CIFAR selects 3 UBC professors as new Canada CIFAR AI Chairs, 1 as Global Scholar
UBC Computer Science researchers recognized as global leaders in AI
UBC Computer Science Assistant Professors Hila Gonen, Mathias Lécuyer and Serena Wang have been named Canada CIFAR AI Chairs. These three new Canada CIFAR AI Chairs, affiliated with Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii), are amongst 42 newly appointed or renewed Chairs this year who are supported by the Government of Canada and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) to help drive innovation and train the next generation of AI talent in Canada. The CIFAR AI Chairs program provides long-term funding to support research programs to advance fundamental and applied AI research in Canada. CIFAR also renewed the appointment of Assistant Professor Danica Sutherland and Professor Jeff Clune as Canada CIFAR AI Chairs.
Dr. Hila Gonen, who joined UBC Computer Science in 2025, aims to understand model behaviour, develop more trustworthy and reliable language models and apply them to different domains, such as health and medicine. She also studies multilinguality of language models — creating tools that equitably serve people who speak different languages and studying how models understand with different languages.
Since 2021, Dr. Mathias Lécuyer has been at UBC Computer Science researching trustworthy AI systems. His research seeks to develop new theory, algorithms and mechanisms for systems to preserve privacy in a practical way and be more robust against adversaries. He also develops techniques to understand, explain and audit AI systems and studies causal machine learning models.
Dr. Serena Wang, an incoming Assistant Professor at UBC Computer Science in 2026, combines machine learning, statistics, economics and social sciences in her research. She seeks to understand and improve long-term societal impacts of AI through rethinking algorithms, their incentives and practices. Her work focuses on evaluation processes for AI systems.
Assistant Professor Kelsey Allen selected as emerging research leader in learning in machines and brain
CIFAR has chosen UBC Computer Science Assistant Professor Kelsey Allen as one of 15 Global Scholars for 2026-2028 to develop and lead interdisciplinary research that tackles complex questions. CIFAR’s Global Scholars program supports early-career researchers in their ambitious projects, help expand their network and train them in leadership skills in order to help them in their first year as independent investigators. Dr. Allen, who was selected after a competitive recruitment process that involved over 450 applications from 41 countries, will join a global community of researchers advancing ideas across disciplines.
Since 2025, Dr. Allen has been at UBC Computer Science integrating cognitive science, machine learning and robotics to study adaptive and efficient learning. Her research aims to understand how intelligent systems — both human and artificial — learn about, adapt to, make decisions within and reason about the world around them.