Organization: Canada First Research Excellence Fund

Microsoft Ventures invests in Montreal AI expertise

Microsoft Venture‘s new start-up fund has made its first investment in Element AI, a Montreal-based artificial intelligence start-up affiliated with researchers at McGill Univ, Univ of Montreal and Univ of Toronto. Founded by Dr Yoshua Bengio and serial entrepreneurs Jean-François Gagné and Nicolas Chapados, Element AI will use the undisclosed Microsoft investment to achieve scale…

CERC to encourage diversity among chair holders

The federal government is changing the Canada Excellence Research Chairs (CERC) to encourage more gender diversity and will hold at least three of the 11 new chairs for priority areas in its forthcoming competition. Only one of the 27 CERCs awarded to date is held by a woman, prompting new rules that require institutions to…