Computer Science

This month, the department proudly celebrated several undergraduate students as winners of the 2012 Gordon Cressy Student Leadership Award. Click here for full story.

This February, PhD candidate George Dahl was awarded a distinguished 2012 Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship. The Fellowship is a two-year program for outstanding PhD students nominated by their universities, and was given to 12 PhD students in North America this year.

Dahl, supervised by Geoffrey Hinton, describes his research interests as "deep learning architectures, speech recognition and language processing, undirected graphical models, and most of statistical machine learning." The Microsoft Fellowship honours the best young minds in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Mathematics; Dahl's award is only the second Fellowship to come to Canada since the award was created.

Congratulations!

On Thursday, November 10, the University of Victoria bestowed an Honorary Doctor of Engineering to DCS Professor Emeritus C.C. "Kelly" Gotlieb. UVic describes their honorary degree as "the highest honour the university can bestow for distinguished achievement in scholarship, research, teaching, the creative arts and public service."

Kelly received this honour in recognition of his pioneering work in Computer Science, including his founding of the first computing centre in the country. Read the full citation here.

In honour of this very distinguished occasion, the B.C. and Victoria chapters of Canada's Association of Information Technology Professionals (CIPS) held a dinner at the Union Club of British Columbia. In the dinner program, CIPS noted, "As the co-founder in 1958, and an early national president of CIPS, Dr.Gotlieb was instrumental in [the] development of Canada’s professional organization for I.T. practitioners. In 1988, he gave his name to the new C.C. Gotlieb CIPS Contribution Award. In 1996, in recognition of his outstanding career … and his enormous contributions to CIPS … he received the Order of Canada."

Kelly also had the opportunity to speak to the Victoria newspaper the "Times Colonist", urging stronger efforts to safeguard systems controlling vital infrastructure from attacks. See the article here.

The department continues to be very proud of Kelly's well-deserved recognitions and accomplishments. Congratulations, Kelly!

The department's Vice Chair, Sheila McIlraith, received a Ten-Year Award from the Semantic Web Science Association (SWSA) on a paper she co-authored, titled "DAML-S: Semantic Markup ForWeb Services". The paper is credited with defining "a de facto standard for the description of services on the Semantic Web and [influencing] a large number of projects including both research and later standards efforts."

The SWSA is an international organization that promotes scholarly work on the semantic web and runs a conference at which the award-winning paper appeared in 2001. These "test of time" awards are especially noteworthy as they indicate not just a significant paper, but a paper that continues to be judged significant ten years later. More details on the Ten-Year Award can be found on the Semantic Web Science Association site.

In addition to this exciting news, Sheila and her co-authors used their prize to establish a Semantic Web Services Research Challenge to encourage new and innovative research in the are of Semantic Web Services.

Congratulations, Sheila!

The Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Association (OCUFA) has selected Paul Gries as one of five winners of the 2011 OCUFA Teaching Award. It is gratifying to see his outstanding teaching record recognized by this Ontario-wide organization, which serves all but one of the universities in Ontario. The OCUFA award is considered the province's most prestigious recognition of teaching.

In addition to receiving strong teaching evaluations year after year, Paul's continuous efforts to improve the undergraduate experience, along with his high school outreach efforts, have significantly improved the experience of our undergraduate students. In the U of T article about the 2011 award-winners, chair of the OCUFA award selection committee Judith Poe commends Paul, calling him “a master teacher [who] is adored by his students for his passion and commitment” to their learning.

This is a big year for Paul, as this is his second big award: in April, he also received a 2011 U of T President's Teaching Award.

Congratulations!

Celeste Francis Esteves received one of the 2011 Arbor Awards from the University of Toronto Alumni Association.

The Arbors were created to honour "alumni who help make the U of T a better place to learn and work through their dedication and generosity." Celeste's citation reads: "Celeste Francis Esteves has demonstrated her commitment and loyalty to the Alumni Association of Woodsworth College. Celeste, who is now president of the association after serving as secretary and vice-president, chaired the committee that organized the 35th Anniversary Spring Reunion in 2009. She is also currently a member of the University of Toronto Alumni Association’s Community Engagement Initiative."

Congratulations, Celeste, on being recognized for your outstanding personal service to the university.

The Province of Ontario's Ministry of Research and Innovation (MRI) announced awards under its Research Excellence, Research Infrastructure and Early Researcher programs on July 25; the U of T earned more than $24.9 million in total.

Eighteen researchers were recognized with the Early Researcher Award (ERA), which helps promising newly-appointed researchers build their teams. DCS' Yashar Ganjali was awarded funding for his project titled, "Network management for next generation Internet." His citation reads: "With the amount of data continuing to grow, the Internet is reaching the point where its limitations are becoming clear. At the University of Toronto Dr. Yashar Ganjali is developing technologies necessary for the next generation Internet – work that will help Ontario’s information technology companies play a key role in the future of the industry."

See the U of T press release on the MRI awards here; see the ministry's list of U of T ERA recipients here.

Professor Renee Miller has been elected as one of the 2011 Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada.

The Royal Society of Canada (RSC) is the senior national body of distinguished Canadian scholars, artists and scientists. It is Canada's national academy. The primary objective of the RSC is to promote learning and research in the arts and sciences. The RSC consists of nearly 2000 Fellows, men and women who are selected by their peers for outstanding contributions to the natural and social sciences, in the arts and the humanities.

As Canada's national academy, the RSC exists to recognize academic excellence, to advise governments and organizations, and to promote Canadian culture. Renee's citation for the nomination reads: "Professor Renee J. Miller is world-renowned as a pioneer in the field of Database Systems, a core topic for Computer Science. Her work has focused on the long-standing open problem of data integration and has achieved the goal of building practical data integration systems. At the same time, Professor Miller has been a leader among her peers in Canada and abroad, spearheading research and research activity. Her profile is unique in that it combines gracefully theoretical elegance, reflected by citations and scholarly awards, with industrial impact, reflected by patents and successful industrial products."

Congratulations, Renee!

The Discovery Accelerator Supplements (DAS) were created to "accelerate progress and maximize the impact of outstanding research programs". These grants provide a researcher with $120,000 over the next three years.

DCS had four winners in this latest round:

The University of Toronto had 17 DAS recipients in total. For more information on the award and a full listing of the 2011 funded projects, see the NSERC site.

One of the most significant ways the University of Toronto recognizes exceptional scholarly achievement is through the designation of 'University Professor'. The U of T was proud to name Allan Borodin as one of these eminent professors. (Allan joins DCS' Geoff Hinton in this distinguished group.)

Allan's citation notes: "Professor Borodin has a long and distinguished research career in theoretical computer science. His central area of interest, computational complexity and algorithm design, addresses the basic issue of determining the minimum resources required to solve computational problems. A common theme in Borodin's research is that he explores fundamental questions that seemingly should be well understood but often defy answers to even the most basic aspects of these questions. Hence, he has often been at the forefront of developing new models and problem formulations that have become standard frameworks for computer science studies."

More information and Allan's full citation may be found on the U of T Vice-President and Provost Web site. Also, the U of T Bulletin released an article on the 2010-2011 University Professors.

Michael Brudno was awarded a 2010-2011 Connaught New Researcher Award for his work on "Enabling medical application of high throughput sequencing technologies."

The University of Toronto's Connaught New Researcher Program was designed to foster excellence in research and innovation by providing support for researchers at the assistant professor level who are within the first five years of their first academic appointment at the University of Toronto. The awards are intended to help these early-career researchers establish a strong research program, thereby increasing their competitiveness for external funding.

Find more information on this award on the UofT website.

Professor Sheila McIlraith has been elected one of the six 2011 fellows of AAAI (the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence). This is the highest honor in the AI community, aimed "to recognize individuals who have made significant, sustained contributions---usually over at least a ten-year period---to the field of artificial intelligence". Sheila was recognized "for significant contributions to knowledge representation, reasoning about action, and the formal foundations of the semantic web and diagnostic problem solving."

Information about the AAAI fellows program is available on their website.

Sheila joins six other UofT colleagues - Professors John Mylopolous, Geoff Hinton, Hector Levesque, Mark Fox, Craig Boutilier and Fahiem Bacchus, who are members of this prestigious group.

Congratulations, Sheila!

Senior Lecturer Paul Gries was awarded the University of Toronto's highest teaching honour. The university-wide President's Teaching Award recognizes sustained excellence in teaching, research in teaching, and the integration of teaching and research.

Paul received this award for “his skill and passion for teaching,” and for introducing many innovations to our courses, “always with an eye to the latest ideas in pedagogy and in the discipline of computer science.” He has made a significant impact, doing things such as building many valuable educational tools, co-authoring books on introductory computer science, and making many contributions to computer science at the high school level.

Find more information on Paul's award on the Provost's website.

Karen Reid has been chosen as the University of Toronto's Joan E. Foley Quality of Student Experience Award recipient. The award recipient is selected based on making a "distinctive and lasting contribution to enhancing the quality of the undergraduate or graduate student experience at the University of Toronto." This award recognizes the impact that Karen has made on lives of many undergraduate students who have been engaged in research projects under her guidance.

For further award information, please click here.

Congratulations Karen!

Mark Braverman has been awarded a prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship for 2011.

The $50,000 awards are given to early-career scholars in recognition of their achievements and their potential to contribute substantially to their fields. Winners in the fields of chemistry, computer science, economics, mathematics, evolutionary and computational molecular biology, neuroscience and physics are nominated by their peers and selected by an independent panel of senior scholars.

“The scientists and researchers selected for this year’s Sloan Research Fellowships represent the very brightest rising stars of this generation of scholars,” says Dr. Paul L. Joskow, president of the Sloan Foundation. “The Foundation is proud to be able to support their work at this important stage in their careers.

Braverman is one of three recipients from Canadian universities among the 118 scholars selected.

Braverman, who received his PhD in 2008 from the University of Toronto, is interested in complexity theory, the theory of real computation, machine learning, algorithms, game theory, and applications of computer science in health care and medicine.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a philanthropic, not-for-profit grant making institution based in New York City. Established in 1934 by Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr., then-president and chief executive officer of the General Motors, the foundation makes grants in support of original research and education in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and economic performance.

Professor Charlie Rackoff is the recipient of the 2011 RSA Conference Award for Excellence in the Field of Mathematics.

Established in 1998, the RSA Conference Awards are presented to acknowledge the outstanding contributions of individuals and organizations in the field of cryptography, public policy and information security. The RSA Conference Award for Mathematics recognizes innovation and ongoing contribution to the field of cryptography.

From the citation: Rackoff's research interests are in computational complexity. For some time now he has been specializing in Cryptography, Security, and Security protocols. He was a co-originator of the important concepts of "interactive proofs" and "zero-knowledge proofs", for which he co-won the 1993 Godel Prize.

For more information, see the RSA site here.

Professor Geoffrey Hinton, considered one of the world’s foremost researchers in the fields of machine learning and artificial intelligence, has been awarded the 2010 Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering.

The medal, named for Canadian Nobel Laureate Gerhard Herzberg, is awarded annually by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) to an individual who has made outstanding and sustained contributions to Canadian research in the natural sciences and engineering.The prize provides the researcher with $1 million over five years to further his or her research.