New O’Donovan Chairs to lead AI research in trust and safety

Two Waterloo Engineering faculty members have been appointed to updated Val O’Donovan Chair positions that reflect the Faculty’s strategic focus on advancing artificial intelligence through ethical research, interdisciplinary collaboration and student engagement.

Starting September 1, Dr. Amir-Hossein Karimi will hold the O’Donovan Chair in Trustworthy AI, while Dr. Sirisha Rambhatla will hold the O’Donovan Chair in Efficient, Safe and Adaptive AI. Both five-year appointments come with $100,000 in annual research support.

“AI is profoundly transforming every aspect of engineering,” said Dr. Hassan Baaj, the Faculty of Engineering’s associate dean of research and external partnerships. “We saw an opportunity to evolve the O’Donovan Chair into two distinct leadership roles — one focused on trust and human-AI collaboration, and one on critical real-world decision-making — reflecting both the urgency and complexity of this moment in history.”

Karimi, an assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering and faculty affiliate at the Vector Institute, leads the CHARM Lab, which develops AI systems for safe, reliable and human-aligned decision-making. Drawing on industry experience at Meta, Google Brain and DeepMind, he focuses on causal inference, explainable AI and neuro-symbolic methods. The CHARM Lab aims to strengthen human-AI collaboration in fields such as healthcare and finance by detecting issues, correcting errors and integrating insights from social sciences and behavioural economics.

Rambhatla, assistant professor in management science and engineering with cross-appointments in systems design engineering and computer science, leads Waterloo’s Critical Machine Learning (ML) Lab. With over 50 publications and wide media coverage, her work builds next-generation AI models that enhance decision-making and resilience across healthcare, manufacturing and aviation. Her award-winning research develops efficient and adaptive models that prioritize safety and reliability, which addresses the real-world demands of critical, data-scarce, and evolving environments.