Addis Alaminie
AI-driven framework for planning water resources in large river basins
Supervisors: Professor Mohammed Basheer (Department of Civil & Mineral Engineering) & Professor Jude Kong (Department of Mathematics)
Project Goal: To develop an AI-powered framework for sustainable water resource planning in large river basins.
Research Interests: Hydrological Modeling, Water Resource Planning, Remote Sensing
Fellowship: August 2025 – July 2027
Afeez Popoola
AI for Optimizing Geothermal Reservoir Performance Using Coupled Surface Deformation and Subsurface Measurements
Supervisors: Professor Andrei Swidinsky (Department of Earth Science) & Professor Sebastian Jaimungal (Department of Statistical Sciences)
Project Goal: To develop an AI-driven framework using deep reinforcement learning to optimize geothermal field operations.
Research Interests: Geothermal, Surface Deformation, Heat Flow, Energy Transition
Fellowship: September 2026 – August 2027
Amey Pore
Surgical VLA: Vision-Language-Action Model for Robot-Assisted Surgery
Supervisor: Professor Lueder Kahrs (Department of Mathematical & Computational Science, UTM)
Project Goal: To enable robot-assisted surgery to interpret instructions and adapt safely in real time.
Research Interests: Medical Robotics, Imitation Learning, Surgical Safety
Fellowship: May 2025 – April 2027
Ioana Zelko
DarkMatterFM: An Agentic Foundation Model for Multimodal Constraints on Dark Matter
Supervisor: Professor Jo Bovy (Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics)
Project Goal: To shorten the path from data to discovery and bring us closer to answering what dark matter really is.
Research Interests: Dark Matter, Universe Simulations, Open Science
Fellowship: September 2025 – August 2027
Jiaru Bai
Onboarding Human Intelligence in Remote Machines with Cognitive Operating Systems
Supervisor: Professor Alan Aspuru-Guzik (Departments of Chemistry, Computer Science)
Project Goal: To create a cognitive operating system for self-driving labs that enable adaptive, autonomous workflows.
Research Interests: AI operating Systems, Self-Driving Labs
Fellowship: May 2025 – April 2027
Ju Huang
Quantum Machine Learning Discovery of Nanoporous Materials for Direct Air Carbon Capture
Supervisors: Professor Mohamad Moosavi (Department of Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry) & Professor Anatole von Lilienfeld (Department of Chemistry)
Project Goal: To develop a closed-loop system combining quantum mechanics and machine learning to accelerate nanoporous material discovery for direct air carbon capture.
Research Interests: Quantum Mechanics, Machine Learning, Nanoporous Materials
Fellowship: May 2025 – April 2027
Kevin McKinnon
Combined Telescope Astrometry: The Best Telescope is All the Telescopes
Supervisors: Professor Gwendolyn Eadie (Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics) & Professor Aviad Levis (Department of Computer Science)
Project Goal: To revolutionize how we measure the on-sky motion of stars by combining every measurement we have across different telescopes and instruments.
Research Interests: Astrometry, Stellar Dynamics, Neural Radiance
Fellowship: September 2025 – August 2027
Rohan Dahale
Bridging Black Hole Simulations and Observations with Machine Learning
Supervisors: Professor Bart Ripperda (Canadian Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics) & Professor Aviad Levis (Computer Science)
Project Goal: To infer 3D magnetic-filed evolution near supermassive black holes by integrating simulations with multiwavelength data.
Research Interests: Black Holes, Computational Imaging, Machine Learning
Fellowship: October 2025 – September 2027
Ryan Yeung
Deep Neural Networks to Objectively Decode Subjective Experiences in the Brain
Supervisors: Professor Brian Levine (Department of Psychology) & Professor Bradley Buchsbaum (Department of Psychology)
Project Goal: To model subjective experiences using AI, integrating them into cognitive neuroscience to better understand and treat mental disorders.
Research Interests: Memory, Imagery, PTSD, Deep Learning
Fellowship: May 2025 – April 2027
Thomas Schnake
Revisiting Electronic Spin in Quantum Chemistry Using Machine Learning and Explainable AI
Supervisor: Professor Anatole von Lilienfeld (Department of Chemistry) & Professor Chris Maddison (Department of Computer Science)
Project Goal: To isolate electron-spin energy using explainable AI and derive a closed-form expression for quantum chemistry.
Research Interests: Machine Learning, Quantum Chemistry, Explainable AI
Fellowship: January 2026 – December 2027
Xu Charlie Chen
Accelerated Design of Synthetic Microbial Communities for Sustainable Chemical Manufacturing
Supervisors: Professors Christopher Lawson & Mohamad Moosavi (Department of Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry)
Project Goal: To develop an AI-guided, self-driving platform for designing functional synthetic microbiomes through optimized automation.
Research Interests: Self-Driving Labs, MCFAs, Sustainable Chemical Manufacturing
Fellowship: May 2025 – April 2027