AI researcher, Soviet historian among winners of $100K Killam Prize
Montreal AI expert Yoshua Bengio and human genome scientist Dr. Stephen Scherer from U of T among winners
Five of Canada's leading scholars in fields ranging from artificial intelligence to Soviet history are being honoured with the $100,000 Killam Prize.
The Canada Council for the Arts recognized academics from across the country Thursday for outstanding contributions to the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, health sciences and engineering.
Winners included Université de Montreal professors André Blais, an expert in electoral studies whose project examined the behaviour of voters and parties in 25 elections across five countries, and Yoshua Bengio, whose expertise in artificial intelligence has also earned him the A.M. Turing Award, known as the "Nobel Prize for Computer Science."
Dr. Stephen Scherer of the University of Toronto was commended for research that has shaped our understanding of the human genome and founding a database used in thousands of clinical diagnoses per day.
Congratulations to Dr. Stephen Scherer on being awarded the Killam Prize in health sciences; one of the most prestigious awards in Canada in the field of health sciences <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Killam2019?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Killam2019</a> <a href="https://t.co/sApGdhZ1hm">https://t.co/sApGdhZ1hm</a> <a href="https://t.co/pSFmA9Xytl">pic.twitter.com/pSFmA9Xytl</a>
—@SickKidsNewsFellow University of Toronto professor Lynne Viola, a specialist in the history of the Soviet Union, and University of Waterloo systems design engineer Keith W. Hipel were also among the honourees.
Winners are chosen by a committee of their peers.
Previous winners include Victoria Kaspi, the late Mark Wainberg, and Nobel Prize winner Arthur McDonald.