Recognized worldwide as one of the leading experts in artificial intelligence, Yoshua Bengio is most known for his pioneering work in deep learning, earning him the 2018 A.M. Turing Award, “the Nobel Prize of Computing,” with Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun.

He is a Full Professor at Université de Montréal, and the Founder and Scientific Director of Mila – Quebec AI Institute. He co-directs the CIFAR Learning in Machines & Brains program as Senior Fellow and acts as Scientific Director of IVADO.

In 2019, he was awarded the prestigious Killam Prize and in 2022, became the computer scientist with the highest h-index in the world. He is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of London and Canada, Knight of the Legion of Honor of France and Officer of the Order of Canada.

Concerned about the social impact of AI and the objective that AI benefits all, he actively contributed to the Montreal Declaration for the Responsible Development of Artificial Intelligence.

Joelle Pineau is a faculty member at Mila and an Associate Professor and William Dawson Scholar at the School of Computer Science at McGill University, where she co-directs the Reasoning and Learning Lab. She is also co-Managing Director of Facebook AI Research, where she oversees the labs in Montreal, Seattle, Pittsburgh, and Menlo Park.

She holds a BASc in Engineering from the University of Waterloo, and an MSc and PhD in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Pineau’s research focuses on developing new models and algorithms for planning and learning in complex partially-observable domains. She also works on applying these algorithms to complex problems in robotics, health care, games and conversational agents. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research and the Journal of Machine Learning Research and is Past-President of the International Machine Learning Society. She is a recipient of NSERC’s E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship (2018), a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), a Senior Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), a member of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists by the Royal Society of Canada, and a 2019 recipient of the Governor General’s Innovation Awards.

Luc Rabouin was elected mayor of Le Plateau-Mont-Royal in October 2019. Since December 2019, he has been responsible for economic and business development, and design on the city’s executive committee. Prior to that, Mr. Rabouin was the director of strategic development at the Caisse d’économie solidaire Desjardins, where he held the position for three years. He has also led several organizations, including the Centre d’écologie urbaine de Montréal, Communauto France, as well as the Corporation de développement économique communautaire (CDEC) Centre-sud/Plateau-Mont-Royal, now known as PME MTL Centre-ville.

Tal Arbel is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, where she is the Director of the Probabilistic Vision Group and Medical Imaging Lab in the Centre for Intelligent Machines, McGill University. She is a Canada CIFAR AI Chair and Associate Member of MILA (Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms), and an Associate Member of the Goodman Cancer Research Centre. Prof. Arbel’s research focuses on development of probabilistic, deep learning methods in computer vision and medical image analysis, for a wide range of real-world applications, with a focus on neurological diseases. She is a recipient of the 2019 McGill Engineering Christophe Pierre Research Award. She regularly serves on the organizing team of major international conferences in computer vision and in medical image analysis (e.g.  MICCAI, MIDL, ICCV, CVPR). She is currently the Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of the arXiv overlay journal: Machine Learning for Biomedical Imaging (MELBA).

Dr. Sonny Kohli is a practicing Physician in Internal Medicine and Critical Care and is faculty at McMaster University in Canada. He is also the VP of Medical and Regulatory Affairs for Roche Canada Pharma. In 2008/09, Sonny was a top 40 Astronaut Candidate in the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) recruitment campaign. He is also an alumnus of the International Space University, a trained flight surgeon with the Canadian Forces, and was awarded a CSA scholarship to Johnson Space Center & Wyle Labs. While studying at ISU, he helped deploy the Image Reversal In Space (IRIS) experiment on the International Space Station.

In 2010, while volunteering in post-earthquake Haiti, Sonny experienced first-hand the perils of inadequate health care faced by Earth’s most marginalized peoples. Intrigued by space-age and digital solutions to the world’s health problems, Sonny co-founded Cloud DX to create a fully autonomous ‘digital doctor’ called Vitaliti. Sonny and Cloud DX were bestowed as XPRIZE’s first ever ‘Bold Epic Innovator’ as part of the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE competition.

AJung Moon is an Assistant Professor at McGill University (Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering). She is an experimental roboticist specializing in ethics and responsible design of interactive robots and autonomous intelligent systems. She studies how our interaction with machines influence people’s behaviours and decisions and investigates different ways to integrate our societal values in the design and deployment of autonomous systems. Prior to joining McGill, she served as a Senior Advisor for the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation, a taskforce that investigated the need for improved technology governance and policy across national borders. She also ran a start-up AI ethics consultancy, Generation R Consulting and founded the Open Roboethics Institute, a Canadian nonprofit that investigates societal and ethical implications of robotics and AI.
She completed a BASc (University of Waterloo) in Mechatronics Engineering, and a MASc and a PhD (University of British Columbia) in Mechanical Engineering. She became a Vanier Scholar in 2013 and developed interactive robot behaviours that allows for a human and a robot to nonverbally negotiate their way out of conflicts that arise in human-robot teamwork. She currently serves on the Government of Canada Advisory Council on Artificial Intelligence among others.

Dr. Teodor Grantcharov completed his surgical training at the University of Copenhagen, and a doctoral degree in Medical Sciences at the University of Aarhus in Denmark.
Dr. Grantcharov is a Professor of Surgery at Stanford University and Associate Chief Quality Officer for Innovation and Safety at Stanford Healthcare.

Prior to joining Stanford, Dr. Grantcharov was a Professor of Surgery at the University of Toronto and Keenan Chair in Surgery at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. He was the Founder of the International Centre for Surgical Safety – a multidisciplinary group of visionary scientists with expertise in design, human factors, computer- and data science, and healthcare research. He previously held Canada Research Chair in Simulation and Surgical Safety and was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II diamond jubilee medal for his contributions to clinical research and patient safety in Canada. Dr. Grantcharov was awarded the honorary fellowship of the Imperial College in London, the honorary fellowships of the Bulgarian, Danish and Brazilian surgical societies, the Spinoza Chair in Surgery from the University of Amsterdam and multiple national and international awards for his contributions to surgical education and surgical safety.

Dr. Grantcharov’s clinical interest is the area of minimally invasive surgery, while his academic focus is in the field of surgical innovation and patient safety. He has become internationally recognized as a leader in this area with his work on curriculum design, assessment of competence and impact of surgical performance on clinical outcomes. Dr. Grantcharov developed the surgical Black Box concept, which aims to transform the safety culture in medicine and introduce modern safety management systems in the high-risk operating room environment.

Dr. Grantcharov has more than 220 peer-reviewed publications and more than 200 invited presentations in Europe, South- and North America. He holds several patents and is the Founder of Surgical Safety Technologies Inc – an academic startup that commercializes the OR Black Box platform. He sits on numerous committees with Surgical Professional Societies in North America and Europe.

Alyssa Lefaivre is the Director of Partnerships and Market Development at the Responsible AI Institute (RAII). RAII is a community-driven non-profit organization working to advance trustworthy, safe, and fair AI. With over 12 years of experience in business and partnership development primarily in emerging tech, Alyssa has a strong understanding of the opportunities and challenges associated with the adoption of innovation tools and services. Recognizing that people are at the heart of these technologies, she has been successful in supporting both individuals and companies through various aspects of digital transformation.  

In her spare time, Alyssa sits on the board for Global Woman of Vision and NorQuest’s Workforce Advisory Committee.She always strives to be a conscious connector of people who are pursuing their purpose with passion, authenticity and gratitude.

Dhru is a technology innovator with responsibilities for AT&T’s robotics program and automation investments for AT&T and its affiliates. Dhru is driving multiple AT&T organizations through an enterprise-wide implementation of artificial intelligence & advanced cognitive solutions with Robotics Process Automation.

Dhru began his career with AT&T in 1996 and has held various positions in Customer Service, Network Engineering, Research, Sales, and Technical Marketing. Prior to his current role, he served as Director Strategy Planning for Platform Investments with responsibility for over $450M in investments. He also served as Director of Innovation and led the creation of new products and services as part of AT&T’s largest global bid at the time. He has also served as General Manager of various managed services engagements. 

Dhru is a seasoned expert in creating and scaling organizations to offer new products and services. He sits on several boards of directors for national non-profit charities. He has received multiple Presidential Volunteer Service Awards and is currently part of AT&T’s National Disaster Recovery team. He resides in Dallas and his daughter, Puja, is a surgical researcher and future surgeon currently studying at University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas

Constanza is a mechanism design strategist and entrepreneur. She focuses on harnessing the potential of emerging technologies, such as AI and digital tokens, and models of collective intelligence to amplify social and environmental impact. For the last 16 years, she has taken the role of a mission-driven entrepreneur, founding C Minds, a pioneering action-tank in Latin America; and the global initiative AI for Climate, focused on creating awareness and policy action on how emerging technologies can amplify nature-based solutions; among other ventures. Her trajectory has enabled her to be an advisor and partner to governments and multilateral organizations such as the InterAmerican Development Bank, GIZ, Microsoft, Meta, Google, Huawei, and United Nations. Moreover, she has led diverse high-level global processes such as the co-development of the first AI ethics global agreement led by UNESCO, and was invited to Chair the AI for Humanity Global Future Forum of the World Economic Forum, among other global processes.

Jesslyn Dymond is the Director of Data Ethics at TELUS, leading their world-class approach to responsible data-driven innovation. She is recognized for her leadership in data enablement and an advocate for creative solutions to building customer trust with emerging technology, drawing on a background of privacy and information management expertise. Jesslyn completed a Master of Information from the University of Toronto’s iSchool, is a Certified Information Privacy Professional/Canada (CIPP/C) and Data Ethics Professional from the Open Data Institute.