Raquel Urtasun (born 30 January 1976) is a professor at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

. Urtasun uses

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

, particularly

deep learning Deep learning is a subset of machine learning that focuses on utilizing multilayered neural networks to perform tasks such as classification, regression, and representation learning. The field takes inspiration from biological neuroscience a ...

, to make vehicles and other machines perceive the world more accurately and efficiently.

Education

Urtasun received her bachelor's degree in Telecommunication Engineering from the Universidad Publica de Navarra in 2000 and her Ph.D. degree from the Computer Science department at

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne The École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (, EPFL) is a public university, public research university in Lausanne, Switzerland, founded in 1969 with the mission to "train talented engineers in Switzerland". Like its sister institution E ...

(EPFL) in 2006. Afterward, she was a postdoctoral scholar with Trevor Darrell, initially at MIT (2006–2008) and then, following Darrell's move to the

International Computer Science Institute The International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) is an independent, non-profit research organization located in Berkeley, California, United States. Since its founding in 1988, ICSI has maintained an affiliation agreement with the University ...

, at

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkele ...

(2008–2009).

Career

Professor Urtasun's area of research is machine perception for self-driving cars. This work includes machine learning, computer vision, robotics and

remote sensing Remote sensing is the acquisition of information about an physical object, object or phenomenon without making physical contact with the object, in contrast to in situ or on-site observation. The term is applied especially to acquiring inform ...

. She was previously an assistant professor at the

Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago (TTIC or TTI-Chicago) is a private graduate school and research institute focused on computer science and located in Chicago, Illinois within the University of Chicago campus. It is supported by the e ...

(TTIC) (2009–2014) and a visiting professor at

ETH Zurich ETH Zurich (; ) is a public university in Zurich, Switzerland. Founded in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the university focuses primarily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. ETH Zurich ran ...

(2010). In May 2017,

Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. is an American multinational transportation company that provides Ridesharing company, ride-hailing services, courier services, food delivery, and freight transport. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California, a ...

hired Urtasun to lead a Toronto-based research team on

self-driving car A self-driving car, also known as an autonomous car (AC), driverless car, robotic car or robo-car, is a car that is capable of operating with reduced or no human input. They are sometimes called robotaxis, though this term refers specifica ...

s. There, she led a research group in Uber's

Advanced Technologies Group The Advanced Party (), otherwise known as the Advanced Association () was a liberal and centrist Zionist political association in Mandatory Palestine founded by several urban liberal Zionists. The party was founded in order to represent the voice ...

. Uber hired dozens of researchers and also made a multi-year, multi-million dollar commitment to Toronto's Vector Institute, which Urtasun co-founded. She worked for the University of Toronto one day per week and for Uber four days per week. She brought eight students with her. In 2021, Urtasun left Uber and launched Waabi Innovation, focused on developing self-driving cars.

Awards and honours

Among Urtasun's awards are an

NSERC The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC; , CRSNG) is the major federal agency responsible for funding natural sciences and engineering research in Canada. NSERC directly funds university professors and students as ...

E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship, an NVIDIA Pioneers of AI Award, a Ministry of Education and Innovation Early Researcher Award. She is the recipient of Faculty Research Awards from both Amazon and Google, the latter three times. She served as Program Chair of

CVPR The Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition is an annual conference on computer vision and pattern recognition. Affiliations The conference was first held in 1983 in Washington, DC, organized by Takeo Kanade and Dana H. Ballard. Fr ...

2018, and is an editor of the International Journal in Computer Vision (IJCV). She has also served as Area Chair of several machine learning and vision conferences including

NeurIPS The Conference and Workshop on Neural Information Processing Systems (abbreviated as NeurIPS and formerly NIPS) is a machine learning and computational neuroscience conference held every December. Along with ICLR and ICML, it is one of the three ...

, UAI,

ICML The International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) is a leading international academic conference in machine learning. Along with NeurIPS and ICLR, it is one of the three primary conferences of high impact in machine learning and artificial ...

, ICLR,

, and ECCV. She was selected as one of the

Chatelaine Chatelaine may refer to: *Chatelaine (chain), a set of short chains on a belt worn by women and men for carrying keys, thimble and/or sewing kit, etc. * Chatelaine (horse), a racehorse * ''Chatelaine'' (magazine), an English-language Canadian wom ...

Women of the Year 2018.

In January 2024 IN, In or in may refer to: Dans * India (country code IN) * Indiana, United States (postal code IN) * Ingolstadt, Germany (license plate code IN) * In, Russia, a town in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast Businesses and organizations * Independen ...

, she was appointed to the

Order of Ontario The Order of Ontario is a civilian honour for merit in the Canadian province of Ontario. Instituted in 1986 by Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, Lieutenant Governor Lincoln Alexander, on the Advice (constitutional), advice of the Executive Council ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Urtasun, Raquel Canadian women academics Academic staff of the University of Toronto Spanish women academics Spanish emigrants to Canada Living people Year of birth missing (living people) École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne alumni Public University of Navarre alumni Members of the Order of Ontario