mack (03/17/83)
Just for interest's sake I wrote out a list of Canadians I happen to
know who are working or studying in AI in the U.S.. Bob Woodham
and Eric Grimson added a bunch more. We accept no responsibility
for the accuracy of this information but any ?'s indicate we
are definitely unsure! We would appreciate hearing about any
corrections or confirmations of any of the information. I'm sure
we've missed a few - please let us know via a followup to this
item (DO IT) or mail. What is so amazing is there almost seem to
be more of us working in the U.S. than in Canada! People
looking to attract people back to Canada might find this list useful
although most of these people left because the conditions were
better south of the border. To change that we have to make it more
attractive here. Names of students in U.S. Ph.D. programs are
welcomed because we do have a good chance of attracting them back.
Help keep this list up to date!
Name Last Degree Current Location
Johan deKleer Ph.D. MIT B.Sc. UBC Xerox PARC
Eric Grimson Ph.D. MIT B.Sc. Saskatchewan MIT
Harlyn Baker Ph.D. Stanford B.Sc.UWO Stanford
Dave Kashtan M.Sc. McGill SRI
John Mohammed M.Sc. McGill Fairchild
Philipe Brou ? McGill MIT
Joseph Schuehammer ? UWO MIT
Norman Badler ? Ph.D. Toronto U Penn
Hans Moravec Ph.D. Stanford CMU
Reid Smith Ph.D. Stanford Schlumberger
David Lowe B.Sc. UBC Stanford
Jim Davidson M.Sc. UBC Ph.D. Stanford? Stanford/SRI ?
Hans Koomen M.Sc. UBC Rochester
Jay Glicksman Ph.D. UBC TI AI Lab
Heinz Breu M.Sc. UBC HP AI Lab
James Allen Ph.D. Toronto Rochester
Brian Smith Ph.D. MIT Xerox PARC
David McDonald M.Sc. UBC Ph.D. CMU CMU?
Chuck Rich Ph.D MIT MIT
Byron Davies M.Sc. Caltech TI AI Lab
Austin Henderson Ph.D MIT BBN (or Xerox)?
Hector Levesque Ph.D. Toronto Fairchild AI Lab
Barbara White Ph.D MIT BBN
Steve Rosenberg Ph.D. CMU Lawrence Berkeley Lab
Demetri Terzopoulos (sp?) B.Eng, M.Eng McGill MIT Ph.D
Phil Cohen Ph.D. Toronto ??
Alex Borgida Ph.D. Toronto? ??
Alan Mackworth
Dept. of Computer Science
University of British Columbia
Electronic Mail: UUCP ... !ubc-vision!mackmdrutenberg (03/25/83)
Alan, I found your "Canadians in US AI" message in can.ai very interesting to read and reflect on. I can see some really serious problems in attracting people back to Canada which I thought I'd comment on. First some context... I am currently a first year (non CS) undergraduate at Waterloo. I'm quite interested in most areas of computer science research (including AI) and so I've tried to get interesting summer jobs in the field. Last summer I worked at Parc with the Software Concepts Group (the Smalltalk group) and since then, I've spent some of my free time here doing CS research work (with a professor) as well as just watching the Waterloo CS department function. As may be apparent, I am not currently too close to facing a decision about where to work, but I have spent some time this year thinking about the problem. I see several things which might discourage people from returning to Canada. While they currently do not directly affect me (other than that I have generally gone to the US for my summer jobs), I would expect that they will be quite important when I have to choose where to work after I get my PhD (in CS). The first problem, as you mentioned in an earlier message, is that there are no private Canadian AI research labs similar to Parc or SRI. If people do not want to teach or work in an academic environment, this gives them nowhere to go in Canada. The second problem is that it appears that governments (both federal and provincial) have little idea of what is going on in computer science and they provide funding accordingly. To move from the informed, (somewhat) assured funding of Arpa, NSF or the large corporation of your choice to an almost hostile funding environment is *not* very attractive. The final, and I think most serious, problem is that Canadian CS schools don't seem to provide the type of working environment that, for example, the world class institutions mentioned on your list provide. I'm thinking not just of equipment (e.g. high performance personal computers) but more importantly of the general atmosphere and the support, both from colleagues and administrators, which seems missing. I don't see this as a problem only in Canada, but if we want to keep top people here, we will have to provide an environment which is competitive with the top institutions they are leaving for. An example... I was talking with the head of our CS department about the difficulty the department is having getting new faculty members. He mentioned that he sometimes has graduate students visit as potential assistant professors and he was amazed that many expected to have a terminal in their office(!). Such an attitude towards environment and support would be hard to find in the places which are "stealing"(?) Canadians. Mike Rutenberg