Bits of History

Incognito logo courtesy of Jean Vaucher

The Département d'informatique et de recherche opérationnelle (department of computer science and operations research) of the Université de Montréal gained prominence in the field of natural language processing thanks to its Incognito laboratory (artificial intelligence) founded in 1983.

In June 1997, the department was awarded a contract to take over Industry Canada’s research program in computer-assisted translation (CAT), which had been run since 1984 by the government’s Centre d'innovation en technologie de l'information (CITI). In conjunction with that changeover, RALI was established with the mission of applying and promoting the program’s research results.

RALI's team in the summer of 2004.

From l. to r.: Guy Lapalme, Graham Russell, George Foster, Philippe Langlais, Elliott Macklovitch, Leïla Arras, Michel Simard, Jian-Yun Nie.

Rali in November 2011

RALI's team in November of 2011.

From left to right:
First row: Jamel Jridi, Fabrizio Ꮐotti, Dorsaf Haouari, Lise Rebout, Philippe Langlais, Jian-Yun Nie;
Second row: Arbi Bouchoucha, Mohamed Mouine, Houssem Dridi, Pierre-Étienne Genest, Guy Lapalme; 
Third row: Alessandro Sordoni, Chiheb Trabelsi, Jing He, Wei Yuan, Peng Li.