UCLA computer science professor Judea Pearl will give the keynote address at the Society for Epidemiologic Research 2015 Conference on June 16 in Denver.
Being asked to give the John C. Cassel Memorial Lecture is among the highest honors bestowed by the society.
Pearl, a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence and a professor at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, has developed methods that enable machines to assess cause-effect relationships from empirical findings and to reason about them. These are core tasks for all intelligent systems, including those with applications in medical diagnosis and epidemiological research. His lecture will address "The Scientific Approach to Causal Inference."
The Society for Epidemiologic Research was founded in 1968 to ensure epidemiologists are at the forefront of the quest to identify causes for chronic diseases, including lung cancer and coronary heart disease. The late John C. Casell, who chaired the department of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, was a founder of the society.
Pearl earned a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from the Technion in Israel, a master’s degree in physics from Rutgers University and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. He joined the UCLA faculty in 1970.
His many honors include the A.M. Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery, known as the Nobel Prize for computer science. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers, the Cognitive Science Society and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.
Pearl is president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, named in honor of his son.