Royal Society U.K.

Aled Edwards, a professor in the departments of medical biophysics and molecular genetics and the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, has been elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society, the U.K.’s national academy of sciences.

The world’s oldest independent scientific academy in continuous existence, the Royal Society recognizes individuals who have significantly impacted science through its fellowship program. Fellows are elected based on their substantial contributions to fields including mathematics, engineering science and medical science.

Edwards, who holds a Temerty Nexus Chair of Health Innovation and Technology and is the founder and CEO of the Structural Genomics Consortium, was honoured for his contributions to accelerating drug discovery following an open science ethos.

As a fellow of the Royal Society, Edwards will continue to advocate for open science and collaborative research.

Read the Royal Society profile of Aled Edwards

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Geoffrey Hinton recognized with Royal Medal

lanthierj — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 16:09:12 +0000

Geoffrey Hinton recognized with Royal Medal

Research & Innovation

lanthierj Wed, 08/24/2022 - 12:09

Faculty of Arts & Science

Department of Computer Science

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(photo by Johnny Guatto)

Artificial intelligence and deep-learning pioneer Geoffrey Hinton has been awarded the prestigious Royal Medal from the Royal Society, the U.K.’s national academy of sciences.

A University Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Arts & Science’s department of computer science, Hinton is chief scientific adviser at the Vector Institute, and a vice-president and engineering fellow at Google.

Royal Medals have been awarded annually since 1826 for advancements in the physical and biological sciences. A third medal, for applied sciences, has been awarded since 1965. Previous University of Toronto medal winners include Anthony Pawson and Nobel laureate John Polanyi.

According to the Royal Society, Hinton is being honoured for “pioneering work on algorithms that learn distributed representations in artificial neural networks and their application to speech and vision, leading to a transformation of the international information technology industry.”

In 1986, Hinton and his collaborators developed a breakthrough approach that would realize the promise of neural networks and form the current foundation of that technology. They built on that initial work with a number of critical developments that enhanced the potential of AI and helped usher in today’s revolution in deep learning with applications in speech and image recognition, self-driving vehicles, automated diagnosis of images and language, and more.

“It is a great honour to receive the Royal Medal — a medal previously awarded to intellectual giants like Darwin, Faraday, Boole and G.I. Taylor,” says Hinton. “But unlike them, my success was the result of recruiting and nurturing an extraordinarily talented set of graduate students and postdocs who were responsible for many of the breakthroughs in deep learning that revolutionized artificial intelligence over the last 15 years.”

Read the Faculty of Arts & Science story

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University of Toronto professors elected to the U.K.'s Royal Society

lanthierj — Fri, 07 May 2021 20:15:02 +0000

University of Toronto professors elected to the U.K.'s Royal Society

Research & Innovation

lanthierj Fri, 05/07/2021 - 16:15

Faculty

St. George

Department of Biochemistry

Department of Mathematics

Faculty of Arts & Science

Royal Society U.K.

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

landscape

(Photo of Forman-Kay courtesy of Forman-Kay; Quastel by Diana Tyszko)

Two University of Toronto professors have been elected Fellows of the Royal Society – the United Kingdom’s national academy of sciences.

Professor Julie Forman-Kay of the department of biochemistry in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine and Professor Jeremy Quastel of the department of mathematics in the Faculty of Arts & Science are among the 60 scientists named this year as Fellows, Foreign Members or Honorary Fellows.

“The global pandemic has demonstrated the continuing importance of scientific thinking and collaboration across borders,” Sir Adam Smith, president of the society, said in a statement. “Each Fellow and Foreign Member bring their area of scientific expertise to the Royal Society and when combined, this expertise supports the use of science for the benefit of humanity.”

Forman-Kay and Quastel are deeply collaborative leaders who have made profound impact with their research, said Professor Leah Cowen, associate vice-president, research.

“Julie Forman-Kay’s recent studies elucidating the roles of disordered regions in controlling cellular organization and chemical reactions have led to important insights into normal biological regulation and how mutations in these regions lead to cancer and neurological disorders,” Cowen said. “And Jeremy Quastel is making world-leading contributions to probability theory, stochastic processes and partial differential equations.

“The university congratulates them on this important recognition of their accomplishments.”

Jeremy Quastel elected a Fellow of the Royal Society

lanthierj — Fri, 07 May 2021 18:54:46 +0000

Jeremy Quastel elected a Fellow of the Royal Society

Research & Innovation

lanthierj Fri, 05/07/2021 - 14:54

Faculty

St. George

Department of Mathematics

Faculty of Arts & Science

Royal Society U.K.

landscape

(Photo by Diana Tyszko)

For his seminal contributions to both probability theory and mathematical physics, the University of Toronto's Jeremy Quastel has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

“It is wonderful to have this kind of international recognition,” says Quastel, a professor and chair of the Faculty of Arts & Science’s department of mathematics. “This is a very active field in probability and statistical physics where �Թϱ�� is leading the world.”

The distinction recognizes Quastel’s research into the extent to which macroscopic and phenomenological laws of physics can be derived rigorously from fundamental microscopic laws. In particular, Quastel discovered – with former �Թϱ�� postdoctoral fellows Daniel Remenik and Konstantin Matetski – the strong coupling fixed point of the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang universality class describing the large-scale fluctuations of many interface growth models.

“We are extremely proud that Professor Quastel has received this richly deserved honour,” says Melanie Woodin, dean of the Faculty of Arts & Science. “His work is a wonderful example of the depth of research being conducted in the Faculty.”

Quastel was also a Sloan Fellow and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He received his PhD from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Science, NYU, after which he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, then a faculty member at University of California, Davis. He joined �Թϱ�� in 1998.

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Julie Forman-Kay elected a Fellow of the Royal Society

lanthierj — Fri, 07 May 2021 14:59:13 +0000

Julie Forman-Kay elected a Fellow of the Royal Society

Research & Innovation

lanthierj Fri, 05/07/2021 - 10:59

Faculty

St. George

Department of Biochemistry

Royal Society U.K.

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

landscape

Julie Forman-Kay has been named a Fellow of the Royal Society in recognition of her internationally renowned studies of the dynamic structures, interactions and functions of intrinsically disordered proteins.

A professor in the department of biochemistry in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Forman-Kay is also senior scientist and program head of molecular medicine at The Hospital for Sick Children. She holds a Canada Research Chair in Intrinsically Disordered Proteins.

"I am truly honoured to have been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society, with its history of bringing outstanding scientists together to promote excellent science for the sake of improving society,” says Forman-Kay. “I am also extremely pleased, as it is recognition not only of my work but of the importance of disordered regions in biological function."

Intrinsically disordered proteins and protein regions make up about a third of human protein sequences, yet are poorly understood. Forman-Kay's research has provided strong links between dynamic interactions of disordered proteins and regulation of essential cellular processes.

“Forman-Kay’s work sits at the interface of structural biology and cell biology, which is not a set of skills that most people think about in the same sentence. But she moves effortlessly between the two,” says Professor Justin Nodwell, vice-dean, research and graduate education and former chair of biochemistry. “As a result, she’s made foundational discoveries that apply to many proteins with enormous relevance to human disease.

“I’m so happy to hear that Julie has been inducted into the Royal Society. She brings her sharp, critical mind and boundless interest to everything she does – I really can’t think of anyone who is more deserving of this terrific honour.”

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U.K. Royal Society names Zulfiqar Bhutta a Fellow

lanthierj — Tue, 26 May 2020 15:52:58 +0000

U.K. Royal Society names Zulfiqar Bhutta a Fellow

Research & Innovation

lanthierj Tue, 05/26/2020 - 11:52

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

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For his contributions to global child health, Professor Zulfiqar Bhutta has been elected a fellow of the United Kingdom’s Royal Society.

The Royal Society is the U.K.’s national academy of sciences and the oldest scientific academy that has been in continuous existence. Members have included Sir Isaac Newton, Steven Hawking and Albert Einstein.

“This year’s fellows have helped shape the 21st century through their work at the cutting-edge of fields from human genomics, to climate science and machine learning,” said society president Venki Ramakrishnan.

Bhutta, whose primary appointment is with the department of paediatrics, is also appointed to the department of nutritional sciences in the Faculty of Medicine and the epidemiology division in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. He is co-director of the Centre for Global Child Health at the Hospital for Sick Children and a scientist in the Joannah & Brian Lawson Centre for Child Nutrition at �Թϱ��. His latest research focuses on the impacts of food environments on the nutrition of children and adolescents in low- and middle-income countries.

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Royal Society U.K.

Aled Edwards named a fellow of the U.K.’s Royal Society

Read the Royal Society profile of Aled Edwards

Geoffrey Hinton recognized with Royal Medal

Read the Faculty of Arts & Science story

University of Toronto professors elected to the U.K.'s Royal Society

Read more about Forman-Kay

Read more about Quastel

Jeremy Quastel elected a Fellow of the Royal Society

Julie Forman-Kay elected a Fellow of the Royal Society

U.K. Royal Society names Zulfiqar Bhutta a Fellow