$1M prize For An Artificial Intelligence Scientist

A scientist who studies ways to help machines learn like humans has received Canada's top science and engineering prize.
Geoffrey Hinton, a computer science professor at the University of Toronto, has been awarded the 2011 Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering, the federal government announced Monday morning in Ottawa.

The award named after Gerhard Herzberg, who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, includes a $1-million research grant over the next five years. Hinton's research is focused on understanding how collections of brain cells called neural networks can learn by changing their interactions with one another.