AI expert awarded one of America's highest science honours
University of Sydney Professor of Computer Science Dacheng Tao has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), one of the highest honours in the field.
Professor Dacheng Tao.
Professor Tao was elected as an AAAS Fellow as part of the Engineering section.
"It is my great honour and privilege to be elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,” Professor Tao said.
“This election recognises my significant contributions to artificial intelligence (AI), specifically computer vision, deep learning and statistical learning.”
University of Sydney Vice-Chancellor and Principal Dr Michael Spence congratulated Professor Tao on his honour.
“The recognition of Professor Tao by this prestigious international organisation is a fitting testament to his leadership in computer science research. The University is enormously proud of his success,” Dr Spence said.
Professor Tao’s research predominantly covers AI’s applications to robotics, neuroscience, medical informatics and video surveillance.
Earlier this year he was appointed the Director of the newly established UBTECH Sydney Artificial Intelligence Centre and was also awarded an ARC Australian Laureate Fellowship to develop a suite of original models and algorithms for processing and understanding videos captured by moving cameras.
Professor Tao was recently recognised in the Clarivate Analytics 2017 Highly Cited Researchers List, where he was one of one just 147 academics around the world to be recognised in two fields – computer science and engineering. In 2015 and 2016 he was ranked by Thomson Reuters as a Highly Cited Researcher for Engineering and Computer Science.
Professor Tao was awarded a 2015 Scopus Eureka Prize for Excellence in International Scientific Collaboration, and was a finalist for the University of Technology Sydney Eureka Prize for Excellence in Data Science this year.
Founded in 1848, the AAAS is the world's largest multidisciplinary scientific society and seeks to advance science, engineering and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all people.
Election as an AAAS Fellow is an honour bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers.
This year 396 members have been awarded this honour because of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. Professor Tao is one of only two Australian academics named as Fellows this year.
A formal announcement will be made in the journal Science on 24 November and new Fellows will be presented with an official certificate and rosette pin at the 2018 AAAS Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas next February.
