Announcing the 2021 Recipient of the Dickson Prize in Science

Dear Members of the CMU Community,

I am delighted to announce that the university professors have selected Dr. Geoffrey Hinton as the 2021 recipient of the Dickson Prize in Science. Dr. Hinton is a former CMU faculty member and a co-winner of the 2018 ACM Turing Prize, an honor that is often described as the “Nobel Prize for Computer Science.” Over the past four decades, his pioneering research in neural networks has helped us understand how machines can learn from experience. His work contributed to technology that has enabled many recent successes in artificial intelligence, including speech recognition, language translation and computer vision.

CMU's Dickson Prize in Science was established in 1969 by the late Pittsburgh physician Joseph Z. Dickson and his wife Agnes Fisher Dickson. One of the most prestigious awards bestowed by Carnegie Mellon University, the prize recognizes substantial achievements or sustained progress in engineering, the natural sciences, computer science or mathematics. Additional information about the award, including a complete list of previous winners, can be found on the Dickson Prize website.

As part of the University Lecture Series, Dr. Hinton will receive his award and present the annual Dickson Prize in Science lecture this coming spring. We greatly look forward to this opportunity to welcome Dr. Hinton back to campus. Information about this event, including the date and how to attend, will be shared later this fall.

Sincerely,

Jim Garrett
Provost
Thomas Lord Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering