Dr. Cristina Conati receives the UBC Killam Research Prize in Science
Dr. Cristina Conati, Professor of Computer Science at UBC and Distinguished Scholar at the UBC Sauder School of Business, has been awarded a UBC 2022 Killam Research Prize in the Sciences category.
The research awards recognize recipients who demonstrate: outstanding research and scholarly contributions relative to their peer group at a comparable career stage; research impact accounting for context of the discipline or field of study; and, national and/or international research leadership, where appropriate.
Dr. Conati’s research lies at the intersection of artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction and cognitive science. Her overarching goal is to support Human-AI collaboration via trustworthy AI artifacts that can understand relevant properties of their users (e.g., states, skills, needs) and personalize the interaction accordingly, in a manner that preserves transparency and user control.
Over her career thus far, Conati has received awards from a variety of venues, including: 10 Best Paper Awards; ACM Distinguished Member (2020) in recognition of significant contributions to the field of computing; and, AAAI Senior Member (2019) in recognition of significant accomplishments within the field of AI.
Cristina has been researching human-centered and AI-driven personalization for over 25 years, much before these research themes became highly prominent in society, with significant contributions in the areas of Intelligent Tutoring Systems, User Modeling, Affective Computing, Information Visualization and Explainable AI.
Upon receiving the award, Dr. Conati said, “I am thrilled and honored to receive this award. I am especially overjoyed that the award committee is recognizing highly-interdisciplinary research that acknowledges the importance of bringing humans into the loop for the advancement of AI.”
We congratulate Cristina on this significant achievement!
More about Dr. Conati and her research
More about the 2022 UBC Faculty Research Prizes