PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Pascal Poupart

Pascal Poupart is a University of Waterloo computer scientist who works on reinforcement learning and on scalable algorithms for partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs). After a B.Sc. at McGill in 1998 and an M.Sc. at the University of British Columbia in 2000, he completed a Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Toronto in 2005. With Jesse Hoey, Alex Mihailidis and colleagues, he applied POMDPs to automated handwashing assistance for people with dementia, described in a 2010 paper. In 2018, he became a Canada CIFAR AI Chair at the Vector Institute and took charge of the Borealis AI research lab in Waterloo until 2020. He is Interim Research Director at the Vector Institute and a professor in Waterloo's Cheriton School of Computer Science.

Badges

Timeline

  1. 1998–2005

    Degrees from McGill to Toronto

    He earns a B.Sc. in Mathematics and Computer Science at McGill University in 1998 and an M.Sc. in Computer Science at the University of British Columbia in 2000. In 2005, he completes a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Toronto.

  2. 2003–2006

    Controllers and Bayesian reinforcement learning

    In 2003, he coauthors "Bounded finite state controllers" with Craig Boutilier in Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems. In 2006, he coauthors "An analytic solution to discrete Bayesian reinforcement learning" with Nikos Vlassis, Jesse Hoey and Kevin Regan at the 23rd International Conference on Machine Learning.

  3. 2007–2010

    Handwashing help for dementia

    In 2007, he coauthors a paper with Jesse Hoey, Axel von Bertoldi and Alex Mihailidis on assisting persons with dementia during handwashing with a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP). In 2010, the group publishes "Automated handwashing assistance for persons with dementia using video and a partially observable Markov decision process" in Computer Vision and Image Understanding; the system chooses between audio-visual prompts and calls for human assistance. He is most well known for approximate scalable POMDP algorithms and their applications, including automated prompting for people with dementia and spoken dialog management.

  4. 2008

    An Ontario Early Researcher Award

    In 2008, he receives an Early Researcher Award from the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation. He is also a best paper award runner-up at UAI-2008.

  5. 2015–2018

    Cheriton fellowship and SAT medals

    He holds a David R. Cheriton Faculty Fellowship from 2015 to 2018. He receives a gold medal at the SAT-2016 competition and, in 2017, a silver medal at the SAT-2017 competition plus a best student paper honourable mention.

  6. 2018

    A Canada CIFAR AI Chair

    In 2018, he is appointed a Canada CIFAR AI Chair at the Vector Institute, a post he holds today.

  7. 2018–2020

    Research director at Borealis AI

    In November 2018, Borealis AI, the machine learning research institute of the Royal Bank of Canada, sets up a lab in the evolv1 building in Waterloo under his leadership. He serves as Research Director and Principal Research Scientist of the Waterloo lab from 2018 to 2020.

  8. As of October 2026

    Interim research director at Vector

    He is Interim Research Director at the Vector Institute and a professor in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. A $170,000 NSERC Alliance Grant, announced in July 2026 and matched by $85,000 from Manulife Financial, funds his two-year project "Agentic Workflow Adaptation and Validation" on agents that automate insurance underwriting workflows.

Career

  1. Since 2018Vector InstituteCanada CIFAR AI Chair
  2. NowUniversity of WaterlooProfessor
  3. 2018–2020Royal Bank of CanadaResearch Director and Principal Research Scientist

Education

  1. 2005University of TorontoPh.D.
  2. 2000University of British ColumbiaM.Sc.
  3. 1998McGill UniversityB.Sc.

From the biography.

  1. 11% of AI doctorate holders from 2010 to 2016 founded or led a company or lab by 10 years after graduationIncludes Pascal Poupart. We estimate how often AI doctorate holders founded or led a company or lab by 10 years after graduation, how waiting times compare between founders and top jobs, and which universities trained the most.
  2. Of 943 people shaping AI who worked at Google, 446 work there nowIncludes Vector Institute. 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.
  3. Nonprofit roles are 2.3 times as common in AI safetyIncludes Vector Institute. We estimate where people focused on safety, alignment and evaluation work. Nonprofit roles appear for 25.1% of safety people with known affiliations, compared with 11.0% in other areas.
  4. Universities (31%) and startups and other companies (25%) employ the largest shares of 2020–2026 entrantsIncludes Vector Institute. 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.

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 Pascal Poupart yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Pascal Poupart's Homepage - Biography cs.uwaterloo.ca. Checked 22 October 2026.
  2. Pascal Poupart – CIFAR cifar.ca. Checked 22 October 2026.
  3. Coach Project (Handwashing) cs.uwaterloo.ca. Checked 22 October 2026.
  4. Expert profile — Profil d'expert | CAIAC caiac.ca. Checked 22 October 2026.
  5. Borealis AI opens R&D lab at evolv1 in Waterloo | BetaKit betakit.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  6. Pascal Poupart - Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence vectorinstitute.ai. Checked 22 October 2026.
  7. Pascal Poupart awarded $170k NSERC Alliance Grant to develop an agentic system to automate internal workflows | Artificial Intelligence Group | University of Waterloo uwaterloo.ca. Checked 22 October 2026.