Discover more stories about Mitacs — and the game-changing innovations driven by students and postdocs.
Thales Canada and cortAIx Labs, in partnership with Mitacs.
Through its cortAIx Labs in Canada, Thales is focused on developing artificial intelligence technologies that support and enhance human decision-making. These innovations are applied to advanced systems in defence, security, aerospace, cybersecurity, and digital identity.
Over the past 12 years, Thales has worked closely with Mitacs, hosting more than 10 student interns per year from a range of disciplines, including software engineering, physics, mathematics, and psychology.
These students come from leading Canadian universities, such as Université Laval and Polytechnique Montréal, contributing their expertise to support Thales’ cutting-edge research and development efforts.
Last year, Thales and Mitacs expanded their long-standing collaboration by launching an umbrella research program. Unlike previous project-specific partnerships, this initiative provides a cohesive framework to guide multiple student-led research projects under a unified focus: advancing aircraft safety.
These projects address critical areas in improving autonomy in safety systems, obstacle detection, and solutions for landing and take-off. According to Jean-François Gagnon, Director of cortAIx Labs, Mitacs researchers play an essential role in supporting the company’s internal research and development efforts.
“In addition to the direct impact the students’ work has on solving critical business challenges, we also receive the indirect benefit of exposing our use cases to the academic community to solicit valuable feedback,” says Gagnon. “The company identifies best job candidates, with former Mitacs interns accounting for roughly one third of our lab’s full-time staff. So, for us, hiring students from Mitacs is a real advantage.”
A recent collaborative project between Thales and Mitacs is addressing challenges in the aviation maintenance industry by using generative AI and large language models (LLMs) to improve compliance and efficiency.
Researchers are developing tools to help airplane mechanics quickly and accurately retrieve critical information from extensive documentation, which is often distributed across various platforms.
“The compiled information is not only precise but easily understood to support smart decision-making,” explains Gagnon.
Ensuring safety in autonomous flight is another critical focus of the Thales and Mitacs collaboration. Thales is developing AI models that help aircraft make better decisions when avoiding obstacles in flight. For example, a drone conducting a search and rescue mission might need to make a sudden maneuver to avoid a collision. The AI model responsible for piloting it must ensure that this action doesn’t inadvertently cause another risk or incident.
“If you ask your AI assistant a question and it makes a mistake in its answer for a trivial situation, you might find it funny. Mistakes aren’t funny when AI is piloting a plane,” emphasizes Gagnon. “What differentiates the majority of our research is that we can’t afford to make errors because human lives are at stake.”
As part of its global strategy for technology leadership, Thales Canada has launched AI@Centech, an incubator designed to support Canadian AI start-ups. Mitacs interns are playing a key role in this initiative, contributing their expertise to advance innovation and bridge the gap between academic research and real-world applications.
“Through our partnership with Mitacs, we’re able to bounce innovative ideas off of the broader academic community, garnering their expert feedback,” says Gagnon. “This would be more difficult for our engineers to do.”
Thales’ collaboration with Mitacs has also earned the global AI leader a Mitacs Innovation Award — Canadian Enterprise Innovator of the Year. This recognition underscores Thales’ commitment to developing ethical AI technologies and advancing human-centered innovation.
“For Thales, winning this award is a source of great pride. It really recognizes the value of our work,” concludes Gagnon.
This achievement also underscores the value of Mitacs programs, which are supported by Quebec’s Ministère de l’Économie, de l’Innovation et de l’Énergie. Through its funding of Mitacs internships, the MEIE enables collaborations like the one with Thales, helping to drive progress in artificial intelligence, aerospace, and other key sectors critical to Quebec’s economic growth and global competitiveness.
Mitacs’s programs receive funding from multiple partners across Canada. We thank the Government of Canada, the Government of Alberta, the Government of British Columbia, Research Manitoba, the Government of New Brunswick, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Government of Nova Scotia, the Government of Ontario, Innovation PEI, the Government of Quebec, the Government of Saskatchewan, and the Government of Yukon for supporting us to empower Canadian innovation.
Do you have a business challenge that could benefit from a research solution? If so, contact Mitacs today to discuss partnership opportunities: email@example.com.