Prof. Judea Pearl Donates Prize Money to Technion

2015 Winner of the Dickson Prize in Science donates a portion of the prize money to the Technion

Technion alumnus, Prof. Judea Pearl, whose pioneering research efforts led to the development of knowledge representation and reasoning tools in computer science, received the prestigious award from Carnegie Mellon University in the U.S.

Professor Judea Pearl

Professor Judea Pearl, a Technion alumnus, who was awarded the 2011 Harvey Prize from the Technion, received the 2015 Dickson Prize in Science on February 29th. The Dickson prize, which includes a medal as well as a monetary award of $50,000, is given each year by Carnegie Mellon University to Americans who have made an outstanding significant contribution to science. Prof. Pearl announced that he will be donating a portion of the prize money to the Technion, where he completed his Bachelor’s degree.

Upon completing his BSc at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Technion, Pearl went on to pursue his Master’s degree in physics at Rutgers University and a PhD in electrical engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. In 1970 he became a faculty member at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles). He currently directs the university’s Cognitive Systems Laboratory and heads the research in artificial intelligence, human cognition and philosophy of science. His work on reasoning and uncertainty laid the groundwork in computerized systems, with far-reaching applications in a wide range of fields, namely: security, medicine, genetics and language understanding. Prof. Pearl is also a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Technion Faculty of Computer Science.

Prof. Pearl, one of the foremost leaders in the field of artificial intelligence, is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, a founding fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and a member of IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering). He also serves as the President of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, named after his son, who was working as a journalist in Pakistan in 2002 when he was kidnaped and murdered by Pakistani terrorists.

In 2011 Pearl received the A.M. Turing Award, considered the ‘Nobel Prize of computing,’ and then the Harvey Prize bestowed by the Technion in recognition of significant contributions in the advancement of humankind in the areas of science and technology, human health and peace in the Middle East. The Harvey Prize was awarded to Judea Pearl, “In recognition for his pioneering research efforts which serves as a foundation for knowledge representation and reasoning in computer science and has profoundly influenced modern life. His Bayesian network, which mimics the activities of the human brain, has had a profound influence on diverse fields such as artificial intelligence, statistics, philosophy, health, economics and cognitive sciences. The Harvey Prize in Science and Technology is awarded to Professor Pearl in recognition of the inherent breakthroughs of his research and their impact on such a wide variety of aspects in our lives.”

The Dickson Prize was established in 1969 through the philanthropy of the late Dr. Joseph Z. Dickson and his wife Agnes Fisher Dickson. It was awarded to Prof. Judea Pearl on February 29, 2016 in a festive ceremony at Carnegie Mellon (CMU), at which time he gave a lecture on the topic of “Science, Counterfactuals and Free Will.”