Liam Paull

Liam Paull is an Associate Professor at Université de Montréal where he co-leads the Montreal Robotics and Embodied AI Lab (REAL). His academic journey includes a Ph.D. in Marine Robotics from the University of New Brunswick (2013), followed by significant roles at MIT, where he served as a Postdoctoral Associate and later as Research Scientist leading Toyota's autonomous car project at CSAIL. His research spans multiple areas including simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), uncertainty modeling, and robotic learning systems. As a co-founder and director of the Duckietown Foundation, he has made substantial contributions to robotics education, developing innovative teaching approaches that combine theoretical knowledge with practical implementation. His work with the "Self-Driving Cars with Duckietown" course, which has attracted over 10,700 enrollments, demonstrates his commitment to making robotics education accessible globally. He currently holds a CIFAR AI Chair, is affiliated with Mila (Quebec AI Institute), and continues to advance the field through research in world representation building, uncertainty modeling, and robotic learning systems