Sara Hooker praises profile of Hugo Larochelle, the professor who democratized deep learning
sarahookr · x · 2026-09-15
Sara Hooker shared a long-form profile of Hugo Larochelle, Scientific Director of Mila and former Google Brain researcher. She recalls watching all his Sheffield deep learning lectures before joining Google Brain—at a time when deep learning knowledge belonged to fewer than 100 people, he made it accessible to many more, and later became her PhD advisor.
The piece traces Larochelle's childhood outside Montreal and his path through the AI-winter era when neural networks were all but dead, to becoming an exceptional researcher who shaped the deep learning ecosystem.
Related event: Sara Hooker pays tribute to mentor Hugo Larochelle(3 posts)→
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