Doina Precup facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Doina Precup
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Doina Precup with Ian Kerr in Montreal (2018)
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| Nationality | Romanian |
| Alma mater | Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, University of Massachusetts Amherst |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | artificial intelligence |
| Institutions | McGill University, Deepmind |
| Thesis | Temporal Abstraction in Reinforcement Learning (2000) |
| Doctoral advisor | Richard S. Sutton |
Doina Precup is a smart researcher from Romania. She lives in Montreal, Canada. Her main work is in artificial intelligence (AI). AI is about making computers think and learn like humans. Doina Precup works at McGill University. She is also a leader at Deepmind in Montreal. Deepmind is a company that creates AI.
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Learning About AI
Doina Precup became interested in AI when she was young. She loved science fiction stories about robots. In these stories, robots were often helpful and kind. Her mother was also a computer science professor in Romania.
Her Studies
Doina studied computer science and engineering. She earned her first degree in 1994. This was at the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca in Romania. She then got a master's degree there in 1995.
In 1995, she moved to the United States. She received a special scholarship called a Fulbright scholarship. She continued her studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. There, she earned another master's degree in 1997. She completed her PhD in 2000.
Women in Science
Many women in Doina's family had successful science careers. Her high school in Romania had many girls studying science. She only noticed fewer women in science and tech when she moved to North America.
Doina decided to help fix this. She co-founded the AI4Good Lab. This group helps more women study and work in artificial intelligence.
Working in Artificial Intelligence
In 2000, Doina Precup became a professor. She joined the School of Computer Science at McGill University. She has lived in Montreal ever since.
Leading AI Research
In 2017, Doina started leading the Montreal office of Deepmind. Deepmind is an AI company owned by Google. She teaches at McGill University. She also does important research at Deepmind.
Her research focuses on reinforcement learning. This is a way to teach AI systems to make decisions. She works on AI that can help people. For example, she uses AI in health care. This includes using AI for medical imaging. She is interested in how machines make choices when things are uncertain.
AI and Society
Doina Precup is a senior fellow at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. She is also a member of the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms. She is a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.
In 2017, she joined other AI experts. They wrote a letter to the Canadian Prime Minister. They asked him to think about the risks of AI-controlled weapons. These are weapons that use AI to make decisions. They wanted leaders to address these important issues.
