--- title: "Laurent Charlin — author profile and papers" description: "Laurent Charlin, HEC Montréal: 2 papers on Elamur Research (2016), h-index 23 — affiliations, topics, co-authors and who cites them in our library." canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/laurent-charlin/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/laurent-charlin/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [authors](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/) / Laurent Charlin # Laurent Charlin Laurent Charlin's papers here deal with [dialogue systems](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/dialogue-systems/), specifically open-domain conversational models that produce a reply from the preceding exchange alone. Two questions recur: how a neural generator can keep track of a whole conversation instead of only the next word, and how such systems should be judged. The methods range from recurrent encoder-decoder networks with variational training to empirical studies that compare automatic scores with human ratings. That second theme links the work to [evaluation and benchmarks](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/evaluation-benchmarks/). The most cited of these works is [A Hierarchical Latent Variable Encoder-Decoder Model for Generating Dialogues](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/serban-2016-hierarchical-latent-variable-encoder-decoder/). It introduced VHRED, which adds a continuous Gaussian latent variable, drawn once for each utterance, to a hierarchical recurrent dialogue model. Training optimises a bound on the likelihood, much as variational autoencoders do. The variable is meant to counter the dull, generic answers that come from purely token-level randomness. Close behind is [How NOT To Evaluate Your Dialogue System](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/liu-2016-how-not-evaluate-your-dialogue/). That study gathered human judgments of responses from several generative and retrieval models. It then checked how well word-overlap measures such as BLEU, METEOR and ROUGE, along with embedding-based measures, agree with those judgments. Both papers appeared in 2016 and are the natural starting point for a reader. Since both papers date from the same year, the most recent work here is the same pair: one builds better conversational generators and the other questions the tools used to score them. Charlin is currently affiliated with [HEC Montréal](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/hec-montreal/), [Mila - Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/labs/mila-quebec-artificial-intelligence-institute/) and the [Canadian Institute for Advanced Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/labs/canadian-institute-for-advanced-research/). Earlier bylines list [McGill University](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/mcgill-university/), [Columbia University](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/columbia-university/) and the [University of Toronto](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-toronto/). Co-authors on these papers include [Iulian Vlad Serban](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/iulian-vlad-serban/), [Joelle Pineau](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/joelle-pineau/) and [Ryan Lowe](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/ryan-lowe/), as well as Aaron Courville, Alessandro Sordoni and Yoshua Bengio. Laurent Charlin has 2 papers in our library, in 2016, most of them on [Dialogue systems](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/dialogue-systems/), [Evaluation & benchmarks](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/evaluation-benchmarks/); often with [Iulian Vlad Serban](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/iulian-vlad-serban/), [Joelle Pineau](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/joelle-pineau/), [Ryan Lowe](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/ryan-lowe/). 2 papers in our library · 2016 [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/A5103126568) · [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6437-9713) · [**h-index 23**](https://openalex.org/authors/A5103126568) · [64 works](https://openalex.org/works?filter=author.id:A5103126568) · [3,726 citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=author.id:A5103126568&sort=cited_by_count:desc) OpenAlex, 2026-10-14 [📄 2 works in our library](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/laurent-charlin/#papers) · [🔗 894 citations in our library](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/laurent-charlin/cited-by/) · [3 more in our library without a page yet](#also) · [⭐ Paper Star rank #1971](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/paper-stars/page/20/#star-1971) The profile is the library's match of the name; two people with one name are not always told apart. Elsewhere: [Google Scholar](https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=search_authors&mauthors=Laurent+Charlin) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/search?q=Laurent+Charlin) · [dblp](https://dblp.org/search?q=Laurent+Charlin) · [ACL Anthology](https://aclanthology.org/search/?q=Laurent+Charlin) ## Affiliations [🎓**HEC Montréal** Montreal · Canada 2016–2026 · 26 papers*current*](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/hec-montreal/) · [🔬**Mila - Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute** Montreal · Canada 2019–2026 · 17 papers*current*](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/labs/mila-quebec-artificial-intelligence-institute/) · [🔬**Canadian Institute for Advanced Research** Toronto · Canada 2020–2026 · 3 papers*current*](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/labs/canadian-institute-for-advanced-research/) · [🎓**McGill University** Montreal · Canada 2016–2017 · 3 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/mcgill-university/) · [🎓**Columbia University** New York · United States 2014–2015 · 3 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/columbia-university/) · [🎓**University of Toronto** Toronto · Canada 2012–2013 · 2 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-toronto/) From the bylines of their papers (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14), ORCID and Wikidata; institutions on papers are matched by machine. 2 more institutions on single bylines are not listed. ## Topics [Dialogue systems (2)](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/dialogue-systems/) · [Evaluation & benchmarks (1)](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/evaluation-benchmarks/) ## Works by year ### 2010s [**2016** 2 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/laurent-charlin/year/2016/) ## Papers The most cited first (OpenAlex and our library). 1. **[A Hierarchical Latent Variable Encoder-Decoder Model for Generating Dialogues](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/serban-2016-hierarchical-latent-variable-encoder-decoder/)** *(2016 · 518 citations)* Standard RNN-based dialogue generators, including RNNLM and HRED, introduce randomness only when each output token is sampled. 2. **[How NOT To Evaluate Your Dialogue System: An Empirical Study of Unsupervised Evaluation Metrics for Dialogue Response Generation](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/liu-2016-how-not-evaluate-your-dialogue/)** *(2016 · 500 citations)* The paper examines whether automatic metrics can be trusted when evaluating unsupervised dialogue models, that is, chatbots that generate a response based solely on the conversation context. ## Also in our library 3 more works of theirs are in our library without a page here yet; they will appear as we publish them. ## Co-authors here 6 co-authors with a page, the most papers together first. - [Iulian Vlad Serban](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/iulian-vlad-serban/) ×2 - [Joelle Pineau](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/joelle-pineau/) ×2 - [Ryan Lowe](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/ryan-lowe/) ×2 - [Aaron Courville](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/aaron-courville/) - [Alessandro Sordoni](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/alessandro-sordoni/) - [Yoshua Bengio](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/yoshua-bengio/) ## Cited by Papers of our library cite their works 894 times (of the 140,884 papers whose bibliographies we read); [54 citing papers with a page here →](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/laurent-charlin/cited-by/).