This is the home page of Jonathan Schaeffer, Professor in the Department of Computing Science at the University of Alberta.

I have a (sporadically updated) blog about my life in academia. Check it out here.

My research area is artificial intelligence (AI). I am best known for my work applying AI technology to the problem of building high performance game-playing programs, as well as tackling the challenges of the commercial computer games industry. I am the lead author of the checkers-playing program Chinook, the first computer program to win a human world championship. In 2007 we announced that the game had been solved: perfect play by both sides leads to a draw.

New books: The story of man versus machine for supremacy at chess, and historical fiction telling the story of Sir John Franklin's tragic expedition to uncover the last link in the quest for the North-west Passage.

Man vs Machine: Challenging Human Supremacy at Chess Toward No Earthly Pole: Letters from John Franklin's Last Expedition