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Raquel Urtasun

Professor

Faculty of Arts and Science, Department of Computer Science

Orcid identifier0000-0003-2332-5361
  • Professor
    Faculty of Arts and Science, Department of Computer Science

BIO

Raquel Urtasun is the Founder and CEO of Waabi. She is also a Full Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto and a co-founder of the Vector Institute for AI. From 2017 to 2021 she was the Chief Scientist and Head of R&D at Uber ATG. From 2015-2017 she was a Canada Research Chair in Machine Learning and Computer Vision (from which she resigned to join Uber). Prior to this, she was an Assistant Professor at the Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago (TTIC), an academic computer science institute affiliated with the University of Chicago. She was also a visiting professor at ETH Zurich during the spring semester of 2010. She received her Bachelors degree from Universidad Publica de Navarra in 2000, her Ph.D. degree from the Computer Science department at Ecole Polytechnique Federal de Lausanne (EPFL) in 2006 and did her postdoc at MIT and UC Berkeley. She is a world leading expert in AI for self-driving cars. Her research interests include machine learning, computer vision, robotics, AI and remote sensing. Her lab was selected as an NVIDIA NVAIL lab. She is a recipient of an NSERC EWR Steacie Award, an NVIDIA Pioneers of AI Award, a Ministry of Education and Innovation Early Researcher Award, three Google Faculty Research Awards, an Amazon Faculty Research Award, two NVIDIA Pioneer Research Awards, a Connaught New Researcher Award, a Fallona Family Research Award and two Best Paper Runner up Prize awarded at CVPR in 2013 and 2017 respectively. She was also named Chatelaine 2018 Woman of the year, and 2018 Toronto's top influencers by Adweek magazine.

Media availability: TV, Radio, Print/Online

ACADEMIC POSITIONS

  • Canada Research Chair
    University of Toronto, Toronto, CanadaNov 2015 - present
  • Associate Professor
    University of Toronto, Department of Computer Science, Toronto, CanadaJul 2016 - present
  • Assistant Professor
    University of Toronto, Department of Computer Science, Toronto, CanadaJan 2014 - Jun 2016
  • Assistant Professor
    Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago, Chicago, United StatesSep 2009 - Jan 2014

DEGREES

  • B.S. in Telecommunication Engineering
    University of Navarra, Pamplona, SpainSep 1994 - Jun 2000
  • PhD, Computer Science
    École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, SwitzerlandSep 2000 - Jun 2006

POSTGRADUATE TRAINING

  • Postdoctoral Associate
    Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Cambridge, United StatesOct 2006 - Aug 2008
    Postdoctoral Research
  • Postdoctoral Research Scientist
    University of California, Berkeley, EECS & ICSI, Berkeley, United StatesJan 2008 - Sep 2009
    Postdoctoral Research

AVAILABILITY

  • Media enquiries

INSTITUTIONAL STRATEGIC INITIATIVES

  • Robotics Institute