2013 Killam Prizes announced

The Canada Council of the Arts has announced the winners of the 2013 Killam Prizes, which celebrate world class excel- lence in the arts and sciences. This year’s five winners will each receive $100,000 at an April 23rd awards ceremony at the Governor General’s residence in Ottawa.

The winners are:

Dr Lorne Babiuk, Univ of Alberta (Health Sciences) — Babiuk is a world leader in the area of vaccinology and a global authority in virology, immunology and vaccine delivery. He is the founder of the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Orga- nization, and more recently InterVac, a $140 million dollar bio-containment facil- ity. He is VP research at the Univ of Alber- ta and serves on numerous committees, helping to set science policy in Canada and around the world;

Dr John McGarry, Queen’s Univ (Social Sciences) — McGarry is one of the world’s top authorities on power-sharing, federalism, and conflict resolution and played an important role in shaping North- ern Ireland’s successful peace process in the area of policing reform. McGarry is writing a book on power-sharing theory;

Dr Witold Pedrycz, Univ of Alberta (Engineering) — Pedrycz specializes in computational intelligence, a comprehen- sive framework for analysis and design of human-centric intelligent systems. The goal of his research activities is the devel- opment of hybrid intelligent systems that exhibit different levels of learning and account for the factor of uncertainty;

Dr Richard Peltier, Univ of Toronto (Natural Sciences) — Peltier is a pioneer in the field of earth system science built on the premise that the Earth and its climate are understandable only through cross-dis- ciplinary research. He is director of the Centre for Global Change Science, princi- pal investigator of the Polar Climate Sta- bility Network, and the scientific director of SciNet; and,

Dr Paul Thagard, Univ of Waterloo (Humanities) — Thagard is among the top researchers building theories of thinking worldwide. He pioneered the philosophi- cal use of computer models to help under- stand the structure and growth of scientific knowledge. He is currently working on new theories of emotion, intention, and consciousness of science, and the role of emotion in thinking.