Amii Adds Martin Ester and Peter West as Canada CIFAR AI Chairs
Amii has welcomed two new Canada CIFAR AI Chairs, Martin Ester of Simon Fraser University and Peter West of the University of British Columbia. According to Amii, the appointments raise its research capacity to 73 Canada CIFAR AI Chairs across the country.
- Amii welcomed Martin Ester (Simon Fraser University) and Peter West (University of British Columbia) as Canada CIFAR AI Chairs.
- Amii says it now has 73 Canada CIFAR AI Chairs across the country.
- Ester works on transfer learning, scientific discovery agents, generative molecule models and precision medicine.
- West studies the capabilities and limits of LLMs, including social intelligence, creativity and effects of alignment techniques.
- Amii says its network includes more than 1000 active researchers.
Two new appointments at Amii
Amii, the Alberta-based AI institute, announced that Martin Ester, Distinguished Professor at Simon Fraser University, and Peter West, Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia, have joined its researcher community as Canada CIFAR AI Chairs.
The Canada CIFAR AI Chair program is described by Amii as a key part of the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy. It enables leading researchers to keep pursuing impactful research and to advance fundamental AI science. With the two new appointments, Amii says it now has 73 Canada CIFAR AI Chairs across the country.
The announcement's title also refers to three new Chairs and two renewals, but the body text names only Ester and West as new appointments and does not identify the other Chair or the renewed ones.
Martin Ester: transfer learning and molecule models
Ester is a Distinguished Professor at the School of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Amii says his research centres on four main areas:
- transfer learning, which allows models to learn from one another
- scientific discovery agents
- generative molecule models, which operate similarly to language models but generate chemical structures instead of text
- machine learning in precision medicine
In the precision medicine work, his lab uses machine learning to improve diagnosis and to give treatment insights based on a patient's specific genomics and lifestyle.
Peter West: the limits of generative AI
West, an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia, studies the capabilities and limits of generative AI systems, with a focus on Large Language Models (LLMs). According to Amii, much of his work looks at generative AI's capability for social intelligence and creativity.
He also examines systemic limits on LLMs that stem from alignment techniques such as reinforcement learning from human feedback.
What it means for Amii and Canadian AI research
Amii says it has led breakthroughs for more than two decades and anchors one of the world's most concentrated and influential hubs of AI expertise. By funding and supporting Amii Fellows and Canada CIFAR AI Chairs, it says it advances fundamental work in interdisciplinary AI, reinforcement learning and explainable machine learning.
The institute adds that its researchers also mentor the next generation of talent, cultivating a network of more than 1000 active researchers. The two appointments extend that network with work spanning scientific discovery, healthcare and the study of how large language models behave and where they fall short.
