Bio
Short version
Alex Hernandez-Garcia is an incoming assistant professor at the Université de Montréal and at Mila. His current focus is on machine learning research for scientific applications to tackle the climate crisis. Previously, his research has explored the intersection between learning in both brains and machines, which continues to be a source of inspiration.
Longer version
Alex Hernandez-Garcia is an incoming (January 2025) assistant professor at the Université de Montréal at the Département d’informatique et de recherche opérationnelle (DIRO) and at Mila, in Tiohtià:ke / Montréal. Previously, he was a postdoctoral researcher with Prof. Yoshua Bengio and Prof. David Rolnick. He defended his PhD thesis in 2020 at the University of Osnabrück, as a fellow of the Marie Sklodowska-Curie ITN NexGenVis, with the supervision of Prof. Peter König. He obtained his B.Sc and M.Sc. at the University Carlos III of Madrid and during his PhD he was a visiting researcher at the University of Cambridge with Dr. Tim Kietzmann and at the Spinoza Center for Neuroimaging with Dr. Serge Dumoulin.
His current main research interest is in the applications of machine learning to accelerate scientific discoveries to tackle the climate crisis. He helped create ThisClimateDoesNotExist.com, a website to help us visualise the impacts of climate change in our own backyard. Currently, his focus is materials discovery and molecular modelling with machine learning. In particular, he studies and applies Generative Flow Networks (GFlowNets) for probabilistic modelling and active learning for exploration. Examples of applications are catalyst design to improve the energy efficiency of hydrogen storage and other energy-intensive industrial processes, or discovery of solid electrolytes to make better and safer batteries.
More broadly, besides developing potentially impactful machine learning applications, since his graduate years Alex has been interested in brain-inspired deep learning and computational neuroscience. Alex is also a strong proponent of open science and is active in initiatives about how making science more inclusive, equitable, open, reproducible, transparent and environmentally conscious. At Mila, he has been a Lab Representative and a member of the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee and the Sustainability Committee.