Professor Richard Sutton to Receive Honorary Degree
Professor Richard Sutton, a leading figure in artificial intelligence (AI) from the University of Alberta, is slated to receive an honorary degree during the university's winter convocation in March. University of Alberta chancellor Nizar Somji noted Sutton's work in AI has had a transformative impact.
"Sutton's work in AI has had a transformative impact."
Contributions to AI and Reinforcement Learning
Sutton, a professor in the Department of Computing Science and a founder of modern computational reinforcement learning, has contributed to Alberta's reputation as an AI hub since his arrival in 2003.
Reinforcement learning, a branch of machine learning, involves AI systems learning to solve problems through trial-and-error. Sutton's research in this area has found applications in diverse fields including medicine, economics, engineering, and agriculture.
Academic Background and Key Publications
Sutton began his academic career at Stanford University, studying behavioural psychology. He subsequently earned his master's and PhD in computer science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In 1998, he co-authored "Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction" with Andrew Barto, which is recognized as an essential text in the field.
Leadership and Industry Engagement
After joining the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Sutton served as Chair of Reinforcement Learning and Artificial Intelligence at iCORE/AITF until 2018. He founded the Reinforcement Learning and Artificial Intelligence Lab, where he currently serves as a principal investigator. Sutton is also the chief scientific advisor at the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii) and a Canada CIFAR AI Chair.
In 2017, he co-founded Google DeepMind Alberta. In 2023, he became a research scientist at Keen Technologies, collaborating with John Carmack.
Recognition and Impact
Sutton's scientific publications have accumulated approximately 175,000 citations. He mentored David Silver, who, alongside Sutton and Martin Müller, developed AlphaGo, an AI program that defeated human Go players in 2016 and 2017.
His accolades include a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Canadian Artificial Intelligence Association in 2018. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Royal Society of London, and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. Most recently, he was a co-recipient of the 2024 Association for Computing Machinery A.M. Turing Award, a prestigious computing science prize.