The University of Toronto is Hinton Chair in Artificial Intelligencemade possible with $10 million in funding from Google.
The new chair recognizes the extraordinary work of Jeffrey Hinton, professor emeritus and Nobel laureate at the university, and will enable the university to recruit and retain new, internationally recognized and talented AI experts who will make significant contributions to the field.
“On behalf of the University, I would like to express our deep gratitude to Google for this wonderful investment,” said Melanie A. Woodin, President of the University of Toronto. “This new chair will allow us to build on Jeff Hinton’s historic contributions in artificial intelligence and advance his record of innovative research in an area of great importance to the world.”
U of T is providing $10 million in additional funding to match Google’s support. This historic $20 million investment makes the Hinton Chair in Artificial Intelligence one of the most prestigious and generously supported advanced research roles at the University of Toronto, providing significant endowed support for cutting-edge AI researchers and additional funding to advance fundamental discoveries and insights, creating the intellectual foundation needed to take AI to the next level.
This chair will advance responsible research that powers world-class academic research, accelerates breakthrough innovation, and shapes a future where AI serves the public good.
“Google is proud to partner with the University of Toronto to establish this endowed chair in recognition of the extraordinary influence of Jeff Hinton, whose Nobel Prize-winning work laid the foundation for modern artificial intelligence,” said Jeff Dean, principal scientist at Google DeepMind and Google Research. “On a personal level, it has been an honor to have had Jeff as a colleague for more than a decade. This chair will enable world-class academic researchers to accelerate groundbreaking innovation and advance responsible research that will shape a future where AI serves the public good.”
This chair will advance responsible research that powers world-class academic research, accelerates breakthrough innovation, and shapes a future where AI serves the public good.
The Hinton Chair is the first of the University’s newly developed Third Century Chair Program, a strategic initiative established in the lead-up to U of T’s bicentenary to attract and retain visionary scholars who can transform academic disciplines, shape global debates, improve lives and strengthen Canada’s ability to thrive. At a time when competition for talent has never been fiercer, this program will help the university build critical expertise in areas critical to the country’s future, a key priority shared by the Government of Canada, which recently announced $1.7 billion to attract world-class research talent.
The Hinton Chair will also help U of T recruit, mentor and train the world’s most talented students in the field, accelerate innovation in AI applications across medicine, engineering, discovery sciences, humanities and more, expand the university’s AI network and international partnerships, and spark a new wave of promising AI startups.
Based on Hinton’s groundbreaking research
The Hinton Chair in Artificial Intelligence aims to support the same great exploratory research that its namesake pursued during his time at the University of Toronto and at Google.
Geoffrey Hinton received his PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Edinburgh in 1978 and, after completing several years of postdoctoral research in the UK and the US, came to the University of Toronto as a Canadian Institute of Advanced Study (CIFAR) Research Fellow in 1987.
There, he and several graduate students accelerated extensive research into artificial neural networks as a potential path to advancing AI, developing the following core concepts: Distributed representation. Time delay neural net. A mix of expert, variational learning, and deep learning. The most famous one is the Boltzmann machine.
In the 2000s, Hinton’s ideas began to yield very promising results. In March 2013, as more technology companies realized the potential of artificial neural networks, Hinton joined Google as vice president and engineering fellow and remained there for the next 10 years, splitting his time between the company and the University of Tennessee.
I am grateful to have been given the time and resources to continue my research at the University of Toronto and develop the ideas that ultimately led to the success of neural networks.
Many people have contributed to the state of AI, but perhaps none has been more important than Hinton. Hinton’s decades of research form the basis of modern artificial intelligence and its myriad applications across nearly every field and field. He is also responsible for the “Hinton Effect,” where many of his students lead advances in AI at universities and companies around the world.
“I am grateful to have been able to continue my research at the University of Toronto, which gave me the time and resources to develop the ideas that ultimately led to successful neural nets,” said Jeffrey Hinton. “I am heartened that Professor Hinton of Artificial Intelligence will similarly support the next generation of AI research and enable big, promising ideas to germinate for the benefit of all humanity.”
I am grateful to have been given the time and resources to continue my research at the University of Toronto and develop the ideas that ultimately led to the success of neural networks.
Hinton shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics with John J. Hopfield for the fundamental work that made deep learning possible and brought the field to its current peak.
University of Toronto – World leader in AI
Based in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Computer Science, ranked 12th in the world by subject in the 2025 QS World University Rankings and a world leader in deep learning and generative AI, the Hinton Chair in Artificial Intelligence will leverage U of T’s and Toronto’s widely recognized and substantial strengths in AI.
“We are very excited given the incredible potential of bringing the world’s leading AI researchers into this environment,” said Stephen Wright, interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “In the School of Computer Science, the Chair will be surrounded by an incredible concentration of scientific knowledge and creative skills, and a deeply proven track record of research excellence. The School of Computer Science is the ideal platform to chart new paths and pursue breakthrough discoveries in our shared goal of a brighter technological future for all.”
The University of Toronto is home to the CIFAR AI Chair and Canada Research Chair in AI, and has fostered several cutting-edge AI startups, including BlueDot (infectious disease intelligence), Waabi (self-driving trucks), and Deep Genomics (RNA-focused AI for disease detection). In addition to Hinton’s Nobel Prize, U of T faculty and alumni have earned many other honors, including two Turing Awards, two of the three Herzberg Gold Medals ever awarded to computer scientists, and 15 Sloan Research Fellowships.
I’m really excited about the incredible potential of bringing the world’s leading AI researchers into this environment.
The university also consistently attracts and trains the best and most diverse undergraduate and graduate students from around the world, with hundreds continuing to conduct AI-related research across the university.
In addition, U of T is home to a series of AI-focused research initiatives, including the Acceleration Consortium, the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, the Data Science Institute, and the Temerty Center for AI Research and Education in Medicine. The University also maintains a close partnership with Vector Institute, a world-renowned organization co-founded by Jeffrey Hinton that helps researchers, businesses, and governments develop and deploy AI responsibly.
I’m really excited about the incredible potential of bringing the world’s leading AI researchers into this environment.
Impactful partnership: Google and U of T
The establishment of the Hinton Chair in Artificial Intelligence is the latest example of a long-standing partnership between U of T and Google that supports discovery-based research. Over the years, Google has formed a number of partnerships with AI-focused TSU alumni and academic leaders, including Hinton, and the two organizations are founding partners of Toronto’s Vector Institute. Previous funding from Google has helped establish the University of Toronto as a center of excellence for advanced research in AI, and this new faculty position will greatly expand this impact.
“We are extremely grateful to Google for partnering with us to establish a laboratory dedicated to cutting-edge research on the technologies that define our time, helping to generate social and economic benefits for communities around the planet,” said University of Tennessee Vice President David Palmer. “Hinton himself once said that true breakthroughs come from people focusing on what they are excited about. The Hinton Chair will honor this example and provide unprecedented support for the next era of elemental, curiosity-driven work in artificial intelligence.”
