Portrait de Samira Ebrahimi Kahou

Samira Ebrahimi Kahou

Membre affilié
Professeure agrégée, University of Calgary, Départment de génie électrique et logiciel
Professeure associée, École de technologie suprérieure, Département de génie logiciel et technologies de l'information
Professeure associée, McGill University, École d'informatique
Sujets de recherche
Apprentissage automatique médical
Apprentissage de représentations
Apprentissage multimodal
Apprentissage par renforcement
Apprentissage profond
Traitement du langage naturel
Vision par ordinateur

Biographie

Samira est professeure agrégée à l’Université de Calgary, à la Schulich School of Engineering. Elle est également professeure associée à l’École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS), au Département de génie logiciel et des technologies de l’information, ainsi qu’à l’Université McGill, à l’École d’informatique. Elle est membre académique de Mila - Institut québécois d’intelligence artificielle et détient une Chaire canadienne CIFAR en IA. Samira a obtenu son doctorat en génie informatique à Polytechnique Montréal/Mila, avec un prix pour la meilleure thèse du département. Elle a également travaillé comme chercheuse postdoctorale à l’École d’informatique de l’Université McGill et comme chercheuse à Microsoft Research Montréal.

Samira et son groupe de recherche travaillent à résoudre des problèmes fondamentaux de l’apprentissage de représentations pour la prise de décision, avec un accent particulier sur l’explicabilité, la généralisation et l’apprentissage efficace. Ses travaux ont été publiés dans des conférences et revues de premier plan telles que NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, ICCV, CVPR, TMLR et CoRL. Samira a reçu en 2024 le prix d’excellence en recherche en début de carrière de la Schulich School of Engineering. Ses contributions marquantes en apprentissage multimodal ont été reconnues à deux reprises par les prix ACM ICMI Ten-Year Technical Impact Awards : finaliste en 2023 et lauréate en 2025.

Étudiants actuels

Doctorat - UdeM
Superviseur⋅e principal⋅e :
Doctorat - École de technologie suprérieure
Superviseur⋅e principal⋅e :
Doctorat - École de technologie suprérieure
Superviseur⋅e principal⋅e :
Doctorat - McGill
Co-superviseur⋅e :
Maîtrise recherche - École de technologie suprérieure
Doctorat - McGill
Superviseur⋅e principal⋅e :

Publications

Attention-Based Multi-Agent RL for Multi-Machine Tending Using Mobile Robots
Abdalwhab Abdalwhab
David St-Onge
Robotics can help address the growing worker shortage challenge of the manufacturing industry. As such, machine tending is a task collaborat… (voir plus)ive robots can tackle that can also greatly boost productivity. Nevertheless, existing robotics systems deployed in that sector rely on a fixed single-arm setup, whereas mobile robots can provide more flexibility and scalability. We introduce a multi-agent multi-machine-tending learning framework using mobile robots based on multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) techniques, with the design of a suitable observation and reward. Moreover, we integrate an attention-based encoding mechanism into the Multi-Agent Proximal Policy Optimization (MAPPO) algorithm to boost its performance for machine-tending scenarios. Our model (AB-MAPPO) outperforms MAPPO in this new challenging scenario in terms of task success, safety, and resource utilization. Furthermore, we provided an extensive ablation study to support our design decisions.
Attention-Based Multi-Agent RL for Multi-Machine Tending Using Mobile Robots
Abdalwhab Abdalwhab
David St-Onge
Robotics can help address the growing worker shortage challenge of the manufacturing industry. As such, machine tending is a task collaborat… (voir plus)ive robots can tackle that can also greatly boost productivity. Nevertheless, existing robotics systems deployed in that sector rely on a fixed single-arm setup, whereas mobile robots can provide more flexibility and scalability. We introduce a multi-agent multi-machine-tending learning framework using mobile robots based on multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) techniques, with the design of a suitable observation and reward. Moreover, we integrate an attention-based encoding mechanism into the Multi-Agent Proximal Policy Optimization (MAPPO) algorithm to boost its performance for machine-tending scenarios. Our model (AB-MAPPO) outperforms MAPPO in this new challenging scenario in terms of task success, safety, and resource utilization. Furthermore, we provided an extensive ablation study to support our design decisions.
Attention-Based Multi-Agent RL for Multi-Machine Tending Using Mobile Robots
Abdalwhab Bakheet Mohamed Abdalwhab
David St-Onge
Behaviour Discovery and Attribution for Explainable Reinforcement Learning
Rishav
Vincent Michalski
Zero-Shot Anomaly Detection with Dual-Branch Prompt Selection
Zero-shot anomaly detection (ZSAD) enables identifying and localizing defects in unseen categories by relying solely on generalizable featur… (voir plus)es rather than requiring any labeled examples of anomalies. However, existing ZSAD methods, whether using fixed or learned prompts, struggle under domain shifts because their training data are derived from limited training domains and fail to generalize to new distributions. In this paper, we introduce PILOT, a framework designed to overcome these challenges through two key innovations: (1) a novel dual-branch prompt learning mechanism that dynamically integrates a pool of learnable prompts with structured semantic attributes, enabling the model to adaptively weight the most relevant anomaly cues for each input image; and (2) a label-free test-time adaptation strategy that updates the learnable prompt parameters using high-confidence pseudo-labels from unlabeled test data. Extensive experiments on 13 industrial and medical benchmarks demonstrate that PILOT achieves state-of-the-art performance in both anomaly detection and localization under domain shift.
Zero-Shot Anomaly Detection with Dual-Branch Prompt Learning
Zero-shot anomaly detection (ZSAD) enables identifying and localizing defects in unseen categories by relying solely on generalizable featur… (voir plus)es rather than requiring any labeled examples of anomalies. However, existing ZSAD methods, whether using fixed or learned prompts, struggle under domain shifts because their training data are derived from limited training domains and fail to generalize to new distributions. In this paper, we introduce PILOT, a framework designed to overcome these challenges through two key innovations: (1) a novel dual-branch prompt learning mechanism that dynamically integrates a pool of learnable prompts with structured semantic attributes, enabling the model to adaptively weight the most relevant anomaly cues for each input image; and (2) a label-free test-time adaptation strategy that updates the learnable prompt parameters using high-confidence pseudo-labels from unlabeled test data. Extensive experiments on 13 industrial and medical benchmarks demonstrate that PILOT achieves state-of-the-art performance in both anomaly detection and localization under domain shift.
Zero-Shot Anomaly Detection with Dual-Branch Prompt Selection
Zero-shot anomaly detection (ZSAD) enables identifying and localizing defects in unseen categories by relying solely on generalizable featur… (voir plus)es rather than requiring any labeled examples of anomalies. However, existing ZSAD methods, whether using fixed or learned prompts, struggle under domain shifts because their training data are derived from limited training domains and fail to generalize to new distributions. In this paper, we introduce PILOT, a framework designed to overcome these challenges through two key innovations: (1) a novel dual-branch prompt learning mechanism that dynamically integrates a pool of learnable prompts with structured semantic attributes, enabling the model to adaptively weight the most relevant anomaly cues for each input image; and (2) a label-free test-time adaptation strategy that updates the learnable prompt parameters using high-confidence pseudo-labels from unlabeled test data. Extensive experiments on 13 industrial and medical benchmarks demonstrate that PILOT achieves state-of-the-art performance in both anomaly detection and localization under domain shift.
GitChameleon: Evaluating AI Code Generation Against Python Library Version Incompatibilities
Victor May
Brice Rauby
Justine Gehring
Antonio Orvieto
Eilif Benjamin Muller
Massimo Caccia
The rapid evolution of software libraries poses a considerable hurdle for code generation, necessitating continuous adaptation to frequent v… (voir plus)ersion updates while preserving backward compatibility. While existing code evolution benchmarks provide valuable insights, they typically lack execution-based evaluation for generating code compliant with specific library versions. To address this, we introduce GitChameleon, a novel, meticulously curated dataset comprising 328 Python code completion problems, each conditioned on specific library versions and accompanied by executable unit tests. GitChameleon rigorously evaluates the capacity of contemporary large language models (LLMs), LLM-powered agents, code assistants, and RAG systems to perform version-conditioned code generation that demonstrates functional accuracy through execution. Our extensive evaluations indicate that state-of-the-art systems encounter significant challenges with this task; enterprise models achieving baseline success rates in the 48-51\% range, underscoring the intricacy of the problem. By offering an execution-based benchmark emphasizing the dynamic nature of code libraries, GitChameleon enables a clearer understanding of this challenge and helps guide the development of more adaptable and dependable AI code generation methods. We make the dataset and evaluation code publicly available at https://github.com/mrcabbage972/GitChameleonBenchmark.
GitChameleon: Evaluating AI Code Generation Against Python Library Version Incompatibilities
Victor May
Brice Rauby
Justine Gehring
Antonio Orvieto
Eilif Benjamin Muller
Massimo Caccia
The rapid evolution of software libraries poses a considerable hurdle for code generation, necessitating continuous adaptation to frequent v… (voir plus)ersion updates while preserving backward compatibility. While existing code evolution benchmarks provide valuable insights, they typically lack execution-based evaluation for generating code compliant with specific library versions. To address this, we introduce GitChameleon, a novel, meticulously curated dataset comprising 328 Python code completion problems, each conditioned on specific library versions and accompanied by executable unit tests. GitChameleon rigorously evaluates the capacity of contemporary large language models (LLMs), LLM-powered agents, code assistants, and RAG systems to perform version-conditioned code generation that demonstrates functional accuracy through execution. Our extensive evaluations indicate that state-of-the-art systems encounter significant challenges with this task; enterprise models achieving baseline success rates in the 48-51\% range, underscoring the intricacy of the problem. By offering an execution-based benchmark emphasizing the dynamic nature of code libraries, GitChameleon enables a clearer understanding of this challenge and helps guide the development of more adaptable and dependable AI code generation methods. We make the dataset and evaluation code publicly available at https://github.com/mrcabbage972/GitChameleonBenchmark.
GitChameleon: Evaluating AI Code Generation Against Python Library Version Incompatibilities
Victor May
Brice Rauby
Justine Gehring
Antonio Orvieto
Eilif Benjamin Muller
Massimo Caccia
The rapid evolution of software libraries poses a considerable hurdle for code generation, necessitating continuous adaptation to frequent v… (voir plus)ersion updates while preserving backward compatibility. While existing code evolution benchmarks provide valuable insights, they typically lack execution-based evaluation for generating code compliant with specific library versions. To address this, we introduce GitChameleon, a novel, meticulously curated dataset comprising 328 Python code completion problems, each conditioned on specific library versions and accompanied by executable unit tests. GitChameleon rigorously evaluates the capacity of contemporary large language models (LLMs), LLM-powered agents, code assistants, and RAG systems to perform version-conditioned code generation that demonstrates functional accuracy through execution. Our extensive evaluations indicate that state-of-the-art systems encounter significant challenges with this task; enterprise models achieving baseline success rates in the 48-51\% range, underscoring the intricacy of the problem. By offering an execution-based benchmark emphasizing the dynamic nature of code libraries, GitChameleon enables a clearer understanding of this challenge and helps guide the development of more adaptable and dependable AI code generation methods. We make the dataset and evaluation code publicly available at https://github.com/mrcabbage972/GitChameleonBenchmark.
GitChameleon 2.0: Evaluating AI Code Generation Against Python Library Version Incompatibilities
Victor May
Brice Rauby
Justine Gehring
Antonio Orvieto
Eilif Benjamin Muller
Massimo Caccia
The rapid evolution of software libraries poses a considerable hurdle for code generation, necessitating continuous adaptation to frequent v… (voir plus)ersion updates while preserving backward compatibility. While existing code evolution benchmarks provide valuable insights, they typically lack execution-based evaluation for generating code compliant with specific library versions. To address this, we introduce GitChameleon 2.0, a novel, meticulously curated dataset comprising 328 Python code completion problems, each conditioned on specific library versions and accompanied by executable unit tests. GitChameleon 2.0 rigorously evaluates the capacity of contemporary large language models (LLMs), LLM-powered agents, code assistants, and RAG systems to perform version-conditioned code generation that demonstrates functional accuracy through execution. Our extensive evaluations indicate that state-of-the-art systems encounter significant challenges with this task; enterprise models achieving baseline success rates in the 48-51% range, underscoring the intricacy of the problem. By offering an execution-based benchmark emphasizing the dynamic nature of code libraries, GitChameleon 2.0 enables a clearer understanding of this challenge and helps guide the development of more adaptable and dependable AI code generation methods. We make the dataset and evaluation code publicly available at https://github.com/mrcabbage972/GitChameleonBenchmark.
Revisiting Laplacian Representations for Value Function Approximation in Deep RL
Proto-value functions (PVFs) introduced Laplacian embeddings as an effective feature basis for value-function approximation; however, their … (voir plus)utility remained limited to small, fully known state spaces. Recent work has scaled Laplacian embeddings to high-dimensional inputs, using them for reward shaping and option discovery in goal-directed tasks, yet only as auxiliary signals, rather than directly using them as features for value functions. In this paper, we learn Laplacian eigenvectors online and employ them as features for Q-learning in 23 Atari games. We empirically demonstrate that these online–learned embeddings substantially improve model-free RL in large, high-dimensional domains. We demonstrate that enriching state representations with action embeddings yields additional gains under both behavior-policy and uniform-random policies. Additionally, we introduce the Fusion architecture, which augments the representation with useful inductive bias at the embedding level. To assess the usefulness of each embedding used in the Fusion architecture, we use Shapley values analysis.