Portrait of Catherine Régis

Catherine Régis

Associate Academic Member
Canada CIFAR AI Chair
Full Professor, Université de Montréal
Research Topics
Deep Learning
Online Learning

Biography

Catherine Régis is Full Professor at the Faculty of Law of Université de Montréal (UdeM), Co-director of the Canadian AI Safety Institute research program and Director of Social Innovation and International Policy at IVADO. In addition to holding a Canada CIFAR Chair in AI and Human Rights and a Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy, she is a Senior Research Associate at the Intellectual Forum of the University of Cambridge. From 2021 to 2023, she was UdeM’s Associate VP for Strategic Planning and Responsible Digital Innovation.

Prof Régis is very active on the international scene. In 2022, she was appointed Cochair of the Working Group on Responsible AI of the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI), which comprises 29 member states (including Canada, France, Germany, India, Japan and the USA) for a period of two years. From 2020 to 2024, she led the Working Group on Responsible Digital Innovation and AI of the U7+ Alliance, which includes more than 50 universities from around the world. In 2022, she was a selected Fellow for the UN’s Institute for Training and Research’s program (UNITAR) in Science Diplomacy and, in 2024, she became part of the Technical Committee for UNESCO’s AI and the Rule of Law Program.

Prof Régis is used to executing consulting or training assignments both in Canada and elsewhere. She has been a visiting professor in different countries, and she has presented her work at institutions such as the OECD, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, the Alan Turing Institute, the Supreme Court of Canada, and the Aspen Ministers Forum; in more than 20 universities worldwide (e.g., Cambridge, Costa Rica, Edinburgh, Georgetown, Osaka, Oxford, Sciences Po Paris, Sorbonne, Toronto); and in high-level conferences, including the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in 2023 and NeurIPS. She is involved in the development of Science Diplomacy (which aims at building leadership and communication skills to bridge science and diplomacy in policymaking) at the national and international levels. She also guides governments, public organizations and international organizations (e.g., academic health centres, ombudspeople and ministries of health or innovation, UNESCO, WHO, UN) on policy orientation and responsible AI projects. 

Most of her work explores how to best regulate AI at the national and international levels and to build responsible AI governance approaches more broadly. Her main objectives are: 1) to ensure human rights considerations are integrated throughout the AI life cycle; 2) to help policymakers map out and implement normative strategies that will contribute to the equitable distribution of AI benefits across nations; and 3) to inform the creation of the regulatory and governance tools needed for the responsible design and deployment of AI in key systems like healthcare and justice.

Current Students

Collaborating Alumni - Université de Montréal
PhD - Université de Montréal

Publications

L’appréhension empirique du leadership normatif d’une organisation internationale : l’exemple de l’Organisation mondiale de la Santé
Gaelle Foucault
Pierre Larouche
Jean-Louis Denis
Miriam Cohen
En plein essor, la recherche empirique en droit participe à la création de nouvelles connaissances et ouvre aux juristes d’autres voies … (see more)pour étudier une question, un phénomène. Oser l’empirisme n’est pas chose aisée, mais les auteurs du présent article ont pris ce virage et proposent d’en exposer le récit. En construisant deux méthodes distinctes (pour deux projets), ils ont pu tester les possibilités qu’offre la recherche empirique pour appréhender l’enjeu du leadership normatif de l’Organisation mondiale de la Santé (OMS). Destiné à aiguiller à partir d’une expérience celles et ceux qui voudraient s’aventurer dans l’empirisme, cet article met en lumière les défis rencontrés, mais surtout les atouts d’une telle recherche. La richesse des informations obtenues a en effet grandement bonifié la compréhension de la trajectoire des normes de l’OMS et de leurs impacts sur les États.
The empirical apprehension of the normative leadership of an international organization: The example of the World Health Organization
Gaelle Foucault
Pierre Larouche
Jean-Louis Denis
Miriam Cohen
Challenges for impact evaluation of WHO’s normative output
Gaelle Foucault
Jean-Louis Denis
Pierre Larouche
Miriam Cohen
The black box of the relationship between breast cancer patients and accompanying patients: the accompanied patients’ point of view
Marie-Pascale Pomey
Monica Iliescu Nelea
Cécile Vialaron
Louise Normandin
Marie‐Andrée Côté
Mado Desforges
Pénélope Pomey‐Carpentier
Nesrine Adjtoutah
Israël Fortin
Isabelle Ganache
Zeev Rosberger
Danielle Charpentier
Lynda Bélanger
Michel Dorval
Djahanchah Philip Ghadiri
Mélanie Lavoie-Tremblay
Antoine Boivin
Jean-François Pelletier
Nicolas Fernandez … (see 2 more)
Alain M. Danino
Michèle de Guise
Enjeux juridiques propres au modèle émergent des patients accompagnateurs dans les milieux de soins au Québec
Léa Boutrouille
Marie-Pascale Pomey
The World Health Organization as an engine of ideational robustness
Jean-Louis Denis
Gaelle Foucault
Pierre Larouche
Miriam Cohen
Marie-Andree Girard
Integrating accompanying patients into clinical oncology teams: limiting and facilitating factors
Marie-Pascale Pomey
Jesseca Paquette
Monica Iliescu Nelea
Cécile Vialaron
Rim Mourad
Karine Bouchard
Louise Normandin
Marie‐Andrée Côté
Mado Desforges
Pénélope Pomey‐Carpentier
Israël Fortin
Isabelle Ganache
Zeev Rosberger
Danielle Charpentier
Marie-France Vachon
Lynda Bélanger
Michel Dorval
Djahanchah Philip Ghadiri
Mélanie Lavoie-Tremblay … (see 5 more)
Antoine Boivin
Jean-François Pelletier
Nicolas Fernandez
Alain M. Danino
Michèle de Guise
Human-Centered AI
Jean-Louis Denis
Maria Luciana Axente
Atsuo Kishimoto
Human-Centered AI
Jean-Louis Denis
Maria Luciana Axente
Atsuo Kishimoto
Understanding the normative leadership of the world health organization (who): a mixed-method approach
Miriam Cohen
Jean-Louis Denis
Pierre Larouche
Gaelle Foucault
Marie-Andree Girard
An exploratory cross-sectional study of the effects of ongoing relationships with accompanying patients on cancer care experience, self-efficacy, and psychological distress
Marie-Pascale Pomey
Monica Iliescu Nelea
Louise Normandin
Cécile Vialaron
Karine Bouchard
Marie‐Andrée Côté
Maria Alejandra Rodriguez Duarte
Djahanchah Philip Ghadiri
Israël Fortin
Danielle Charpentier
Mélanie Lavoie-Tremblay
Nicolas Fernandez
Antoine Boivin
Michel Dorval
Mado Desforges
Isabelle Ganache
Lynda Bélanger
Zeev Rosberger
Michel Alain Danino … (see 3 more)
Jean-François Pelletier
Thi Trinh Thuc Vu
Michèle de Guise
Accompanying patients in clinical oncology teams: Reported activities and perceived effects
Marie-Pascale Pomey
Jesseca Paquette
Monica Iliescu‐Nelea
Cécile Vialaron
Rim Mourad
Karine Bouchard
Louise Normandin
Marie‐Andrée Côté
Mado Desforges
Pénélope Pomey‐Carpentier
Israël Fortin
Isabelle Ganache
Zeev Rosberger
Danielle Charpentier
Lynda Bélanger
Michel Dorval
Djahanchah Philip Ghadiri
Mélanie Lavoie-Tremblay
Antoine Boivin … (see 4 more)
Jean-François Pelletier
Nicolas Fernandez
Alain M. Danino
Michèle de Guise
Since 2018, four establishments in Quebec, Canada, have decided to implement the PAROLE‐Onco programme, which introduced accompanying pati… (see more)ents (APs) in healthcare teams to improve the experience of cancer patients. APs are patient advisors who have had a cancer treatment experience and who conduct consultations to complement the service offered by providing emotional, informational and educational support to patients undergoing treatments (e.g., radiotherapy, chemotherapy, surgery), mostly for breast cancer. We aimed to explore the evolution of APs' perspectives regarding their activities within the clinical oncology teams as well as the perceived effects of their intervention with patients, the clinical team and themselves.