Awards and Honors

Winner of the Multi-core track at the 8th International Planning Competition (IPC'14), for the planning system ArvandHerd (with Richard Valenzano, Hootan Nakhost, Martin Mueller, and Nathan Sturtevant).
Winner of the Multi-core track at the 7th International Planning Competition (IPC'11), for the planning system ArvandHerd (with Richard Valenzano, Hootan Nakhost, Martin Mueller, and Nathan Sturtevant).
University of Alberta Unit Teaching Award (with Bowling, Gouglas, Hoover and Sturtevant), 2009.
Named a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Alberta, 2008.
Canadian Society of Computational Studies of Intelligence (CSCSI) lifetime achievement award, 2008.
The paper "Checkers is Solved" by Jonathan Schaeffer et al. published in Science won the International Computer Games Association Best Publication prize for 2007.
Solved the game of checkers (500 billion billion positions), the largest computational problem to be optimally solved to date (2007).
Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, 2007.
Alberta Ingenuity Center for Machine Learning (Michael Bowling, Randy Goebel, Russell Greiner, Robert Holte, Jonathan Schaeffer, Dale Schuurmans, and Richard Sutton) won the Alberta Science and Technology (ASTech) award for Leadership in Alberta Science, 2006.
Best paper prize at GameOn North American, 2006, for the paper "Adapting a Commercial Role-Playing Game for Educational Computer Game Production" (with Mike Carbonaro, Maria Cutumisu, Harvey Duff, Stephanie Gillis, Curtis Onuczko, Allan Schumacher, Jeff Siegel, Duane Szafron and Kevin Waugh).
iCORE Chair in High-Performance Artificial Intelligence Systems, renewed 2006-2011.
Province of Alberta Centennial medal award (2005).
Distinguished paper prize at International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), 2005: "Solving Checkers" by Jonathan Schaeffer, Yngvi Bjornsson, Neil Burch, Akihiro Kishimoto, Martin Mueller, Robert Lake, Paul Lu and Steve Sutphen.
Distinguished paper prize at International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), 2003: "Approximating Game-Theoretic Optimal Strategies for Full-scale Poker" by Darse Billings, Neil Burch, Aaron Davidson, Rob Holte, Jonathan Schaeffer, Terence Schauenberg, and Duane Szafron.
Best poster prize at International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), 2003: "Multiple Agents Moving Target Search" by Mark Goldenberg, Alexander Kovarsky, Xiaomeng Wu and Jonathan Schaeffer,
Honourary doctorate, University of Lethbridge, 2002.
Best paper prize Canadian AI Conference (AI'02), 2002: "Transposition Table Driven Work Scheduling n Distributed Game-Tree Search" by Akihiro Kishimoto and Jonathan Schaeffer.
Canada Research Chair, 2002-present.
Best paper prize, 7th International Workshop on High-Level Parallel Programming Models and Supportive Environments (HIPS'2002): "Generating Parallel Programs from the Wavefront Design Pattern" by John Anvik, Steve MacDonald, Duane Szafron, Jonathan Schaeffer, Steven Bromling, and Kai Tan.
iCORE Chair in High-Performance Artificial Intelligence Systems, 2001-2006.
Fellow, American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2000.
E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, 1998-2000.
University of Alberta Board of Governor's Award of Distinction, 1997.
Killam Annual Professor, University of Alberta, 1997-98.
McCalla Professor, University of Alberta, 1996-97.
Best paper prize (with Joe Culberson), Canadian Society for Computational Studies of Intelligence (CSCSI) '96.
Best paper prize (with Aske Plaat, Arie de Bruin and Wim Pijls), 1994-95, International Computer Chess Association.
Author of the program Chinook, the World Man-Machine Checkers Champion. Chinook has been recognized by the Guiness Book of World Records as the first computer to win a human world championship in any game.
Author of the program Phoenix, which tied for first place in the 1986 World Computer Chess Championship.
Listed in Canadian Who's Who.