help financial professionals navigate complex global asset transfers.
Through programs and guidance from Applied Machine Learning Scientist Shaina Raza, the team acquired skills, and added key features for market readiness. Their progress reflects Vector’s role in driving responsible AI innovation and supporting emerging leaders in Canada’s AI ecosystem.
“The mentorship and support we received was tremendous. We organized ourselves to make the most of this valuable resource.”
Ali Saleh
President, Evolving Intelligence
Accelerating ambition:
Get to know select members of Vector’s FastLane community
Kiwi Charge
Kiwi Charge provides charging-as-a-service for EV owners in buildings without existing infrastructure. With support from Vector’s FastLane program, they built an AI model to predict electricity demand and pinpoint optimal charging locations. Within months, they launched in major Canadian cities, secured a $1.5 million original equipment manufacturer pilot, and sparked new customer demand for the tool.
“The FastLane program was game-changing for us. It gave us the AI expertise, credibility, and product development support to transform our ambitious idea into a practical, revenue-generating solution—all while staying lean and focused on what matters most to our business.”
– Abdel Ali, CEO, Kiwi Charge
PAVE AI
PAVE AI is using AI to automate vehicle inspections and generate condition reports in minutes. Through FastLane, they worked with Vector to develop custom models for vehicle identification and odometer readings. Within two months, the models achieved 98% accuracy at scale, replacing slow and costly manual processes and saving the workload of 20 full-time roles monthly.
“Vector is a must-have partner – helping us build world-class AI, giving us access to top AI talent, improving our product, and fast-tracking our path to millions in Annual Recurring Revenue.”
– Stephen Southin, CEO, PAVE AI
Bell Kearns & Associates
Bell Kearns & Associates, an independent investment consultancy, joined FastLane in search of AI expertise to help reduce the time and labour required to summarize lengthy quarterly investment reports. With hands-on support from Vector experts and machine learning interns, they now have a generative AI-powered tool which saves more than 40 hours of manual work per cycle for their five-person team.
“Vector gave us the tools, knowledge, and confidence to bring AI into a non-technical firm—and it’s now transforming how we work.”
– Darshan Mistry, Assistant Vice President, Bell Kearns & Associates Ltd.
Supercharging Ontario’s health innovators:
HealthSpark
Vector’s new HealthSpark initiative supports Ontario’s early stage companies in developing promising AI-driven solutions in the health sector. Through technical expertise, training, and access to networks, Vector helps startups and scaleups to improve their AI-powered solutions to address the sector’s most pressing challenges.
HealthSpark launched with a 2024 pilot project with Identos Inc., a leader in digital identity and access management. Working with Vector’s technical experts and Southlake Regional Health Centre in Newmarket, Ontario, Identos enhanced their novel AI-powered navigation tool. The tool provides personalized, safe, and location-aware recommendations to simplify how patients and providers access services in the region. This recommendation capability makes it easier for patients to navigate the complex health system. Vector is expanding HealthSpark to support six additional companies over the next two years as they develop safe, effective AI solutions to improve health outcomes for Ontarians.
“Working with Vector has enabled us to unlock significant advances in how we use AI in our technology. Through HealthSpark, our team was able to collaborate with the best minds in AI engineering and safe and secure health data management to enhance our solutions that simplify how patients and providers access services in Ontario’s complex health system.”
Mike Cook
CEO and co-founder of Identos Inc.
Unlocking transparency in LLMs:
Vector’s State of Evaluations Study
As AI companies develop increasingly powerful LLMs at an unprecedented pace, Vector is helping end users, researchers, and developers better understand model performance to enable safe and responsible deployment.
In its first-ever State of Evaluations study, Vector’s AI Engineering team assessed leading commercial and open AI models against 16 benchmarks—including several developed by Vector researchers that measure accuracy, reliability, and fairness and are now used globally. In a first for this type of research, Vector open-sourced both the results and the code, empowering the AI community to verify results, compare models, and run their own evaluations.
The work builds on Vector’s leading role throughout 2024 in developing Inspect Evals, an open-source AI safety testing platform created with the UK AI Security Institute to standardize global safety evaluations and foster collaboration.
By examining the capabilities, limitations, and impacts of frontier models, as well as sharing the findings, Vector fosters transparency and reproducibility to support responsible AI use.
Putting Principles into Action:
Vector’s Playbook for Responsible AI Product Development
Veronica Chatrath, Technical Program Lead on Vector’s AI Engineering team, presented the Playbook at the 2025 International Association for Safe and Ethical AI Conference, an official event of the 2025 AI Action Summit.
Entrepreneurs, product teams, tech leads, and others who work in AI development are benefiting from Vector’s new product development playbook. Published by Vector’s AI Engineering team, the playbook helps innovators build safe, ethical, and human-centred AI products, providing practical guidance across five product development stages aimed at embedding responsible AI practices into product design.
Grounded in Vector’s AI Trust and Safety Principles, this practical, expert playbook connects responsible AI goals with tools like Inspect Evals, UnBIAS, and CyclOps to tackle real-world challenges.
“We built this playbook so teams don’t just talk about responsible AI, they operationalize it every day. It helps AI builders ask the right questions, make thoughtful choices, and launch AI products that people can trust.”
Carolyn Chong
Senior Product Manager, AI Engineering, Vector
By the numbers:
Developing skilled AI talent to fuel Ontario’s growth
Vector builds crucial pathways that attract, develop, and connect top AI talent to fuel Ontario’s growth. Scholarships and internships foster workforce-ready AI skills and hands-on experience, while the Digital Talent Hub and AI Summit and Career Fair connect ambitious organizations with skilled job seekers who are ready to drive impact.
“I am deeply honoured to be a recipient of the prestigious Vector AI scholarship. This scholarship represents an exciting and pivotal step for my career in AI, and I am truly grateful for this award. With this funding, I have invaluable support for my AI studies, research, and projects.”
Christine Tang
Vector Scholarship in AI recipient, Master of Management in AI, Schulich School of Business, York University
New report reveals 37% surge in demand for core AI skills in Canada
Demand for core AI skills in Canada has surged 37%, signaling an important shift in the talent landscape, according to a report by the Conference Board of Canada. Artificial Intelligence Talent in Canada, produced in October 2024 for the Vector Institute in partnership with the Future Skills Centre, attributes the rise to growing needs in areas vital to AI application, including machine learning, deep learning, and AI ethics and governance. The findings highlight the value of Vector’s programs that develop in-demand, application-ready skills and connect top AI talent with employers.
Launching future-ready AI careers:
Vector internships and networks connect talent to opportunity
Through internships, workshops, mentorship programming and recruitment events, Vector is a proven launchpad for emerging AI talent in Ontario, helping them gain experience, launch careers, and help the organizations they join compete in the world of AI and data science.
OJ Onyeagwu
CIBC Data Analytics Team, former Automation and Marketing Analytics Intern, Vector Institute
During his Automation and Marketing Analytics internship with Vector, engineering graduate OJ Onyeagwu acquired new skills and built a custom semantic search and recommender system for the Vector Institute’s Partner Portal.
This opened doors to a role at Vector Platinum sponsor CIBC where he designs data pipelines for product analytics. He also continues to develop his skills through Vector’s bootcamps and workshops, showcasing how Vector’s internship, training, and education programs are shaping Ontario’s AI workforce.
Justin Yang
Technology Architect, TELUS, former Applied ML Intern, Vector Institute
First joining Vector as an Applied Machine Learning intern, Justin Yang tackled vital projects and participated in Vector’s IMPACT Mentorship Program, which connects interns with AI experts at sponsor organizations.
After being mentored by a senior staff member at Vector Gold sponsor Deloitte, Yang leveraged Vector’s Digital Talent Hub, where sponsors and AI-skilled job seekers connect, to launch his career with a full-time role at TELUS, another Gold sponsor at Vector.
Georgette Otoo
Data Analyst Intern, Vector Institute
Enrolling in a Vector-recognized master’s program gave Georgette Otoo the technical foundation, ethical lens, and strategic mindset to apply AI responsibly.
“My Vector internship was more than a one-time opportunity; it came with ongoing support, mentorship, and a real sense of belonging. I had access to workshops, mentorship, and summits that connected me with professionals and peers already shaping the future of AI.”
Her Vector Scholarship in AI award marked a turning point, connecting her with a vibrant AI community and opened doors to hiring leaders at Vector’s industry partners. Now interning with Vector’s Research Operations and Academic Partnerships team, she’s giving back, supporting the very programs that shaped her journey from international student to emerging AI professional.
Strengthening Canada’s voice in crucial dialogues
Reflecting Vector’s stature as a top-10 global AI institute, Vector’s senior leadership, faculty, and researchers are regularly invited to share their expert insights on AI-related policy, ethics, implementation, and more in consultations with the Canadian governments, as well as international organizations and AI safety institutes around the world.
Selected highlights of 2024-25 include:
- Vector’s VP of AI Engineering Deval Pandya, along with Faculty Members Jeff Clune, David Duvenaud, and Faculty Affiliate David Lie were named to Canada’s Safe and Secure AI Advisory Group, while Faculty Member Nicolas Papernot was appointed Co-Director of CIFAR’s Canadian AI Safety Institute Research Program and Faculty Member Sheila McIlraith and Pandya joined its Research Council.
- Vector’s then President & CEO, Tony Gaffney participated at the Ministerial Roundtable on the AI Strategy for the federal public service. He also contributed informed perspectives with the World Economic Forum’s AI Governance Alliance and the OECD.AI community with Vector’s Chief Information Officer Ben Davies.
- Roxana Sultan, Vector’s Chief Data Officer and Vice President, Health, engaged extensively with both the federal and Ontario governments in consultations on compute infrastructure, Ontario’s SmartHealth initiative, proposed federal legislation on digital security and trust, and access to information legislation.
- Vector’s Director of Professional Development Sedef Akinli Kocak was invited to share insights on AI and climate action at the November 2024 Conference of the Parties (COP29) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
By engaging in crucial dialogues and providing insights that can inform how AI intersects with Canadians’ lives, Vector continues to advocate for the interests of Ontarians and Canadians while strengthening Canada’s voice on the global stage.
Where AI research meets real-world impact
The Vector Institute is funded by the Government of Canada, the Government of Ontario, and leading industry sponsors from across the Canadian economy.
