PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

David Duvenaud

Also known as David Kristjanson Duvenaud

As of October 2026, David Duvenaud is an associate professor at the University of Toronto, where his research focuses on AGI governance and catastrophic risk. His machine learning work includes Neural Ordinary Differential Equations, which won a Best Paper Award at NeurIPS 2018. He finished a PhD at Cambridge in 2014 and joined the University of Toronto faculty in 2016 after a postdoc at Harvard. From 2023 to 2024 he worked full time at Anthropic, where he led the alignment evaluations team. In 2024 he received an Outstanding Early Career Computer Science Researcher Award from CS-Can | Info-Can.

Photo of David Duvenaud

Timeline

  1. 2014

    A Cambridge PhD

    He completes a PhD at Cambridge in 2014 under Carl Rasmussen and Zoubin Ghahramani.

  2. 2016

    Joining the Toronto faculty

    After a postdoc at Harvard with Ryan Adams, he joins the University of Toronto faculty in 2016.

  3. 2018

    A NeurIPS best paper award

    He co-authors Neural Ordinary Differential Equations, which wins a Best Paper Award at NeurIPS 2018.

  4. 2021

    An ICML honorable mention

    He co-writes Oops I Took A Gradient: Scalable Sampling for Discrete Distributions, which receives an Outstanding Paper Honorable Mention at ICML 2021.

  5. 2023–2024

    An alignment evaluations team

    He works full time at Anthropic in 2023–2024, where he leads the alignment evaluations team.

  6. 2024

    A chair and an early-career award

    In June 2024 he and Roger Grosse are named Schwartz Reisman Chairs in Technology and Society, and he receives the 2024 CS-Can | Info-Can Outstanding Early Career Computer Science Researcher Award.

  7. 2025

    A federal AI advisory role

    In 2025 he is appointed to the federal Safe and Secure Advisory Group, which provides guidance to the Government of Canada on AI safety.

  8. As of October 2026

    An associate professor in Toronto

    He is an associate professor at the University of Toronto, where his research focuses on AGI governance, evaluation, and mitigating catastrophic risks from future systems.

Sources and credits

Photo: cs.toronto.edu; David Duvenaud; creator not stated. License: Not stated by source. Source: cs.toronto.edu. Cropped to a square and resized. Ask us to remove or replace this photo.

  1. David Duvenaud - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org. Checked 14 October 2026.
  2. David Duvenaud cs.toronto.edu. Checked 14 October 2026.
  3. Awards neurips.cc. Checked 14 October 2026.
  4. David Duvenaud wins CS-Can | Info-Can Outstanding Early Career Computer Science Researcher Award web.cs.toronto.edu. Checked 14 October 2026.
  5. ICML 2021 Awards icml.cc. Checked 14 October 2026.
  6. Professor David Lie named director of Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society alongside two new chairs - Electrical & Computer Engineering ece.utoronto.ca. Checked 14 October 2026.