PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Mark Coates

Mark Coates is an AI researcher whose work includes network tomography, distributed particle filtering and learning on graphs. He earned a computer systems engineering degree at Adelaide in 1995 and a PhD in information engineering at Cambridge in 1999, then worked as a research associate and lecturer at Rice through 2001. He joined McGill's electrical and computer engineering department in 2002; his research team received the NSERC Synergy Award in 2006, and he worked as a senior scientist at Winton Capital in 2012–2013. His later coauthored work applied machine learning to biological sequence design in 2023 and Koopman-based recurrent networks for time-series forecasting in 2025. As of October 2026, he is an associate professor in McGill's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and supervises the McGill Networks Research Lab.

Badges

Timeline

  1. 1995–1999

    Adelaide engineering and Cambridge PhD

    He earns a B.E. in computer systems engineering from the University of Adelaide in 1995 and a PhD in information engineering from the University of Cambridge in 1999.

  2. 1999–2001

    Research at Rice

    At Rice University, he works as a research associate and lecturer from 1999 to 2001.

  3. 2002

    Joining McGill ECE

    He joins McGill's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2002.

  4. 2006

    An NSERC Synergy Award

    His research team receives the 2006 NSERC Synergy Award for its collaboration with Canadian industry.

  5. 2012–2013

    Senior scientist at Winton

    He works as a senior scientist at Winton Capital Management in Oxford in 2012–2013.

  6. 2023

    Biological sequence design

    In 2023, he coauthors 'Bidirectional Learning for Offline Model-based Biological Sequence Design.' The method adds a linear head to a pre-trained language model and proposes a linearization scheme for offline model-based sequence optimization.

  7. 2025

    SKOLR for time-series forecasting

    In 2025, he coauthors SKOLR, which connects Koopman operator approximation with linear recurrent network updates for time-series forecasting. It uses a learnable spectral decomposition and an MLP in a parallel linear RNN stack.

  8. As of October 2026

    McGill associate professor and lab supervisor

    As of October 2026, he is an associate professor in McGill's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He supervises the McGill Networks Research Lab, and his work includes network tomography, distributed particle filtering and learning on graphs.

Career

  1. Since 2002McGill UniversityAssociate Professor
  2. 2012–2013Winton Capital ManagementSenior Scientist
  3. 1999–2001Rice UniversityResearch associate and lecturer

Education

  1. 1999University of CambridgePhD
  2. 1995University of AdelaideB.E.

From the biography.

  1. 20% of people at companies who shape AI also hold a university role, led by Google and Stanford UniversityIncludes McGill University. 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.
  2. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes McGill University. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.
  3. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes McGill University. 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.
  4. 19% of people shaping AI who founded a dated organization have founded two or more, waiting a median of 7 years before a secondIncludes McGill University. Across 1,136 people shaping AI who founded or co-founded a dated company, standalone lab or nonprofit, 221 (19%) founded at least two organizations, accounting for 36% of all 1,421 founding events.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. Mark Coates | Mila mila.quebec. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Mark Coates - Proceedings of the IEEE proceedingsoftheieee.ieee.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Bidirectional Learning for Offline Model-based Biological Sequence Design proceedings.mlr.press. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. SKOLR: Structured Koopman Operator Linear RNN for Time-Series Forecasting proceedings.mlr.press. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. McGill Networks Research Lab networks.lab.mcgill.ca. Checked 21 October 2026.