Mila (research institute)

Mila - Quebec AI Institute (originally Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms) is a research institute in Montreal, Quebec, focusing mainly on machine learning research. Approximately 500 researchers, including faculty and students, were part of Mila in 2020.[1]

Mila
Established1993  (28 years ago)
FoundersYoshua Bengio 
LocationLittle Italy, Montreal
Coordinates45°31′51″N 73°36′49″W

History

Mila was founded as Laboratoire d'informatique des systèmes adaptatifs (LISA)[2] at the Université de Montréal in 1993 by Yoshua Bengio, a Turing award winner and one of the founders of the field of deep learning.[3][4][5] Since 2017, Mila is the result of a partnership between the Université de Montréal and McGill University with École Polytechnique de Montréal and HEC Montréal.

In December 2020, Mila teamed up with IBM to accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning research using open-source technology in a bid to integrate the Quebec institute’s open-source software, Oríon, with IBM’s Watson Machine Learning Accelerator, an AI model training and inference tool that the tech giant offers to businesses.[6]

Notable researchers

Besides Bengio, Mila's faculty members include Joëlle Pineau and Doina Precup. Some of its graduates include Hugo Larochelle and Ian Goodfellow.

Research activities

Research at Mila is largely, but not exclusively focused on deep learning and reinforcement learning. Specific research topics include:

Other activities

Mila is both a research and educational institution, providing postdoc and internship positions, and granting PhD and Master's degrees in machine learning.

Mila members have also contributed to open-source software. Theano, one of the early programming frameworks for deep learning originated at Mila. In 2020, active projects included myia, a deep learning framework for Python, and baby-ai, a platform for simulating language learning with a human in the loop.[7]

In addition, Mila is also involved in numerous partnerships with private companies.[8]

References
  1. "Mila website". mila.quebec. Retrieved 2020-07-26.
  2. "Laboratoire d'Informatique des Systèmes Adaptatifs". www.iro.umontreal.ca. Retrieved 2020-08-11.
  3. "Fathers of the Deep Learning revolution receive 2018 ACM A.M. Turing Award". www.acm.org. Retrieved 2019-07-17.
  4. "Massive new centre for AI research opens in Montreal - Montreal | Globalnews.ca". globalnews.ca. 2019-01-28. Retrieved 2019-07-15.
  5. Desmond, John (2018-06-22). "Executive Interview: Yoshua Bengio of MILA, University of Montreal". AI Trends. Retrieved 2019-07-17.
  6. "Mila, IBM collaborating on open-source AI and machine learning project | BetaKit". 2020-12-11. Retrieved 2020-12-19.
  7. "Mila Github Page". github.com. Retrieved 2020-07-26.
  8. "Mila industrial partner list". mila.quebec. Retrieved 2020-07-26.
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