New Faculty Profile: Rick Valenzano

The Department of Computer Science welcomes Rick Valenzano on board. He brings expertise in artificial intelligence, complemented by industry experience.

You’ve already published papers in some top-tier AI conferences. Tell us about your research.
Think of a robot or chess-playing program. To successfully navigate from one location to another, the robot must identify an appropriate sequence of movements to get there, while the chess-playing program must choose a sequence of “good” moves in response to an opponent.

These are examples of sequential decision making tasks. They require an autonomous agent to make a sequence of effective decisions about how to act in order to achieve some desired objective. I focus on developing the underlying principles and techniques needed for sequential decision making.

I’m particularly interested in incorporating ideas from different, but related research communities, such as automated planning, reinforcement learning, and game theory. By combining ideas from these research communities, we can more easily build systems for new sequential decision making problems, while also increasing the size and complexity of the problems that we can solve.

You also spent time working in industry?
Yes, after completing a postdoctoral position at the University of Toronto, I worked for three years as an Applied Research Scientist at Element AI. While there, I worked on using sequential decision making and forecasting methods on a variety of projects. For example, I was part of a team that developed a product that helps large institutional investors rebalance their portfolio.

You’re originally from Toronto. Glad to be back?
Yes, I love living in this city because it provides a nice balance between doing just about anything you want (with so many opportunities for culture, music, and food), while still being able to find more chill locales, like the parks and beach.

How do you want to make your mark at Ryerson?
I’m excited about joining this growing department and university in a city with such a robust and growing tech sector. I want to help build up the university’s background in artificial intelligence. It has been really exciting to see the AI ecosystem explode in Toronto over the last few years, and I think Ryerson is an excellent position to engage with that community and help it grow.

If you could offer one piece of advice, what would it be?
In STEM, we often spend so much time trying to optimize for some desired outcome. While this might be a helpful way to approach problems in our own lives, it could also lead to obsessing over a task or stewing over numerous similar options in an effort to choose the absolute best one. As they say, “perfection is the enemy of done”. So, make your decisions carefully, but don’t let yourself get too bogged down in the details when it’s time to move forward.

Give us a few fast favourites?

• Favourite pasta: Lasagna
• Favourite sport: Baseball, but I am a big basketball fan too. (Blue Jays and Raptors!)
• Favourite season: Fall
• Favourite movie: RoboCop

You have an interesting pastime. What is that?
One of the hobbies I picked up while I was in Edmonton was curling. I have come to really enjoy the sport, and have been in leagues ever since I came back to Toronto.
I’m also an avid follower of sports. I actually listen to a lot of games on the radio, and even bought a portable AM radio to do so. I often cook or garden while listening to a game on that radio!