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photo credit: Thanh Pham
Siamak Ravanbakhsh
Assistant Professor, School of Computer Science, McGill University
Canada CIFAR AI Chair, Mila

Address:   3480 University Street,
McConnell Engineering Building,
Room 318, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 0E9
McGill Office:  MC 325
Mila Office:  I.9

E-mail: 
Phone:  +1 (514) 398-7076

Research

My research area is machine learning. I’m broadly interested in the problem of representation learning and inference in structured, complex and combinatorial domains. In addition to its potential role in artificial general intelligence, our ability to draw inference with structured data is essential in a data-driven approach to science. My recent collaborations explore symmetry transformations in deep learning. This is succinctly motivated by Hermann Weyl’s guiding principle: Whenever you have to do with a structure-endowed entity, try to determine [...] those transformations which leave all structural relations undisturbed.


Select Publications

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Teaching

COMP 451: Fundamentals of Machine Learning (Fall 2023)

COMP 588: Probabilistic Graphical Models (Winter 2023)
COMP 451: Fundamentals of Machine Learning (Fall 2022)
COMP 588: Probabilistic Graphical Models (Winter 2022)
COMP 551: Applied Machine Learning (Fall 2021)
COMP 766-002: Probabilistic Graphical Models(Winter 2021)
COMP 551: Applied Machine Learning (Fall 2020)
COMP 551: Applied Machine Learning (Winter 2020)
COMP 767-002: Probabilistic Graphical Models(Fall 2019)
CPSC 532R (at UBC) : Advanced Topics in AI: Graphical Models(Winter 2018)

Group

Prospective students and postdoctoral fellows, please read this.

Tara Akhoundsadegh, Ph.D. W2021 (M.Sc. 2020-2021; co-supervised w/ Laurence Perreault Levasseur)
Vineet Jain, Ph.D. 2021
Seku-Oumar Kaba, Ph.D. 2021 (M.Sc. 2020-2021)
Arnab Kumar Mondal, Ph.D., 2020 (co-supervised w/ Kaleem Siddiqi)
Daniel Levy, Ph.D. 2022 (M.Sc., 2020-2022)
Xiusi Li, M.Sc. 2023
Victor Livernoche, M.Sc. 2022
Mahsa Massoud, M.Sc. W2023
Mehran Shakerinava, Ph.D. 2021 (M.Sc. 2020-2021)
Siba Smarak Panigrahi , M.Sc. 2022
Hugo Sonnery , Ph.D. 2021

Alumni

Christopher Morris, Postdoctoral Scholar 2021-2022
Fabrício Dos Santos , B.Sc. Intern, S/F2023
Mary Letey , M.Sc. Intern, S2023
Marjan Albooyeh , M.Sc., 2018 (UBC)
Devon Graham, M.Sc., 2017-2018 (UBC)
Vaden Masrani, Ph.D., 2018 (UBC)

Bio

Before joining McGill and Mila, I held a similar position at the University of British Columbia. Before that, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Machine Learning Department and the Robotics Institute, at the Carnegie Mellon University. There, I worked with Barnabás Póczos and Jeff Schneider, and I was also affiliated with Auton Lab and McWilliams Center for Cosmology. I received my M.Sc. and Ph.D. from the University of Alberta, as a member of Alberta Ingenuity Center for Machine Learning, now amii, working with Russ Greiner. During this time, I also spent a few months at Frey Lab, at the University of Toronto. I received my B.Sc. from Sharif University.

A more formal bio is here.