Doina Precup

Member, AIRi@UTCN Advisory Committee

Canada CIFAR AI Chair, McGill University and Mila | Research Director, Google DeepMind | Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada

Doina Precup is an internationally recognised researcher in artificial intelligence and machine learning, specialising in reinforcement learning, reasoning and decision-making under uncertainty. An alumna of the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca (TUCN), she serves on the AIRi@UTCN Advisory Board, contributing her scientific expertise and international perspective to the institute's strategic development, research priorities and international collaborations.

She holds a Canada CIFAR AI Chair at McGill University and Mila – Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, where she co-directs the Reasoning and Learning Lab. She is also Research Director at Google DeepMind, leading its Montreal research team. Her work focuses on developing AI systems capable of learning, reasoning and making decisions in complex and uncertain environments, with particular interest in applications in healthcare and automated control.

Her pioneering contributions to reinforcement learning have received international recognition. Her research introducing the options framework for temporal abstraction received the 2019 Artificial Intelligence Journal Classic Paper Award. Subsequent work on the option-critic architecture received an AAAI Outstanding Student Paper Award, while her co-authored research on the expressivity of Markov reward was recognised among the Outstanding Papers at NeurIPS 2021.

In 2022, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, recognising her distinguished contributions to scientific research. She is also a Senior Fellow of CIFAR's Learning in Machines & Brains programme and has held important scientific leadership positions, including Chair of the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy National Program Committee, Associate Scientific Director of McGill's Healthy Brains for Healthy Lives initiative, and President of CSCan–InfoCan.

Beyond her scientific achievements, Doina Precup is a strong advocate for diversity, inclusion and equal opportunities in artificial intelligence. In 2017, she co-founded AI4Good Lab, an initiative designed to increase women's participation in machine learning. In 2018, she co-founded the Eastern European Machine Learning Summer School (EEML) alongside Viorica Pătrăucean and Răzvan Pascanu, expanding access to advanced AI education and supporting the development of research communities across Eastern Europe.

Through her involvement in AIRi@UTCN, Doina Precup strengthens the connection between her alma mater and the international AI research community, bringing valuable expertise in scientific excellence, research leadership and inclusive innovation.