Professor David Ifeoluwa Adelani appointed Canada CIFAR AI Chair

David Ifeoluwa Adelani, an assistant professor in the School of Computer Science at McGill University, will join the more than 50 Canada CIFAR AI Chairs at Mila as a Core Academic Member to pursue his groundbreaking research on how to improve performance and accessibility of AI tools for people speaking underrepresented languages.

His work advances natural language processing to develop machine learning models for under-resourced languages, such as African languages, Latin-American languages, and Indigenous languages. 

His group aims to improve access to information and enhance human-machine communication for these communities, for example in better automatic translation and text-to-speech services.

The addition of David Ifeoluwa Adelani to the Mila community will help to advance priority areas under the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) including health, sustainable energy and the environment, fundamental science, and the responsible use of AI.

The Canada CIFAR AI Chairs program remains a cornerstone of the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy, recruiting the world’s top AI researchers to Canada while retaining existing talent. The prestigious program provides university-affiliated faculty with long-term, dedicated funding to support cutting-edge research programs and help them train the next generation of AI leaders in Canada. 

“I am very happy to join Mila as a Canada CIFAR AI Chairs to pursue my research work on building machine learning models for under-resourced languages. I am looking forward to collaborating with the other extraordinary researchers at the institute to contribute to a more accessible and equitable world for people speaking under-represented languages.” – David Ifeoluwa Adelani