computer science

Sheila McIlraith

Sheila McIlraith is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Sheila McIlraith rather than just read about it. In short: Sheila Ann McIlraith is a Canadian computer scientist specializing in artificial intelligence. She is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto.

Key takeaways

Sheila McIlraith belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Sheila McIlraith to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Sheila McIlraith from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Sheila Ann McIlraith is a Canadian computer scientist specializing in artificial intelligence. She is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto. She is a Canada CIFAR AI Chair, a faculty member of the Vector Institute, and Associate Director and Research Lead of the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society.

Education McIlraith earned her PhD at the University of Toronto under the supervision of Raymond Reiter.

Research and career McIlraith worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Xerox PARC and as a research scientist at Stanford University before returning to the University of Toronto as a faculty member in 2004. McIlraith’s research is in the area of AI knowledge representation and reasoning, automated planning, and machine learning where she currently studies sequential decision-making, broadly construed, with a focus on human-compatible AI. Her research was seminal to the area of semantic web services and had made practical contributions to the development of emerging web standards such as DAML-S/OWL-S and computer-aided diagnosis systems. McIlraith served as program co-chair for the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Conference in 2018, as program co-chair of the 13th International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR2012), and as program co-chair of the International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC) in 2004.

Awards and honors McIlraith was elected an ACM Fellow in 2019 "for contributions to knowledge representation and its applications to automated planning and semantic web services". She was also elected an AAAI Fellow in 2011 “for significant contributions to knowledge representation, reasoning about action, and the formal foundations of the semantic web and diagnostic problem solving”. She and co-authors have been recognized with two 10 year test of time awards from the International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC) in 2011, and from the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS) in 2022.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Sheila McIlraith

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Sheila McIlraith claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Sheila McIlraith before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Sheila McIlraith ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Sheila McIlraith

In research: Sheila McIlraith appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Sheila McIlraith in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Sheila McIlraith is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Academic staff of the University of Toronto, Canadian computer scientists, Canadian women computer scientists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Sheila McIlraith outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Sheila McIlraith in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Sheila McIlraith means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Sheila McIlraith out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Sheila McIlraith in simple terms?

Sheila Ann McIlraith is a Canadian computer scientist specializing in artificial intelligence. She is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto.

Why does Sheila McIlraith matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Sheila McIlraith?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Sheila McIlraith.