David Duvenaud, Sanja Fidler, Brendan Frey, Roger Grosse, Geoffrey Hinton, Jordan Jacobs, Tomi Poutanen, Daniel Roy, Raquel Urtasun, Richard Zemel.
there is a lot more momentum at UofT in this specific area of research, more than there is at Waterloo.
Funny aside: I saw him walking up University Ave a few weeks ago. He was all bundled up in a coat and hood. It was cold out, but I also suspect he is becoming recognizable as a celebrity by some and prefers to keep a low profile. If I had recognized him earlier I probably would have tried to stop and chat.
This selection will certainly put a dent in Waterloo's reputation, though with any luck they'll be able to capitalize on it in some capacity due to their proximity.
And if it really matters to you that Waterloo be involved, it's obviously worth pointing out that Pearl Sullivan (Dean of Waterloo Engineering) is on the Board of Directors for the Vector Institute anyway.
Highly doubt it. Waterloo is known for being mediocre/trash for CS research. People go to Waterloo to get into industry and not academics.
Are you out of your mind?
Do you know why Waterloo's School of Computer Science is named after David R. Cheriton?
Yeah, the same DRC who made a major exit to Cisco, seed funded Google and hold an emeritus professorship at Stanford.
A sizeable chunk of the people who published Spark have done their undergrad' or research masters at UW.
Waterloo is definitely top-notch at the undergrad', perhaps less impressive than schools with bigger endowment at the research level, but far from being "trash". Tons of Waterloo profs are on the steering committees of major CS conferences (VLDB most notably).
This comment is so puerile, it has to be written by some jealous and petty undergraduate student. Or so I hope.
Relatedly, Waterloo is in fact included in the Budget 2017 funding for Canada's overall AI initiative, of which this Vector stuff is a part:
"In this budget, the government announced the creation of the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy, which will promote collaboration between AI hubs Toronto, Kitchener-Waterloo, Montreal, and Edmonton. It will be dedicating $125 million towards the launch of this strategy."
Take your pick :)
Yes, you can buy a house there more cheaply than in Toronto. But is owning a pile of bricks worth living in a wasteland? Personal preference, as they say.
Why? UofT / Hinton are doing the AI here...