PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Raquel Urtasun

Raquel Urtasun is a computer vision researcher whose AI work spans machine learning and autonomous driving. She earns a computer science PhD at EPFL, completes postdoctoral work at MIT and UC Berkeley, and moves through faculty roles in Chicago and Toronto. At Uber, she leads Toronto’s self-driving lab before starting Waabi, whose autonomous driving system uses deep learning, probabilistic inference and simulation. Her KITTI work earns the PAMI Mark Everingham Prize and the Longuet-Higgins Prize. Later, she is elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, appointed to the Order of Ontario, and elected to the United Kingdom’s Royal Society.

Works
392
Citations
51,813
h-index
105

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 14 October 2026.

Photo of Raquel Urtasun

Timeline

  1. 2000–2006

    From Navarre to Lausanne

    She earns a bachelor's degree at Universidad Pública de Navarra in 2000 and a computer science PhD at EPFL in 2006.

  2. Before 2015

    A Chicago research post

    She completes postdoctoral work at MIT and UC Berkeley and serves as an assistant professor at TTIC. She is also a visiting professor at ETH Zurich in spring 2010; her research spans machine learning, computer vision, robotics and remote sensing.

  3. 2014–2017

    A Toronto research chair

    She joins the University of Toronto's Department of Computer Science in 2014 and holds a Canada Research Chair in machine learning and computer vision from 2015 to 2017.

  4. 2017–2021

    Leading Uber's Toronto lab

    In 2017, she leads Uber's new self-driving vehicle lab in Toronto while she is an associate professor at U of T. From 2017 to 2021, she serves as chief scientist and head of R&D at Uber ATG.

  5. 2021

    Starting Waabi

    After four years as chief scientist and head of Uber ATG's self-driving lab, she launches Waabi to apply AI to autonomous driving. Its system uses deep learning, probabilistic inference and complex optimization, with a simulator for testing autonomous-vehicle software.

  6. 2021–2024

    Awards for KITTI and AI

    The KITTI Vision Benchmark earns the 2021 PAMI Mark Everingham Prize for its development and maintenance, and its paper “Are We Ready for Autonomous Driving? The KITTI Vision Benchmark Suite” receives the 2022 Longuet-Higgins Prize. In 2024, she is elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and appointed to the Order of Ontario.

  7. May 2026

    A Royal Society fellowship

    She is elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences.

  8. As of October 2026

    Academic and company leadership

    She is a full professor in the University of Toronto's computer science department, founder and CEO of Waabi, and co-founder of the Vector Institute for AI.

Sources and credits

Photo: Raquel Urtasun, via Wikimedia Commons. License: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: commons.wikimedia.org. Cropped to a square and resized. Ask us to remove or replace this photo.

  1. Raquel Urtasun cs.toronto.edu. Checked 14 October 2026.
  2. Raquel Urtasun elected Fellow of the Royal Society web.cs.toronto.edu. Checked 14 October 2026.
  3. U of T's Raquel Urtasun a big draw at Uber's on-campus career event utoronto.ca. Checked 14 October 2026.
  4. The road ahead: Raquel Urtasun's startup to ‘unleash full power of AI’ on self-driving cars utoronto.ca. Checked 14 October 2026.
  5. Andreas Geiger erhält Everingham-Preis uni-tuebingen.de. Checked 14 October 2026.
  6. Robotics Institute Prof Raquel Urtasun shares prestigious Longuet-Higgins prize for “KITTI Vision Benchmark” work in development since 2012 robotics.utoronto.ca. Checked 14 October 2026.
  7. Raquel Urtasun - Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence vectorinstitute.ai. Checked 14 October 2026.