Awards & Accolades: June 2022

Join us in celebrating some of the recent achievements of our Faculty of Science faculty, staff, students and alumni.

News Staff - 30 June 2022

Student Success

Congratulations to the graduating class of Spring 2022! June marked the convocation celebration as this year’s graduates joined the Faculty of Science alumni family as we celebrated convocation in-person for the first time since 2019.

In addition to the amazing achievements of all members of the graduating class, the Faculty of Science celebrated this year’s gold medallists at Convocation Reception on June 14th.

Kara Terry, member of the Spring 2022 graduating class.

Congratulations to Kara Terry, recipient of the Gold Medal in Science awarded to the convocating student from the specialization programs in the Faculty of Science who has shown the highest distinction in scholarship. Kara has made the Dean’s Honor Roll for each year of her undergraduate specialization program in pharmacology and has contributed to two recently published research papers.

Jayesh Vig, member of the Spring 2022 graduating class.

Congratulations to Jayesh Vig, recipient of the Dean's Gold Medal in Science awarded to the convocating student from the general program in the Faculty of Science who has shown the highest distinction in scholarship. Jayesh, who graduated this semester with a bachelor of science degree in biological sciences (major) and psychology (minor), and made the Dean’s Honor Roll for each year of his undergraduate program.

Faculty & Staff Excellence

Nelson Amaral, professor in the Department of Computing Science.

Congratulations to Nelson Amaral, professor in the Department of Computing Science, on receiving the 2022 Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) Presidential Award. The SPEC organization is a non-profit corporation formed to establish, maintain and endorse standardized benchmarks and tools to evaluate performance and energy efficiency for the newest generation of computing systems.

Amaral’s research focuses on high-performance computing, compiler design and optimization. He is heavily involved with SPEC, where he has served as director, awards committee chair, research group steering committee chair, and more. This award recognizes Amaral’s service to SPEC and his research excellence in driving this important field forward.

Rob Holte, professor emeritus of the Department of Computing Science.

Congratulations to Rob Holte, professor emeritus of the Department of Computing Science, on receiving a 2021 CS-Can/Info-Can Lifetime Achievement Award! (Photo credit: Amii)

The CS-Can/Info-Can Lifetime Achievement Awards recognize current or former faculty members in Canadian computer science departments, schools and faculties who have made outstanding and sustained contributions to computing over their careers.

Holte is recognized for his impressive research achievements, aimed at developing scientific understanding and improved algorithms in the field of artificial intelligence with a particular focus on machine learning and heuristic search — techniques that are supporting and enabling further advances in the field of AI. Holte also served for many years as editor-in-chief of Machine Learning, a top journal of the field, and is one of the founders of the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii).