Patrick Pilarski, PhD, BASc, ICD.D

Professor, Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry - Deptment of Medicine - PhysMedRehab

Pronouns: he/him

Personal Website: https://sites.ualberta.ca/~pilarski/

Contact

Professor, Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry - Deptment of Medicine - PhysMedRehab
Email
pilarski@ualberta.ca
Phone
(780) 248-5636

Overview

Area of Study / Keywords

Artificial Intelligence Bionics Upper-limb Prostheses Rehabilitation Technology Reinforcement Learning Continual Machine Learning Human-Machine Interaction Intelligence Amplification Assistive Robotics


About

Dr. Patrick M. Pilarski is a Canada CIFAR Artificial Intelligence Chair (Amii), past Canada Research Chair in Machine Intelligence for Rehabilitation, and a Professor in the Division of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Department of Medicine, University of Alberta. He is a Fellow and Board Member of the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii), co-leads the Bionic Limbs for Improved Natural Control (BLINC) Laboratory, and is a principal investigator with the Reinforcement Learning and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (RLAI) and iSMART at the University of Alberta. Dr. Pilarski received the B.ASc. in Electrical Engineering from the University of British Columbia in 2004, the Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Alberta in 2009, and completed his postdoctoral training in the Computing Science with Dr. Richard S. Sutton at the University of Alberta in 2014. He graduated from the ICD-Rotman Directors Education Program (DEP) in 2024, and is a holder of the Institute of Corporate Directors Director designation.

Dr. Pilarski’s research interests include reinforcement learning and decision making, artificial intelligence, real-time machine learning, human-machine interaction, intelligence amplification, rehabilitation technology, and assistive robotics. He leads the Amii Adaptive Prosthetics Program—an interdisciplinary initiative focused on creating intelligent artificial limbs to restore and extend abilities for people with amputations. As part of this research, Dr. Pilarski has developed and made prominent machine learning techniques for continual sensorimotor control and prediction learning on prosthetic devices. These include some of the first published approaches to ongoing user training of upper-limb prosthesis control systems via reinforcement learning, and he pioneered the use of general value functions in prediction learning to continually adapt myoelectric control interfaces in real time. Dr. Pilarski’s research programme continues to explore human-device interaction and communication, long-term co-adaptation and joint action between agents, patient-specific device optimization, and constructivism in tightly coupled human-machine interfaces. He has also created techniques for rapid cancer and pathogen screening through work on biomedical pattern recognition, robotic micro-manipulation of medical samples, and hand-held diagnostic devices. Dr. Pilarski is the award-winning author or co-author of more than 120 peer-reviewed articles, a Senior Member of the IEEE, and has been supported by provincial, national, and international research grants.

In 2017, Dr. Pilarski co-founded the first international research office of Alphabet Inc’s United-Kingdom-based subsidiary DeepMind, establishing and growing this high-profile research and development office in his home town of Edmonton, Alberta. He served as the office’s co-lead and a Senior Staff Research Scientist until 2023. Dr. Pilarski currently serves as a director on the board of the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii; 2017-present) one of three national not-for-profit institutes established as part of the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy. Prior to its incorporation, he served on Amii’s management advisory board within the University of Alberta (2014-2016). He also serves as a director on the board of Silvacom Holdings Corp. Dr. Pilarski regularly delivers invited keynotes to boards, business organizations, policy makers, and the general public on the growing impact of artificial intelligence on medicine, industry, and society. He previously founded a startup company, actively engages in consulting, has created multiple arts organizations, and has further governance experience in the arts sector on steering councils and advisory boards of regional and national creative arts organizations.


Research

  • Rehabilitation Technology
  • Prosthetics and Artificial Limbs
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Machine Learning
  • Reinforcement Learning
  • Assistive Robotics

Teaching

Please note that  I am not accepting any new students, staff, or trainees for the foreseeable future. Due to the volume of queries, I apologize that I am not able to respond to requests for information about future supervision opportunities.

Recent Courses

  • CMPUT 607, Applied Reinforcement Learning, Winter 2017
  • CMPUT 609, Reinforcement Learning in Artificial Intelligence, Winter 2015
  • CMPUT 496, Fall 2014
  • CMPUT 605, Fall and Winter 2015, 2016
  • REHAB 599, Fall 2014

Featured Publications

Heather E. Williams, Ahmed W. Shehata, Kodi Y. Cheng, Jacqueline S. Hebert, Patrick M. Pilarski

PLOS ONE. 2024 May; 10.1371/journal.pone.0291279


Heather E. Williams, Ahmed W. Shehata, Kodi Y. Cheng, Jacqueline S. Hebert, Patrick M. Pilarski

2024 February; 10.1101/2024.02.05.578477


Alex Kearney, Anna J Koop, Patrick M Pilarski

Adaptive Behavior. 2023 June; 10.1177/10597123221095880


A. Kalinowska, P. M. Pilarski, T. D. Murphey

Annual Review of Control, Robotics, and Autonomous Systems. 2023 January; 6 10.1146/annurev-control-070122-102501


NeurIPS HiLL Workshop. 2023 January;


Neural Computing and Applications. 2023 January; 10.1007/s00521-022-07948-1


Alexandra Kearney, Anna Koop, Johannes Günther, Patrick M Pilarski

Conference on Lifelong Learning Agents - arXiv preprint arXiv:2206.06485, 2022. 2022 August; n/a


H. E. Williams, J. Guenther, J. Hebert, P. M. Pilarski, A. W. Shehata

2022 IEEE 17th International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR), July 25-29, 2022, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. 2022 July; n/a


P. Faridi, J. K. Mehr, D. Wilson, M. Sharifi, M. Tavakoli, P. M. Pilarski, V. K. Mushahwar

2022 IEEE 17th International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR), July 25-29, 2022, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. 2022 July; n/a


Williams H., Shehata A.W., Dawson M., Scheme E., Hebert J., Pilarski P.

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING. 2022 July; 69 (7):2243-2255 10.1109/TBME.2022.3140269


Aleksandra Kalinowska, Elnaz Davoodi, Kory W Mathewson, Todd Murphey, Patrick M Pilarski

Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. 2022 July; 44 n/a


Tavakoli, M., Atashzar, S. F., Trejos, A. L., DiMaio, S., Pilarski, P. M.

Lausanne: Frontiers Media SA. . 2022 June; 10.3389/978-2-88976-473-0


Nathan J Wispinski, Andrew Butcher, Craig S Chapman, Matthew M Botvinick, Patrick M Pilarski

The 5th Multidisciplinary Conference on Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making (RLDM2022). 2022 June; n/a


A. Kalinowska, E. Davoodi, K. W. Mathewson, T. D. Murphey, P. M. Pilarski

The 5th Multidisciplinary Conference on Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making (RLDM2022), June 8-11, 2022, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA. 2022 June; n/a


Trejos A.L., Atashzar S.F., DiMaio S.P., Pilarski P.M., Tavakoli M.

Frontiers in Robotics and AI. 2022 June; 9 10.3389/frobt.2022.886926


NM Ady, R Shariff, J Günther, PM Pilarski

The 5th Multidisciplinary Conference on Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making (RLDM2022) . 2022 June; n/a


Kearney A., Koop A.J., Pilarski P.M.

ADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR. 2022 June; 10.1177/10597123221095880


D. J. A. Brenneis, A. S. Parker, M. B. Johanson, A. Butcher, E. Davoodi, L. Acker, M. M. Botvinick, J. Modayil, A. White, P. M. Pilarski

Adaptive and Learning Agents (ALA) Workshop at AAMAS 2022, 9-10 May 2022, Auckland, NZ. 2022 May; n/a


A. Butcher, M. B. Johanson, E. Davoodi, D. J. A. Brenneis, L. Acker, A. S. R. Parker, A. White, J. Modayil, P. M. Pilarski

Adaptive and Learning Agents (ALA) Workshop at AAMAS 2022, 9-10 May 2022, Auckland, NZ. 2022 May; n/a


A. Kalinowska, E. Davoodi, F. Strub, K. Mathewson, T. Murphey, P. M. Pilarski

5th Workshop on Emergent Communication (EmeCom) at ICLR 2022. 2022 April; n/a


K. W. Mathewson, P. M. Pilarski

ICLR 2022 Workshop on ML Evaluation Standards,. 2022 April; n/a


Scott A. Stone, Quinn A. Boser, T. Riley Dawson, Albert H. Vette, Jacqueline S. Hebert, Patrick M. Pilarski, Craig S. Chapman

bioRxiv. 2022 April; 10.1101/2021.10.22.465332


Kearney A., Günther J., Pilarski P.M.

Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence. 2022 March; 5 10.3389/frai.2022.826724


Pilarski, Patrick M. ; Butcher, Andrew ; Davoodi, Elnaz ; Johanson, Michael Bradley ; Brenneis, Dylan J. A. ; Parker, Adam S. R. ; Acker, Leslie ; Botvinick, Matthew M. ; Modayil, Joseph ; White, Adam

arXiv:2203.09498. 2022 March; n/a


J. L. Castellanos-Cruz, M. F. Gómez-Medina, M. Tavakoli, P. Pilarski, K. D. Adams

Journal of Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies Engineering. 2022 February; 10.1177/20556683221079694


A. K. Kearney, A. Koop, J. Günther, P. M. Pilarski

NeurIPS 2021 Workshop: Self-Supervised Learning - Theory and Practice, Dec. 14, 2021. 2021 December; n/a


Dammika P. Manage, Jana Lauzon, Linda M. Pilarski, Patrick M. Pilarski, Lynn M. McMullen

Micromachines. 2021 August; 12 (8):959 https://doi.org/10.3390/mi12080959


A. W. Shehata, H. E. Williams, J. S. Hebert, P. M. Pilarski

IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING MAGAZINE. 2021 July; 38 (4):46-53 10.1109/MSP.2021.3075931


Adam S. R. Parker, Patrick M. Pilarski

Workshop on Reinforcement Learning for Humans, Computer, and Interaction (RL4HCI), ACM CHI 2021. 2021 May; https://doi.org/10.1145/nnnnnnn.nnnnnnn


Scott A. Stone, Quinn A. Boser, T. Riley Dawson, Albert H. Vette, Jacqueline S. Hebert, Patrick M. Pilarski, Craig S. Chapman

ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications (ETRA '21 Adjunct). 2021 May; https://doi.org/10.1145/3450341.3458880


Heather E. Williams, Craig S. Chapman, Patrick M. Pilarski, Albert H. Vette, Jacqueline S. Hebert

Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation. 2021 May; 18 (1) https://doi.org/10.1186/s12984-021-00855-x


Jonathon S. Schofield, Marcus A. Battraw, Adam S.R. Parker, Patrick M. Pilarski, Jonathon W. Sensinger, Paul D. Marasco

Frontiers in Neurorobotics. 2021 April; 15 10.3389/fnbot.2021.661603


Johannes Günther, Elias Reichensdörfer, Patrick M. Pilarski, Klaus Diepold

PLoS One. 2020 December; 15 (12):e0243320 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243320


View additional publications