Anna Golubeva earns Borealis AI fellowship
Perimeter PhD student Anna Golubeva has been named as one of 10 Borealis AI Fellows for her research in machine learning for physics and physics for machine learning.
The fellowships provide financial assistance for exceptional students as they pursue graduate degrees in various fields of artificial intelligence. Borealis AI is an RBC initiative that supports scientific study and fundamental exploration in machine learning theory and applications, with labs in four Canadian cities, including Waterloo, Ontario.
Golubeva grew up in Moldova and went to high school and university in Germany. She earned a master’s degree at Perimeter Scholars International in 2017, where she met Roger Melko, an Associate Faculty member with Perimeter and the University of Waterloo. Melko was impressed with the quality of her work and offered her a position as a PhD student in his research group at the Perimeter Institute Quantum Intelligence Lab (PIQuIL), located in the Communitech Data Hub. Researchers there come from a mix of academia, government, and industry, and promote the free exchange of scientific ideas, algorithms, and open source computer codes.
Golubeva’s work is forging new inroads to a deeper understanding of machine learning, in particular it uses as a tool to solve major problems in physics. Melko says she’s one of a few bold young researchers who are charting the boundaries between the two.
"It's exciting to have Borealis AI recognize Anna's contributions to the field of machine learning research. I hope this award will help motivate other young physicists to pursue interdisciplinary research on the frontiers of AI and theoretical physics,” Melko said.
“Anna represents the best and brightest of a new, young generation of scientists. She is richly deserving of the fellowship, which will help her pursue her unique research into the foundations of machine learning theory and its relationship to physics.”
Golubeva is also a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholar, and in 2019 received the prestigious NSERC Gilles Brassard Doctoral Prize for Interdisciplinary Research, awarded annually to an outstanding graduate student whose work crosses traditional boundaries.
“I see the fellowship as a recognition of my research efforts, which provides me encouragement and fuels my motivation to continue,” she said.
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About PI
Perimeter Institute is the world’s largest research hub devoted to theoretical physics. The independent Institute was founded in 1999 to foster breakthroughs in the fundamental understanding of our universe, from the smallest particles to the entire cosmos. Research at Perimeter is motivated by the understanding that fundamental science advances human knowledge and catalyzes innovation, and that today’s theoretical physics is tomorrow’s technology. Located in the Region of Waterloo, the not-for-profit Institute is a unique public-private endeavour, including the Governments of Ontario and Canada, that enables cutting-edge research, trains the next generation of scientific pioneers, and shares the power of physics through award-winning educational outreach and public engagement.
