McGill researcher to head Facebook's new Montreal AI lab

Facebook is opening a new Artificial Intelligence Research Lab in Montreal -- FAIR Montreal. This is the company's first research and development investment in Canada, and only its fourth AI research lab in all. Prof. Joelle Pineau, from the School of Computer Science and co-director of McGill's Reasoning & Learning Lab, will head the new Montreal AI lab while maintaining her academic position at the university. Pineau is one of a group of AI researchers at McGill whose work focuses on social applications, particularly in the areas of robotics related to health, transportation and language processing. For example, one of Pineau's research projects has been to build and test smart wheelchairs designed to assist people with mobility impairments.