Jonathan Schaeffer, PhD

Phased Post Retirement-Faculty, Faculty of Science - Computing Science

Contact

Phased Post Retirement-Faculty, Faculty of Science - Computing Science
Email
jonathan@ualberta.ca

Overview

About

Education

  • B.Sc., Computer Science, University of Toronto, 1979
  • M.Math, Computer Science, University of Waterloo, 1980
  • Ph.D., Computer Science, University of Waterloo, 1986

Positions

  • Dean of Science (2012-2018)
  • Vice Provost and Associate Vice President (Information Technology) (2008-2012)
  • Chair, Computing Science (2005-2008)

Research

Areas

Artificial Intelligence
Computer Games

Summary

I am interested in anything to do with heuristic search (such as single-agent (A*) and two-player (alpha-beta) search). Single-agent search has important industrial applications including planning problems and optimization problems.

We work on commercial games with our partners Electronic Arts and BioWare. Some of the problems we are looking at are AI scripting, path-finding, earning, and testing. We have applied our work to role-playing games, sports games and real-time strategy games.

I am co-founder of Onlea (Onlea.org), the world's first MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) production company. Our mission is to create "Mindful online learning crafted with scholarship, creativity and quality." We strive to achieve the highest possible engagement, completion and retention rates in all of our products.