Joëlle Pineau facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Joëlle Pineau
FRSC
|
|
---|---|
![]() Joëlle Pineau speaks at the Canada Science and Technology Museum in 2018
|
|
Born | 1974 (age 50–51) |
Alma mater | |
Children | 4 |
Awards |
|
Scientific career | |
Institutions |
|
Thesis | Tractable Planning Under Uncertainty: Exploiting Structure (2004) |
Academic advisors |
|
Joëlle Pineau (born in 1974) is a brilliant Canadian computer scientist. She is a professor at McGill University in Montreal. She also leads the entire AI research team at Meta, which used to be called Facebook AI Research. In 2023, she became a member of the Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Early Life and Learning
Joëlle Pineau was born in 1974 in Ottawa, Ontario. When she was younger, she played the viola in the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra. Later, she decided to study engineering at the University of Waterloo.
While studying, she helped create a voice recognition system for helicopter pilots. Since there were no female pilots available, Joëlle sat in the helicopter herself. She recorded her voice to help train the system. Her first job was helping Canada's Ministry of Natural Resources. There, she worked on ways to use solar energy for fish farming.
She then went to Carnegie Mellon University to study robotics. She finished her advanced studies in 2004. Her work on planning under uncertainty has been very important in the field of AI.
Amazing Research and Career
Joëlle Pineau creates smart computer programs called algorithms. These programs help computers learn in complex situations. She helps lead the Reasoning and Learning Lab at McGill University.
She also started two companies that make robots to help older people. One project was called SmartWheeler. This was a special wheelchair that used both artificial intelligence and robotics.
Joëlle Pineau is a top expert in Artificial intelligence. She is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). In 2016, she joined the Royal Society of Canada's group of new scholars.
Her team uses AI to improve medicine. They look at medical records, X-ray images, and lab results. This helps them find new ways to treat illnesses. She teaches AI how to understand medical scans. Her team has even used a method called Deep learning to find seizures.
She helps edit important journals like the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research. She also gives talks about AI on the Artificial Intelligence Channel. She is a key member of Mila Quebec, a big AI research center.
In 2017, Joëlle Pineau became the head of the Facebook AI Research Lab in Montreal. She won an award from Facebook for her research. She focuses on how computers can learn by trying things (reinforcement learning). She also works on deep learning and how computers can understand images and videos.
In 2018, she won a special award called the E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship. She believes that AI research should be easy for others to check and repeat. In 2019, she made sure that all papers submitted to a big AI conference included a checklist. This checklist helped make sure the research was clear and could be reproduced. She is also the president of the International Machine Learning Society.
In 2019, she received the Governor General's Innovation Award. This award recognized her leadership in using AI and machine learning for personalized medicine. This means using AI to create treatments that are just right for each person. She now leads all AI research at Meta.
In 2023, Joëlle Pineau was chosen to be a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. This was because of her important work in machine learning. She especially focused on how computers can learn and plan even when things are uncertain.
Personal Life
Joëlle Pineau has four children.