Dr. Chris Pal is an associate professor in the department of computer and software engineering at the École Polytechnique of Montreal. Prior to arriving in Montreal, he was a professor in the department of Computer Science at the University of Rochester. He has been a research scientist with the University of Massachusetts and has also been affiliated with the Interactive Visual Media Group and the Machine Learning and Applied Statistics groups at Microsoft Research. His research at Microsoft lead to three patents on image processing, computer vision and interactive multimedia.

He earned his M. Math and PhD from the University of Waterloo in Canada. During his masters research he developed methods for automated cartography and the analysis of high resolution digital aerial photography. He was also involved with a number of software engineering projects developing spatial databases for managing environmental information. His PhD research led to contributions applying probability models and optimization techniques to image, video and signal processing.

During his PhD studies Chris was also a research assistant at the University of Toronto in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. At Toronto he collaborated closely with the Banting and Best Department of Medical Research. He performed research on image processing and statistical methods for the analysis of large scale genomics and computational molecular biology experiments using DNA microarrays. Prior to his graduate studies Chris was with the multimedia research company Interval in Palo Alto, CA (Silicon Valley). As a result of his research at Interval he was awarded a patent on audio signal processing.