Ever since the rise and popularization of large language models like Chat GPT, artificial intelligence (AI) has been touted as the "next big thing" in technology. But beyond the buzzwords and viral headlines, AI is powering a revolution in almost every field of academic study, and Simon Fraser University (SFU) is at the forefront of that transformation.
"In recent years, we have witnessed the growing importance of data, artificial intelligence, and High-Performance Computing for research of all types in academia and in industry," says Dugan O'Neil, SFU's vice-president, research and innovation. "When I started doing this more than 20 years ago, it was all physicists and chemists; now it is everyone on the cutting edge of just about any field."
SFU ranks in the top 5 AI research universities in Canada (AIRankings, 2025), with more than 100 faculty members across the university actively using AI to unlock breakthroughs in medicine, robotics, agriculture, education and the arts. For these researchers, their work with AI is not just theoretical it's aimed at finding creative solutions to real-world problems, and ultimately, building a better future for everyone.
AI for advancing agritech
In the world of computing science, researchers led by mechatronics systems engineering professor Woo Soo Kim have developed an AI-driven system to help grow food indoors sustainably and efficiently. Smart sensors are used to determine when and how much water tomato plants need.
"This system uses plant-generated electrical signals, combined with AI, to determine precisely when irrigation is needed eliminating both guesswork and manual oversight," says Kim.
As the climate crisis continues to affect farmers and food production in regions around the world, this system could contribute to sustainable solutions by maximizing resources like water and fertilizer and enabling crops to be grown indoors all year round. In the future, Kim hopes to expand its use to both indoor and outdoor grown produce.
AI for better health
Meanwhile, in the health care sector, SFU researchers have unveiled an AI framework that could transform drug development and accelerate the discovery of new medicines.
"The development of a new drug is an extremely time consuming and expensive process," says Martin Ester, a professor of computing science at SFU and one of the lead researchers developing this technology. "As a rule of thumb, people always say that it takes 10 years and $1 billion USD to bring a new drug to market."
Ester and his colleagues hope to change this through the use of computer modelling to design molecules that will bind to harmful disease-causing proteins and inhibit their harmful activity. By running this process on high-performance computers, potential new drugs can be identified far more quickly than by physical experimentation in labs.
"Our hope is that our method will significantly shorten this process so that new drugs can be discovered, produced and made available in a much shorter timeframe in order to help cure diseases," says Ester.
AI for a human-centered world
SFU researchers are also shaping the development of next generation AI models and the way humans interact with them. Angelica Lim is a professor in the School of Computing Science and director of the Rosie Lab, where she and her colleagues build robots that are useful and interact naturally and seamlessly with humans. One aspect of her work is developing smart AI software to help robots better understand what humans do, think, feel and mean.
Currently, we interact with AI tools like ChatGPT through text, but future generations of the technology will likely be embodied' in the form of a robot, and will respond to non-verbal language cues, such as tone, facial expressions or gestures.
"If we don't build human expressivity understanding into robots, we will become more robotic in the way we speak to them and if they become more expressive, then we can continue to be our human-like selves," says Lim. "That's the goal of my research, to try and give this more expressive understanding to embodied AI agents."
She imagines a world where AI agents speak to us factoring in their environment speaking more loudly and with higher pitch in noisy locations, and whispering in libraries, for example things that humans do subconsciously already. The research has applications in helping language learners practise their speech with responsive AI teachers, in creating text to speech agents for customer service that are more easily understood by a wide range of people, or creating more engaging intonation for education products used by children.
AI for climate action
One major concern that many people have expressed around use of AI is the environmental impact of datacentres that support the technology, and SFU is at the forefront of developing sustainable infrastructure and tools to mitigate that impact.
The university hosts the Cedar Supercomputing Centre (CSC), home to Canada's most powerful academic supercomputer, and one of its most sustainable as well. The CSC runs on renewable hydroelectric power and was built to be one of Canada's most energy efficient supercomputers, with an industry-leading power usage effectiveness of 1.07.
Now accessed by more than 17,000 users across Canada, the CSC empowers innovators to advance solutions in sectors including clean technology, computing, healthcare, energy, advanced manufacturing, cybersecurity and more, while minimizing impact to the environment and setting an example for other data centers to follow.
Shaping our future
While the media buzz around artificial intelligence may fade, its impact on the worlds of research and academia will only continue to grow and SFU is committed to harnessing this technology's transformative power to tackle the most pressing challenges of our time.
From revolutionizing sustainable agriculture and accelerating life-saving drug discovery to energy-efficient computing and climate-conscious innovation, SFU researchers are building solutions that create real impact for people and communities across the world. With a bold, interdisciplinary approach and a commitment to ethical, inclusive technology usage, SFU is shaping a smarter, healthier and more sustainable future for all.
