PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Guillaume Lajoie

Guillaume Lajoie is an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the Université de Montréal, a core academic member of Mila and a Canada CIFAR AI Chair, whose research sits at the intersection of AI and neuroscience. After a 2013 paper on chaos in spiking networks from the University of Washington's Department of Applied Mathematics, he was named a Bernstein Fellow in Computational Neuroscience in 2014. He coauthored the non-normal recurrent network nnRNN with Yoshua Bengio and others in 2019, and Mila appointed him a core academic member in 2020. He shared a Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain Pilot Award with Amy Orsborn in 2021 and was named a Canada Research Chair in Neural Computation and Interfacing in 2022. His 2024 paper Amortizing intractable inference in large language models, with Yoshua Bengio, Nikolay Malkin and others, earned an Honorable Mention at ICLR 2024.

Timeline

  1. 2013

    Chaos in spiking networks

    From the University of Washington's Department of Applied Mathematics, he publishes a 2013 paper with Kevin K. Lin and Eric Shea-Brown on chaos and reliability in balanced spiking networks with temporal drive. The paper shows that such chaos persists in the presence of weak and strong stimuli.

  2. 2014–2015

    Bernstein and WRF fellowships

    He is named a Bernstein Fellow in Computational Neuroscience in 2014 and a Washington Research Foundation Innovation Fellow in 2015.

  3. 2019–2020

    Non-normal RNNs and gradient starvation

    In 2019, he coauthors the non-normal recurrent neural network (nnRNN) with Giancarlo Kerg, Yoshua Bengio and others; its design builds on the Schur decomposition and gives unit-norm eigenspectra without orthogonality constraints on eigenbases. In 2020, he coauthors Gradient Starvation with Mohammad Pezeshki, Yoshua Bengio and others, which formalizes why over-parameterized networks trained with cross-entropy loss can capture only a subset of the features relevant for a task.

  4. February 2020

    Core academic member at Mila

    Mila appoints him a Core Academic Member in February 2020. He is an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Université de Montréal, and his research sits at the intersection of AI and neuroscience.

  5. 2021–2022

    Simons award and research chair

    In October 2021, he and Amy Orsborn of the University of Washington receive a Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain Pilot Award, worth $640,000 USD over two years, for a project on how brain-machine interfaces can reveal the computational principles of learning motor behaviours. In January 2022, he is named a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Neural Computation and Interfacing.

  6. July 2023

    Essay on AI's existential risk

    In July 2023, he coauthors the Noema essay "The Illusion Of AI's Existential Risk" with Blake Richards, Blaise Agüera y Arcas and Dhanya Sridhar. The essay argues that focusing on human extinction by AI in the distant future may prevent us from addressing AI's disruptive dangers to society today.

  7. 2024

    An ICLR honorable mention

    In 2024, the paper Amortizing intractable inference in large language models, coauthored with Edward Hu, Moksh Jain, Eric Elmoznino, Younesse Kaddar, Yoshua Bengio and Nikolay Malkin, receives an Honorable Mention at ICLR 2024. It fine-tunes language models with generative flow networks (GFlowNets) to sample from intractable posterior distributions.

  8. As of October 2026

    Professor at Université de Montréal

    He is an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Université de Montréal and a core academic member of Mila. He holds a Canada CIFAR AI Chair, appointed in 2021 and renewed in 2025, and a Canada Research Chair in Neural Computation and Interfacing, and he is a visiting researcher at Google Research. His research develops tools to understand mechanisms of intelligence common to biological and artificial systems.

Career

  1. NowUniversité de MontréalAssociate Professor
  2. NowMilaCore Academic Member
  3. NowGoogle ResearchVisiting Researcher

From the biography.

  1. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Includes Google. Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI each year from 1955 to 2025, tracing the shift from university labs to companies.
  2. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Google. We estimate that Google holds the highest combined h-index at 8,016, while universities account for 73% of the deduplicated total across AI organizations.
  3. 20% of people at companies who shape AI also hold a university role, led by Google and Stanford UniversityIncludes Google. We estimate that 539 of the 6,766 people with a known current organization (8%) hold both a university role and a company role, including 20% of people at companies and 13% of people at universities.
  4. Google alumni have founded or led 133 other organizations, more than any other AI labIncludes Google. We estimate that alumni of 17 major AI labs went on to found or lead 350 other organizations, including 226 they founded, and we trace 472 career moves directly between 23 labs since 2010.

Colleagues

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

Sources and credits

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  1. Chaos and reliability in balanced spiking networks with temporal drive pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Guillaume Lajoie – CIFAR cifar.ca. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. [1905.12080] Non-normal Recurrent Neural Network (nnRNN): learning long time dependencies while improving expressivity with transient dynamics arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. [2011.09468] Gradient Starvation: A Learning Proclivity in Neural Networks arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. 5 new faculty member nominations at Mila mila.quebec. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Mila Professor Guillaume Lajoie receives Prestigious Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain Award mila.quebec. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Professor Guillaume Lajoie appointed Canada Research Chair mila.quebec. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. The Illusion Of AI's Existential Risk noemamag.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. ICLR 2024 Awards iclr.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  10. Guillaume Lajoie | Mila mila.quebec. Checked 21 October 2026.