Shaping AI Futures at Northeastern University in Vancouver

Lino Coria Mendoza has taught computer science from Guadalajara to Vancouver. He’s been working in AI since before it was called AI, building the filters that quiet background noise during phone calls, and computer vision programs to improve tomato growth in greenhouses. He’s currently working at Northeastern University’s Vancouver campus, where he teaches machine learning and computer vision courses for the Master of Science in Computer Science program. He also serves as Program Director for Northeastern’s MS in Artificial Intelligence (MSAI), a graduate degree that currently spans five colleges and four campuses. Sitting atop a two decade career that stretches across a continent, what makes him most proud?

The best thing is when you help others; when you allow other people to grow. It’s always very rewarding when I get an email from a former student to share that they got a job.

“The best thing is when you help others; when you allow other people to grow,” Coria Mendoza said. “It’s always very rewarding when I get an email from a former student to share that they got a job, or because they want my opinion. Some of these are students I had back in Mexico many years ago, and they still want to chat with me – that’s the biggest success.”

Coria Mendoza joined Northeastern in 2021, teaching machine learning and computer vision courses. He’d previously taught at ITESO in Guadalajara, and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and spent the intervening decade developing computer vision algorithms and machine learning models for a range of Canadian startups. He’s always been compelled by the breadth and diversity of the field.

“The field of AI is so diverse. We have computer vision, which is how computers collect or understand visual information; we have natural language processing, how computers understand when we talk,” said Coria Mendoza. “AI is a marketing term; the term I prefer is pattern recognition, because this is what we’re doing. We are training machines to identify patterns.”

Coria Mendoza is determined his courses genuinely prepare students with the technical skills they need to enter the industry. In 2025, he developed and taught Applied Programming and Data Processing for AI, which teaches the simultaneous calculations that allow AI to run at high speeds, providing the technical detail he felt was missing from his earlier education.

“This is the course that I would have loved to have taken as a grad student,” he said. “This is the course I never got, and then had to learn the hard way when I went to industry.”

But vocational excellence isn’t his only focus; it’s important to him that his students have a strong grasp of ethics, too. To ensure the MSAI program provided a strong ethical foundation, Coria Mendoza and other MSAI faculty consulted with Vance Ricks and Meica Magnani, ethics experts on the Value Analysis in Design Team in Northeastern’s CSSH Ethics Institute to build ethics directly into his evaluation criteria.

“Throughout the process, we evaluate the project with ethics in mind: who is it going to be for? Who’s going to benefit from this, who is not going to benefit? Who is going to be able to use it, who is going to not be able to?” he explained. “We embed the ethics in subtle ways, the way parents hide veggies in their children’s meals”

His student experience-focused approach resonates deeply in the classroom.

“He creates an environment where students feel genuinely comfortable asking questions,” said Yue Huang, who’s both taken and been a teaching assistant for Coria Mendoza’s courses. “I remember struggling with my final project design and scheduling an office hour with him. He didn’t just point me toward a fix; he walked me through the reasoning and helped me understand why the design needed to change.”

“What I appreciated most was how hands-on everything felt,” added Mansi Krishnakant Modi, who took Pattern Recognition and Computer Vision with Coria Mendoza. “He had us create two versions of our final project video: a longer one capturing all the technical detail, and a shorter one designed for LinkedIn and social media. That detail says a lot about who he is as an educator; he’s thinking about where you are headed, and how the world is going to see you when you get there.”

Encouraged by his first year as director, his colleagues are also excited to see where he takes the MSAI program, hopeful it will grow to include even more of the global campus network.

“His passion for making knowledge accessible goes well beyond the classroom,” said Mahya Payamshad, assistant director of graduate student services at Northeastern in Vancouver. “Anyone who spends a bit of time with him quickly gets a sense of how much he cares about the program, and about the people in it.”

Coria Mendoza himself is excited to continue finding ways to develop both technical computer science skills, and a broader sense of curiosity and aptitude among his students.

“A strong core is super important. My students can use AI coding tools – but I want them to know why they’re using them, why this is efficient or better than that,” Coria Mendoza said. “My students should develop competence with AI tools, but also great communication skills, great critical thinking skills, teamwork, responding in a changing environment, how to handle stressful situations – all those things.”

By Madelaine Millar