Dr. Robert Holte

Dr. Robert Holte is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Alberta. He joined the University of Alberta in 2001 after having spent 12 years at the University of Ottawa.  Rob received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. from the University of Manitoba and his PhD from Brunel University in the United Kingdom.

Rob’s interests are in machine learning and heuristic search.  Over his career, Rob’s research has received almost 10,000 citations, with 1 particular paper with 2,000 citations. He was the lead author on a paper solving a problem that had been open for 50 years, for which he received the 2016 AAAI Outstanding Paper Award.

Robert has supervised or co-supervised over 30 graduate students, including Chris Drummond!  He was editor and executive editor of the journal Machine Learning journal and served as organizer/program chair/referee for numerous conferences. At the University of Alberta, was Vice Dean of the Faculty of Science and was one of the four co-founders of AMII Institute In 2011, he became a Fellow of AAAI.

For his lifetime contribution to the field of AI, CAIAC is delighted to award Dr. Robert Holte the 2019 CAIAC Lifetime Achievement Award.