Who's who · Research institutes
Mila - Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute
Montreal non-profit institute that calls itself the world's largest academic deep learning research centre
At a glance
- Founded
- 1993
- Based in
- Montreal, Canada
- People
- Valérie Pisano, President and chief executive; Hugo Larochelle, Scientific director; Yoshua Bengio, Founder and scientific advisor
- Known for
- Pan-Canadian AI Strategy, Mila startups, OpenFake
- Funding
- Non-profit; public, philanthropic and industry funding
- Faculty members
- 197 (2024-25)
- Student researchers
- 1,200+ (October 2025)
- Website
- https://mila.quebec/en
Mila is a non-profit research institute in Montreal that brings together machine learning researchers from Université de Montréal, McGill University, Polytechnique Montréal, HEC Montréal and other Quebec institutions. It describes itself as the world's largest academic research centre for deep learning, the branch of AI built on large neural networks.
Yoshua Bengio founded the lab at Université de Montréal in 1993. Mila became a non-profit in 2018 and is one of three national AI institutes, with Amii and Vector, in the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy.
Valérie Pisano has been president and chief executive since 2018. In September 2025 Hugo Larochelle, formerly head of Google's AI research lab in Montreal, became scientific director, and Bengio took the role of founder and scientific advisor. As of October 2025 Mila counted 197 faculty members and more than 1,200 student researchers, and its network included 53 startups founded by Mila researchers.
Sources
- Mila, About Mila, 2026-10-02
- Mila, Valérie Pisano, 2026-10-02
- Mila, Hugo Larochelle becomes the new Scientific Director of Mila, 2025-09-02
- Mila, Impact Report 2024-2025, 2026-10-02
Facts last checked 2026-10-02