PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Chris Pal

Also known as Christopher Pal, Christopher J. Pal

Chris Pal is a professor at Polytechnique Montréal and a Canada CIFAR AI Chair whose work in deep learning covers video description, medical image segmentation, complex-valued networks and large language models. He earned a PhD at the University of Waterloo, then coauthored the video-description paper "Describing Videos by Exploiting Temporal Structure" and a brain tumor segmentation method in 2015, and Deep Complex Networks in 2017. He became a Canada CIFAR AI Chair in 2018, worked as a Principal Research Scientist at Element AI, and chaired the MIDL 2020 conference with Maxime Descoteaux. In 2023 he coauthored StarVector, a multimodal language model that generates SVG code from images and text. Since March 2026, he is Interim Co-Scientific Director for scientific and international activities at IVADO, alongside his work as a Distinguished Scientist at ServiceNow Research.

Badges

Timeline

  1. By 2007

    Waterloo PhD and stereo vision

    He earns a PhD at the University of Waterloo, where his research applies probability models and optimization techniques to image, video and signal processing. In 2007, he and Daniel Scharstein publish the CVPR paper "Learning conditional random fields for stereo".

  2. 2009

    Keypoint velocities for activity recognition

    He is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Rochester before arriving in Montreal. In 2009, he coauthors the ICCV paper "Activity recognition using the velocity histories of tracked keypoints" with Ross Messing and Henry A. Kautz, which presents a feature built from the velocity history of tracked keypoints and a new dataset of activities of daily living.

  3. 2015–2017

    Video description to Deep Complex Networks

    In 2015, he is among the authors of "Describing Videos by Exploiting Temporal Structure", which pairs a 3-D convolutional network with a temporal attention mechanism to describe videos and is accepted to ICCV 2015. He also coauthors a 2015 paper on fully automatic brain tumor segmentation with deep neural networks, tailored to glioblastomas in MR images. In 2017, he coauthors Deep Complex Networks, which provides building blocks such as complex convolutions and complex batch-normalization for complex-valued neural networks.

  4. 2018–2023

    A Canada CIFAR AI Chair

    CIFAR appoints him a Canada CIFAR AI Chair in 2018 and renews the appointment in 2023. He is a full professor in the Department of Computer Engineering and Software Engineering at Polytechnique Montréal.

  5. 2019–2020

    Element AI and MIDL 2020

    In 2019, he is a full professor at Polytechnique Montréal, a founding faculty member of Mila and a Principal Research Scientist at Element AI, and he gives a keynote on AI algorithms at the DASIP conference in Montréal. In 2020, he serves as a conference chair of MIDL 2020 together with Maxime Descoteaux.

  6. December 2023

    StarVector for SVG generation

    In December 2023, he is among the authors of StarVector, a multimodal large language model that generates Scalable Vector Graphics code from images and text. The work introduces the SVG-Stack training dataset of 2M samples and the SVG-Bench benchmark.

  7. 2025

    Visiting scientist at the Simons Institute

    In 2025, he is a Visiting Scientist at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing for its Special Year on Large Language Models and Transformers, Part 2.

  8. Since March 2026

    Interim co-scientific director at IVADO

    IVADO appoints him Interim Co-Scientific Director for Scientific and International Activities in March 2026, taking over from Foutse Khomh. He is a full professor at Polytechnique Montréal, a Canada CIFAR AI Chair, a core academic member at Mila and a Distinguished Scientist at ServiceNow Research, and he co-leads IVADO's AI Safety and Alignment group.

Career

  1. Since 2026Institute for Data ValorizationInterim Co-Scientific Director for Scientific and International Activities
  2. Since 2019MilaFounding Faculty Member; Core Academic Member
  3. Since 2018CIFARCanada CIFAR AI Chair
  4. NowPolytechnique MontréalFull Professor
  5. NowServiceNowDistinguished Scientist
  6. 2025Simons Institute for the Theory of ComputingVisiting Scientist
  7. From 2019Element AIPrincipal Research Scientist
  8. University of RochesterProfessor

Education

  1. 2007University of WaterlooPhD

From the biography.

  1. Universities (31%) and startups and other companies (25%) employ the largest shares of 2020–2026 entrantsIncludes Mila. Among 819 people whose first recorded role started in 2020–2026 and who have a known current organization, 60% work in commercial sectors (25% at startups and other companies, 23% at frontier labs and 13% at big tech, with 9 in two), and 31% work at universities, compared with 66% for earlier entrants.
  2. Companies supply the most prior-work hires at 7 of the 9 frontier AI labsIncludes Mila. Our estimates of the organizations where 550 people worked directly before joining 9 frontier AI labs across 620 career transitions, comparing the main feeder organizations per lab.
  3. Of 943 people shaping AI who worked at Google, 446 work there nowIncludes Mila. Our estimates of where the 943 people shaping AI who worked at Google and Google DeepMind work now: 446 at Google and 452 across 278 other organizations.
  4. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Polytechnique Montréal. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Chris Pal yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Chris Pal | Mila mila.quebec. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Christopher Pal – NEXT Canada nextcanada.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Daniel Scharstein - Publications skylight.middlebury.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Activity Recognition Using the Velocity Histories of Tracked Keypoints | ML Anthology mlanthology.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. [1502.08029] Describing Videos by Exploiting Temporal Structure arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. [1505.03540] Brain Tumor Segmentation with Deep Neural Networks arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. [1705.09792] Deep Complex Networks arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Christopher Pal – CIFAR cifar.ca. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. Keynote by Christopher Pal – DASIP 2019 Conference dasip2019.gr2m.polymtl.ca. Checked 21 October 2026.
  10. Organization | MIDL 2020 2020.midl.io. Checked 21 October 2026.
  11. [2312.11556] StarVector: Generating Scalable Vector Graphics Code from Images and Text arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  12. Christopher Pal simons.berkeley.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  13. Christopher Pal Appointed Interim Co-Scientific Director – Scientific and International Activities at IVADO ivado.ca. Checked 21 October 2026.