Prospective Students

Welcome!

Description of image
On the picture (from top left to bottom right): Quentin, David, Gauthier, Danilo, Marco, and a delicious Paris-Brest. Photography taken by Zichu.

My primary goal is to foster a safer, more inclusive and humane environment for my research group where students can grow as researchers and human beings. I strongly believe that there is beauty in what we do (science) and in our community and I feel immensely privileged to be part of it. I also believe that most revolutions (and revolutionary ideas) come from students and I am not the only one: Geoffrey Hinton, took the time to acknowledge "many very cleaver students, much more clever than [him]" he supervised when he got awarded the Nobel prize of physics (which is something I know he had been continuously acknowledging along his career).

Beyond being a degree, the Ph.D. has been for me a human adventure where I realized that Science was first and foremost a social thing. More than technical skills (which are necessary), it is important to be mindful that social skills, creativity and community building are essential in research. I am grateful to so many of my collaborators who became friends along the way of Science (see my Ph.D. thesis for a non-exhaustive list). Things are always more fun when done with people who care and you care for (e.g., the ICLR Blog Post Track.)

I will most likely hire a few students each year. What I am particularly looking for are students who are collaborative-minded, passionate about research and kind.

The last step is to make sure that your research interest, background, and skills are aligned with the research of my group by checking the latest papers I co-authored on my google scholar (or by looking at my lecture notes, or the main page of my personal website). If after all that, you are still reading these lines, I encourage you to consider applying to do research in my lab but before sending me an email, I strongly advice you to follow these steps:
  • Read (recent) papers from my group to know my research interests.
  • Be able to explain results from these papers or related papers.
  • Ask (even better, answer) questions you find interesting.
  • Mention these questions (or answers) in your email

Articial Intelligence is a tool that may transform our democracies. It is thus critical to gather and include all the diversity of perspectives that our society has to offer in order build a tool that will foster various forms of indentities and expression. That is why I deeply care about diversity in my group. Anyone who indentifies to an underrepresented group in STEM (Including but not exclusively LGBTQIA+, FLINTA*, racialized people, indigenous people and people with disabilities) invited to apply.

If you want to apply to an internship or a Post-doc

Please apply via this form

If you want to apply to M.Sc. or a Ph.D:

Option 1: You are not based in Montréal

If you want to apply for a Ph.D. or a M.Sc. starting in Fall please apply to the Mila supervision request process or via this form

Option 2: You are based in Montréal

Feel free to contact me. I strongly advice you to follow these steps before contacting me:
  • Read my papers to know my research interests.
  • Be able to explain results from my papers or related papers to me.
  • Take a graduate course with me and be on the top of the class.
  • Ask (even better, answer) good questions.
Then:
  • If you are on Mila Slack, just send me a message on Slack.
  • If you are a M.Sc. student at UdeM send me an email.