AI Pioneer Yoshua Bengio Awarded Queen Elizabeth Engineering Prize

Yoshua Bengio, scientific director of IVADO, has been awarded the prestigious Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering alongside six other researchers for their pioneering work in artificial intelligence. The international award recognizes their groundbreaking contributions to modern machine learning, particularly in advancing algorithms, high-performance computing and data science.

Their collaborative research laid the foundation for artificial neural networks, which now power today’s deep learning systems.

Bengio, a professor of computer science at the Université de Montréal and scientific director of Mila, also heads CIFAR’s Machine Learning and Biological Learning program.

Named the world’s most cited computer scientist in 2022, his achievements include the Killam Prize and memberships in the Royal Society of London and the Royal Society of Canada. He has been appointed knight of the Legion of Honour and officer of the Order of Canada.

In 2023, Bengio joined the UN Scientific Advisory Board and was appointed to a Canada CIFAR AI Chair. Time magazine recently listed him as one of 2024’s 100 most influential people, the same year he spearheaded the first global report on AI safety.