Christian Gagné Research Thrust 3 - Methods of Artificial Intelligence and Data Processing

Full Professor, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Université Laval
Director, Institute Intelligence and Data (IID)
Canada-CIFAR Artificial Intelligence Chair

Christian Gagné has been a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Université Laval since 2008. He is the Director of the Institute Intelligence and Data (IID) at Université Laval. He holds a Canada-CIFAR Artificial Intelligence Chair and is an associate member of Mila. He is also a member of the Computer Vision and Systems Laboratory (CVSL), a component of the Robotics, Vision and Machine Intelligence Research Centre (CeRVIM) as well as the Big Data Research Center (CRDM) at Université Laval. He is a member of the REPARTI and UNIQUE FQRNT strategic networks, the VITAM center of the FRQS and the International Observatory on the Societal Impacts of AI and Digital Technology (OBVIA).

He received a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering (Université Laval) in 2005 and then completed a joint postdoctoral internship at INRIA Saclay (France) and the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) in 2005-2006. He worked as an industrial research associate between 2006 and 2008. He has been a member of the executive committee of the ACM Special Interest Group on Evolutionary Computation (SIGEVO) since 2017.

His research interests include method development for machine learning and stochastic optimization. In particular, he is interested in deep neural networks, representation learning and transfer, meta-learning as well as multitasking learning. He is also interested in optimization approaches based on probabilistic models as well as evolutionary algorithms, involving black box optimization and automatic programming. Much of his work also focuses on applying these techniques in areas such as computer vision, microscopy, health, energy and transportation.