Nuance Signs Strategic Partnership with World-Renowned Mila: Quebec AI Institute

Market Leader in Conversational AI Solutions Joins Bleeding-Edge AI Research Consortium to Advance Innovation and Applications

Nuance Communications, Inc., a leading provider of Conversational AI and Ambient Intelligence solutions, announced it has signed a partnership with Mila, an academic research institution dedicated to advancing machine learning with an intensive focus on deep learning related to language and image processing. This expanded partnership enables Nuance and Mila to collaborate on research, advance cutting-edge work in machine learning, and meaningfully enhance AI applications.

“We are excited to enter into this strategic partnership with Mila,” said Joe Petro, Chief Technology Officer, Nuance Communications. “Our research team has been at the forefront of Conversational AI innovation for the last 20 years and this partnership allows us to work more closely with the global academic AI research community to advance the latest in AI innovation and applications.”

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Founded by world-renowned deep learning expert, and recipient of the prestigious 2018 Turing Prize, Yoshua Bengio, Mila is an epicenter of artificial intelligence and machine learning research, seeking to create a space for innovation in artificial intelligence and technology while fostering strong collaboration and knowledge exchange between academic research and innovators in society. As a market-leader in creating deeply-verticalized AI solutions that deliver real-world results across healthcare, telecommunications, financial services, and automotive industries, Nuance’s global research and development team includes more than 2,800 researchers, speech scientists, and engineers focused on AI research and applications pertaining to speech enhancement, recognition and synthesis, natural language understanding and dialog, biometrics and diagnostic imaging.

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“The future of AI is being shaped by the researchers and technologists who are developing these important systems. Creating an AI ecosystem with important partners like Nuance ensures that we are all working together to create AI that has positive effects on real-world applications,” said Yoshua Bengio, Scientific Director of Mila. “We look forward to working alongside Nuance to continue to advance this critical work.”

As part of the partnership, Nuance will staff an AI lab at Mila’s Montreal-based headquarters, where researchers will partner with Mila interns on projects, and participate in joint research, publications, and knowledge-sharing talks.  The lab will serve as an extension of Nuance’s Montreal office, which is one of the company’s key global research sites, and recently named one of “Canada’s Top Employers for Young People,” and one of “Montreal’s Top Employers.” Nuance has long-standing relationships with the academic community and third-party innovators, and the company’s downtown Montreal office has more than 600 employees dedicated to advancing the state-of-the-art in Conversational AI and Ambient Intelligence.

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