Russ Greiner receives CAIAC Lifetime Achievement Award

Russ Greiner (Canada CIFAR AI Chair, Fellow-in-Residence at Amii, and Professor of Computing Science & Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Alberta) has received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Canadian Artificial Intelligence Association (CAIAC).

Announced at the Canadian AI Conference on May 27, the CAIAC Lifetime Achievement Award is the highest honour bestowed by CAIAC. It is presented to individuals who have distinguished themselves through outstanding research excellence in AI during the course of their academic career.

“This award acknowledges the tremendous body of important work done by a team of great researchers,” says Greiner. “This includes my gifted collaborators and colleagues at the University of Alberta and Amii, and especially my wonderful mentees -- undergrads, grads, postdocs -- whose skill and hard work produced the results that led to this award. On behalf of this entire community, I am honoured and grateful to receive this award!”

Past recipients of this award include Robert Holte (Amii Fellow and University of Alberta Professor Emeritus) in 2019 and Rich Sutton (Canada CIFAR AI Chair, Amii Fellow & Chief Scientific Advisor, and University of Alberta Professor) in 2018.

“Russ has long been a key player in establishing Amii and Alberta as world leaders in AI for health. He demonstrates scientific excellence through his many contributions to the field of machine learning and his focus on developing and improving healthcare applications of AI,” says Cam Linke, CEO of Amii. “More than that, Russ is exceptionally devoted to his collaborators - whether they be students, other professors, or clinicians and practitioners in other fields. Congratulations to Russ on this great honour and the many successes that underpin it.”

Greiner’s storied career has spanned more than four decades, with his first publication at AAAI in 1980. After earning his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1985, Greiner worked in both academic and industrial research before settling at the University of Alberta. He was also one of four University of Alberta researchers who originally developed the proposal to create what is now Amii, and then served as its founding scientific director.

Alberta Innovates, the provincial corporation advancing research and innovation in Alberta, and its legacy organizations have provided long-term funding -- more than $35 million in funding to Amii since 2002 -- to support ML research, including Greiner’s. His work currently focuses on developing and improving applications of ML in medicine, providing solutions for specific real-world problems across a range of clinical considerations.

Within the field of computational psychiatry, Greiner uses ML on fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) and other clinical data to develop new ways of diagnosing schizophrenia and assessing the severity of a range of symptoms. His work on this subject has been published three times in npj Schizophrenia, part of the Nature Partner Journal series. One of these papers he co-authored with Sunil Vasu Kalmady (Senior Machine Learning Specialist, Faculty of Medicine, University of Alberta) made headlines earlier this year.

Greiner’s dedication to his students is immense. In 2020, he was awarded a Great Supervisor Award by the University of Alberta Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, as nominated by his students. Over the course of his career, he has supervised more than 110 M.Sc. and Ph.D. candidates and post-doctoral fellows. He also heads the Greiner Lab, a research group now focused on ML for medical applications.

“Working with Dr. Greiner for the past three years has been a delight. Through his insight and positive attitude, he exemplifies what it means to be a distinguished interdisciplinary researcher and collaborator,” says Sarah Davis, Amii Intern and University of Alberta grad student working under Greiner’s supervision. “He is also an excellent teacher and mentor due to his compassion and willingness to listen to his students.”

With decades of important and influential work behind him, Greiner continues to conduct important research and lead the next generation of scientists.

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