Dr. Russell Greiner

After earning a PhD from Stanford, Russ Greiner worked in both academic and industrial research before settling at the University of Alberta, where he is now a Professor in Computing Science. He was the founding Scientific Director of the center now known as the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii).

Russ Greiner's research addresses both fundamental issues in machine learning (ML) and applications of ML, most notably in Medical Informatics.  A recent reviewer stated that he is “one of top 10 researchers in the world in machine learning for healthcare''.

Dr. Greiner was a Program Chair for ICML in 2004 and its General Conference Chair in 2006. He has served as a Senior Editorial Board member for the top journals in AI (AIJ and JAIR) and machine learning (MLJ and JMLR).

His outstanding research has been recognized internationally by his being made a AAAI Fellow and a Canada CIFAR AI Chair. According to Google Scholar, his h-index is 62 and his work has been cited over 23,000 times, with more than 1,000 citations per year since 2012.

Over his career, Dr. Greiner has received a number of prestigious awards, most notably a McCalla Professorship in 2005, a Killam Professorship in 2007 and a FGSR Great Supervisor Award in 2020.  In addition, Russ received 2 best paper awards at Canadian AI, a best paper as noted in the IMIA Yearbook of Medical Informatics, and in 2015, he received an IJCAI Distinguished Paper prize.

Russ is currently (co)supervising 23 HQPs, and in his time at the University of Alberta, he has graduated 134 others.  9 of his graduate students' dissertations have been nominated for Best Thesis prizes, including a recent MSc who was awarded the 2020 CAIAC Master’s Thesis Award. 16 of his HQPs are now professors, 7 of whom hold Canada CIFAR AI or Canada Research Chairs.

For his lifetime contribution to the field of AI, CAIAC is delighted to award Dr. Russ Greiner the 2021 CAIAC Lifetime Achievement Award.