Professors Siva Reddy (Computer Science and Linguistics) and Katelin Schutz (Physics) have been named 2026 Sloan Research Fellows.
They are among the 126 early-career researchers in this year’s cohort. Fellows are nominated by their colleagues and evaluated based on their research accomplishments, creativity and potential to become leaders in their fields. The two-year fellowship, worth US $75,000, is sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Including this year’s winners, 35 McGill faculty members have received a Sloan Research Fellowship since its inception in 1955.
Siva Reddy, Computer Science and Linguistics
Reddy’s work on natural language processing (NLP) spans the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Arts, bridging computer science and linguistics to push the boundaries of how machines use language.
His research group seeks to enable machines with robust language understanding and reasoning abilities, allowing them to converse and perform tasks in ways that feel as natural as interacting with another human.
Reddy works predominantly with large language models (LLMs), especially those that go beyond conversation and carry out complex tasks. The actions of these AI agents can have real-world consequences, such as controlling a browser to follow a user’s multi-step instructions to perform a task on the web.
As these systems move from conversation to action, a central aspect of Reddy’s work is ensuring their safety and alignment with human values.
Recipient of a Canada CIFAR AI Chair, Reddy is a core academic member of Mila – Quebec AI Institute and serves as a research scientist at ServiceNow. He’s also one of four co-leads of the McGill NLP research group.
Prior to joining McGill in 2020, Reddy was a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University and a Google PhD fellow at the University of Edinburgh.
Katelin Schutz, Physics
A member of McGill’s Trottier Space Institute, Schutz studies some of the largest structures in the universe in order to better understand the smallest building blocks of matter.
Her work spans astrophysics, particle physics and cosmology, with a focus on dark matter, the mysterious and invisible form of matter that accounts for 85 per cent of the universe’s mass.
Schutz and her research group use astrophysical systems as natural laboratories to investigate the particles and interactions that may lie beyond the Standard Model. Drawing on observations and theoretical calculations, they explore how undiscovered forms of matter could affect astrophysical systems like stars and galaxies, with the goal of uncovering the composition and behaviour of dark matter.
Schutz holds a Canada Research Chair in Astrophysics Beyond the Standard Model and was named a CIFAR Global Scholar in 2024.
Prior to joining McGill in 2021, Schutz was a Pappalardo Fellow and a NASA Einstein Fellow at MIT. In 2020, she received the J. J. and Noriko Sakurai Dissertation Award in Theoretical Particle Physics from the American Physical Society for her highly original contributions addressing the nature of dark matter.
Consult the list of the recipients of the 2026 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship.