David Austin

Welcome

I’m a first-year PhD student at MILA and McGill University under the supervision of Dr. Jackie Cheung. I’m part of the McGill NLP Group.

Previously, I spent a year as a faculty affiliate researcher at the Vector Institute in Toronto, working with Drs. Scott Sanner and Chris McIntosh of the University of Toronto. Prior to that, I completed my undergraduate studies at the University of Waterloo, where I earned a Bachelor of Computer Science with a minor in Statistics.

Research Interests

I am generally interested in information. I have two main research goals:

(1) Creating intelligent interactive information-seeking systems which are trustworthy, democratic, and useful. I believe that neurosymbolic AI can play a valuable role in these systems. I am also interested in the human impacts of modern information-seeking systems.

(2) Organizational design for effective information dissemination and collective decision-making. I am currently working on multi-agent planning and coordination.