Killam Research Prizes for UBC CS Profs Ng and Schmidt

Computer Science Professor Raymond Ng and Associate Professor Mark Schmidt are the recipients of the prestigious UBC Killam Research Prizes. 

Up to 10 prizes are awarded annually to full-time tenure-stream faculty members in recognition of their outstanding research and scholarly contributions. Per the website, ‘winners were selected by UBC’s Faculty Research Award Committee, which spans arts and humanities, business, applied science, science, and medicine.’

Dr. Schmidt has made significant impact in the worlds of machine learning and numerical optimization, and his research on those topics are reflected not only in his publications, citations, and best paper awards, but also in media articles and in more than 30 software packages. The code he has released has made state-of-the-art machine learning and numerical optimization methods easy to use and accessible, and generated wide range of applications in fields as diverse as medicine, environmental sciences, and finance.

Dr. Ng is a world-renowned expert in the field of data mining and health informatics, and has made influential advances in outlier detection and data clustering. His research has great impact on personalized medicine, genomics, and chronic disease management. As the founding director of UBC’s Data Science Institute, Dr. Ng is expanding data science research and development into many application domains beyond human health, and is widely recognized nationally and internationally for building and training outstanding interdisciplinary data science research teams. 

Congratulations, Mark and Raymond!