UTSC prof awarded national mathematics prize for research

Ashton Anderson
Assistant Professor Ashton Anderson from the department of computer and mathematical sciences at UTSC is a recipient of a national math prize from CS-Can/Info-Can (Photo by Ken Jones)

UTSC Assistant Professor Ashton Anderson has been awarded the 2021 Outstanding Career Computer Science Research Prize from Canada’s national academic organization for computer science.

The award from CS-Can/Info-Can, a non-profit society that represents all aspects of computer science in Canada, is given annually to faculty members within 10 years of their PhD who have made significant contributions in their careers, particularly in research.

Anderson’s research in computational social science focuses on a range of questions at the intersection of artificial intelligence, data and society. He has pioneered computational methods to quantify online phenomena including political polarization and has developed human-centered machine learning systems.

Reddit experienced a huge spike in political polarization in 2016. But it wasn’t driven by existing users

Anderson is also affiliated with the department of computer science on the St. George campus, as well as the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence and the Schwartz-Reisman Institute for Technology and Society.

He received his PhD from Stanford University in 2015 and completed a postdoctoral appointment at Microsoft Research NYC in 2017 before joining the department of computer and mathematical science at U of T Scarborough in July 2017.

Read more at U of T's department of computer science