Audrey Durand - Academic Website

I am an Associate Professor in Computer Science and Software Engineering at Université Laval (Québec City, Canada), where I am a core member of the Institute Intelligence and Data (IID). I am also affiliated with Mila — Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute through a Canada CIFAR AI Chair.

My research is focused on interactive learning, where the learning model shapes and is shaped by its data collection or exposure process. This includes:

• Reinforcement learning (RL)
• Bandits
• Active learning
• Partial monitoring
• Continual/incremental learning with feedback loops

I am also interested in leveraging interactive learning in scientific applications, with a focus on health science.

Publications: My Google scholar

Teaching: My RL course videos (in French!)

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Students

I currently (co-)supervise these students/postdocs:

• Santiago Bastidas (MSc student)
• Erinn Grigsby (postdoctoral researcher, Université de Montréal, co-supervisor, director: Becket Ebitz)
• Frédérick Boisvert (MSc student, co-supervisor, director: Benoît Gosselin)
• Caro Strickland (postdoctoral researcher)
• Randy Lefebvre (PhD student)
• Guylain Breton (MSc student, director, co-supervisor: Benoît Gosselin)
• Md. Rabiul Islam (postdoctoral researcher, co-supervisor, director: Benoît Gosselin)
• Julien Armand (MSc student)
• Bruno Joyal (MSc student)
• Yohai-Eliel Berreby (PhD student, co-supervisor, director: Suresh Krishna)
• Hugo Delhaye (MSc student, co-supervisor, director: Lune Bellec)
• Baptiste Bonin (MSc student)
• Hadi Moazen (PhD student, director, co-supervisor: Flavie Lavoie-Cardinal)
• Alexandre Larouche (PhD student, director, co-supervisor: Mario Marchand)
• Mathieu Godbout (PhD student)

Past

I previously (co-)supervised the following students/postdocs:

• Maxime Heuillet (PhD 2021-2026, director, co-supervisor: Ola Ahmad), now at Amazon (AWS)
• Kaoutar Mimouni (MSc 2023-2026)
• Anthony Bilodeau (PhD 2019-2026, co-supervisor, director: Flavie Lavoie-Cardinal)
• Frédéric Dulude-de-Broin (PhD 2020-2025, co-supervisor, director: Pierre Legagneux)
• Laurence Fontaine (MSc 2022-2025 , co-supervisor, director: Flavie Lavoie-Cardinal), now at Co-operators
• Yasmeen Hitti (PhD 2019-2025, co-supervisor, director: Mark Lefsrud), now postdoc at U. de Montréal
• Charles Bourbeau (MSc 2022-2024), now at Icentia
• Dorra Rakia Allegue (postdoctoral researcher 2023-2024)
• Alexandre Bouras (MSc 2021-2024, director, co-supervisor: Richard Khoury)
• Guillaume Desmarais-De Grandpré (MSc 2020-2024, co-supervisor, director: Richard Khoury), now at Bentley Systems
• Louis-Philippe Vignault (MSc 2021-2024, director, co-supervisor: Pascal Germain)
• Catherine Villeneuve (MSc 2021-2023, director, co-supervisor: Pierre Legagneux), now PhD student at McGill University
• Benoît Turcotte (MSc 2020-2023, director, co-supervisor: Flavie Lavoie-Cardinal)
• Albert Michaud-Gagnon (MSc 2020-2023, co-supervisor, director: Flavie Lavoie-Cardinal)
• Rupali Bhati (MSc 2020-2023), now PhD student at Northearstern University
• Renaud Bernatchez (MSc 2020-2023, co-supervisor, director: Flavie Lavoie-Cardinal)
• Théophile Berteloot (MSc 2020-2022, co-supervisor, director: Richard Khoury), now PhD student at U. Laval
• Roseline Olory (postdoctoral researcher 2022, co-supervised with Flavie Lavoie-Cardinal), founder of BrainInnov
• Alexandre Larouche (MSc 2021-2022, director, co-supervisor: Richard Khoury), now PhD student at U. Laval
• Antoine Gariépy (MSc 2020-2022), now at Hectic AI
• François-Alexandre Tremblay (MSc 2020-2022, co-supervisor, director: Jonathan Gaudreault), now at Baseline
• Deepak Sharma (MSc 2019-2021, co-supervisor, director: Joelle Pineau), now at Microsoft
• Seyed Moustafa Mousavi (MSc 2019-2021, co-supervisor, director: Holly Witteman)
• Mathieu Godbout (MSc 2019-2020, co-supervisor, director: Luc Lamontagne), now PhD at U. Laval
• Louis-Émile Robitaille (MSc 2019-2020, co-supervisor, director: Christian Gagné), now at Coveo

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Suggested readings

Some books to get into RL and bandits:

• Bandit Algorithms by Tor Lattimore and Csaba Szepesvari
• Algorithms for Reinforcement Learning by Csaba Szepesvari