Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the notion of machines that exhibit intelligence and mimic cognitive functions that are usually associated with humans, such as learning, reasoning, predicting, planning, recognizing, and problem solving. With the advent of big data driven by the explosion of computing capacity and speed, AI tools are being increasingly integrated in technological solutions that are central to our everyday life, business, society, and the environment.

Waterloo.ai is completely aligned with UWaterloo’s current Strategic Plan and its theme of Transformational Research. The Institute's goals are: to identify and seize opportunities to lead in new and emerging areas; to enable conditions that support excellence and impact; to increase interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary research; and to build greater awareness, nationally and globally, of Waterloo’s research productivity and impact. 

Waterloo.ai will embed the active involvement of internal academic membership, coalescing a powerful network of researchers and their teams. Researchers in foundational and operational AI will include computer science, statistics and actuarial sciences, combinatorics and optimization science; management sciences, electrical and computer, mechanical and mechatronics, systems design, civil and environmental, and chemical engineering; public health, health systems, biology, chemistry, earth and environmental sciences, and physics and astronomy. Topics within the fundamental and operational AI areas can be found in the Research.