About

About the CIFAR Deep Learning + Reinforcement Learning School

Since 2005, when CIFAR’s Learning in Machines & Brains program hosted its first Deep Learning + Reinforcement Learning (DLRL) Summer School in Toronto, a thriving community of DLRL Summer School graduates has grown year-over-year, with our alumni now leading some of the world’s top tech firms and university labs.

Today DLRL is a keystone next-generation offering of the CIFAR Learning in Machines & Brains program and the CIFAR Pan-Canadian AI Strategy’s AI4Good Training Program, hosted each year in partnership with Canada’s three national AI institutes: Amii in Edmonton, Mila in Montreal and the Vector Institute in Toronto.

Now in its 19th year, DLRL truly is where the world comes to learn AI.

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Deep Learning (DL) Summer School

Deep neural networks are a powerful method for automatically learning distributed representations at multiple levels of abstraction. Over the past decade, they have dramatically pushed forward the state-of-the-art in domains as diverse as vision, language understanding, robotics, game playing, graphics, health care, and genomics. The DL Summer School will cover both the foundations and applications of deep neural networks, from fundamental concepts to leading-edge research results.

Reinforcement Learning (RL) Summer School

Reinforcement Learning is a family of approaches for developing systems that learn optimal behaviour through interaction with an environment. In recent years, reinforcement learning has seen success as an essential component of Deep Reinforcement Learning, which has helped AI researchers achieve previously unheard of results in games like Go and in the development of autonomous vehicles. The RL Summer School will cover the basics of reinforcement learning and show its most recent research trends and discoveries, as well as present an opportunity to interact with graduate students and senior researchers in the field.

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“The #DLRL Summer School is a place of learning at the highest scientific level in world-changing research areas but also an opportunity for networking, creating connections which can stay for life and fuel future collaborations.”

Yoshua Bengio

Canada CIFAR AI Chair, Mila | Co-Director, CIFAR Learning in Machines & Brains Program |
Scientific Director, IVADO | Scientific Director, Mila | Professor, Université de Montréal
Elissa Strome, Associate Vice-President, Research & Executive Director of the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy at CIFAR

“The Summer School has become a beacon for top AI students and experts from around the world. We’re excited to showcase what makes Canada a global leader in the field of AI.”

Elissa Strome

Executive Director,
Pan-Canadian AI Strategy at CIFAR
Kyunghyun Cho

“I attended DLRL early in my career. The lectures were amazing and provided an opportunity to have close interaction among the participants, and it was at that point that I decided I wanted to continue to do research full time in the area of deep learning.”

Kyunghyun Cho

Associate Professor, New York University; Fellow in the CIFAR
Learning in Machines & Brains program, CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar 2017-2019
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“Beyond the learning and networking opportunities, [the #DLRL Summer School] showcases the rich AI ecosystem we enjoy in Canada. It's been a major factor in encouraging some of the brightest minds to launch their research careers here.”

Graham Taylor

CIFAR Learning in Machines & Brains;
Canada CIFAR AI Chair, Vector Institute, University of Guelph
Alona Fyshe

“[The #DLRL] is a wonderful opportunity to bring the AI leaders of tomorrow together for a fun and immersive learning experience. It’s also a great way to showcase the depth of AI knowledge and expertise that exists in Canada.”

Alona Fyshe

CIFAR Learning in Machines & Brains;
Canada CIFAR AI Chair, Amii, University of Alberta
CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar 2016-2018
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