Bio

Sheila McIlraith is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, a Canada CIFAR AI Chair (Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence), and an Associate Director and Research Lead of the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. Prior to joining U of T, McIlraith spent six years as a Research Scientist at Stanford University, and one year at Xerox PARC. McIlraith is the author of several hundred scholarly publications in the areas of knowledge representation, automated reasoning and machine learning. Her work focuses on AI sequential decision making, broadly construed, through the lens of human-compatible AI. McIlraith is a fellow of the ACM, a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), and a past President of KR Inc., the international scientific foundation concerned with fostering research and communication on knowledge representation and reasoning. She is currently serving as Chair of the Standing Committee of the One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence (AI100) and is a member of the Canadian AI Safety Institute (CAISI) Research Council. McIlraith has served as associate editor of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR) and the journal Artificial Intelligence (AIJ), and is a past board member of Artificial Intelligence Magazine. In 2018, McIlraith served as program co-chair of the 32nd AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-18). She also served as program co-chair of the International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR2012), and the International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2004). McIlraith’s early work on Semantic Web Services has had notable impact. In 2011 she and her co-authors were honoured with the SWSA 10-year Award, a test of time award recognizing the highest impact paper from the International Semantic Web Conference, 10 years prior; in 2022 McIlraith and co-authors were honoured with the 2022 ICAPS Influential Paper Award, recognizing a significant and influential paper published 10 years prior at the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling; and in 2023 McIlraith and co-authors were honoured with the IJCAI-JAIR Best Paper Prize, awarded annually to an outstanding paper published in JAIR in the preceding five years. In 2024 she was recognized by CAIAC, the Canadian AI Society, with a Lifetime Achievement Award for research excellence in AI. In 2020, McIlraith catalyzed and continues to co-lead the highly successful Embedded Ethics Education Initiative (E3I) at UofT. The E3I leadership team has been honoured with the 2024 UofT Northrop Frye Award of Excellence, and a 2025 D2L Award for Innovation in Teaching and Learning. UofT currently sees annual student enrollment numbers in courses with E3I programming of nearly 10,000.

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Shorter Bio: Sheila McIlraith is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, a CIFAR AI Chair (Vector Institute), and an Associate Director and Research Lead of the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. McIlraith's research is in the areas of knowledge representation, automated reasoning and machine learning, focused on AI sequential decision making, broadly construed, through the lens of human-compatible AI. McIlraith is a fellow of the ACM, and a fellow of AAAI. She is currently serving as Chair of the Standing Committee of the One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence (AI100). McIlraith has served on the editorial boards of AIJ, JAIR, and Artificial Intelligence Magazine. She has also served as program co-chair of AAAI2018, KR2012, and ISWC2004, as well as conference co-chair of ICAPS2024. McIlraith and co-authors have been honoured with a number of paper recognitions, including three test-of-time style awards. McIlraith initiated and co-leads the award winning University of Toronto Embedded Ethics Education Initiative (E3I) which aims to endow students with the knowledge, skills, and incentive to integrate ethical considerations into the design and deployment of technology.

Short Bio: Sheila McIlraith is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, a Canada CIFAR AI Chair (Vector Institute), and an Associate Director and Research Lead at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. McIlraith’s research is in the area of AI sequential decision making, broadly construed, with a focus on human-compatible AI. McIlraith is a Fellow of the ACM and AAAI. She has received a number of honours and recogntions for scholarly work and innovation in teaching.