We see the future of work differently,
because we see it collaboratively.

Our leaders have decades of AI experience.

Meet our founders & executives

• 
  JF Gagné

  CEO and Founder

  Jean-François (JF) Gagné is the founder of Element AI where he leads the strategic vision of the company. He is widely sought by large organizations for his ability to make sense of AI technology across industry contexts, and he puts his insight to work with the Element AI team to enable human-machine collaboration as the next generation of work.
  
  JF draws from 18 years as an AI entrepreneur starting and selling two companies in AI and Operations Research, and from his former role as Chief Product Officer and Chief Innovation Officer at JDA Software where he was the youngest global C-Level Executive of a top-20 Enterprise Software company.
  
  JF is an outspoken advocate of AI for Good and is actively involved in guiding AI's impact on business, people, and society. He serves as a digital advisor to the Canadian Prime Minister, is a Canadian Representative to the WTO, and is the only non-European citizen member of the European Commission’s High Level Expert Group on AI, where he was a key author of their Guidelines for European regulation of AI. JF is also dedicated to technology development at home as a member of the Calcul Québec Board, which supports the province’s high-performance computing research infrastructure, and is an avid supporter of the Montreal startup scene.

• 
  Yoshua Bengio, PhD

  Yoshua Bengio, PhD - Lead Fellow and Co-Founder

  Yoshua Bengio is a pioneer of deep learning and holds numerous influential roles in academic research including: Full Professor in the Computer Science and Operations Research Department at U. Montréal; Scientific Director of the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms (Mila) and of the Institute for Data Valorization (IVADO); Canada Research Chair in Statistical Learning Algorithms; member of the NeurIPS board and co-founder and general chair for the ICLR conference; and, program director of the CIFAR program on Learning in Machines and Brains. He is the recipient of many accolades testifying to his impact as a researcher, most notable of which is the prestigious A.M. Turing Award, considered the Nobel Prize of computing, for his breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. He has also been awarded as an Officer of the Order of Canada, Fellow of the Royal Society (England and Canada), the Marie-Victorin Prize, and the Radio-Canada Scientist of the year in 2017. In 2018, he earned the most citations per day among all computer scientists, worldwide.

• 
  Anne Martel

  Chief Administrative Officer and Co-Founder

  Anne Martel is a serial entrepreneur and Co-founder of Element AI.
  
  She is responsible for the vision, design, implementation, and continuous improvement of operations groups, namely brand and marketing, human resources, public affairs, government relations, and legal functions.
  
  Anne previously owned and managed Genie Audio, a company focusing on manufacturing and distribution of medical devices, from which she successfully exited in 2014.
  
  She holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University and a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts and Finance from Concordia University.
  
  Anne is a passionate art enthusiast and philanthropist. She co-founded the Continuum Foundation, with a mission to level the impact of technology on society. She is also involved in Montreal’s thriving community of entrepreneurs as an active spokesperson, an angel investor and as a board member of OSMO Foundation, a non-profit established in 2009 to help grow the local startup community.

• 
  Nicolas Chapados, PhD

  Chief Science Officer and Co-Founder

  Nicolas Chapados holds an engineering degree from McGill University and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Université de Montréal. While still writing his thesis and jointly with his thesis advisor Prof. Yoshua Bengio, he co-founded ApSTAT Technologies in 2001. It was a machine learning technology transfer firm, whose goal was to apply cutting-edge academic research ideas to areas such as insurance risk evaluation, supply chain planning, business forecasting, national defence, and hedge fund management.
  
  From the work in this company he spinned-off two companies: Imagia, to detect and quantify cancer early with AI analysis of medical images and Chapados Couture Capital, a quantitative asset manager.
  
  He also holds a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation.