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!