Craig Jones, an expert in the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning to medical imaging, is coming to the University of Alberta as a Killam Memorial Chair.
Craig Jones, a leading expert who is advancing artificial intelligence in medical imaging to improve diagnosis and patient outcomes, is coming to the U of A as a Killam Memorial Chair. (Photo: Supplied)
Joining the Department of Biomedical Engineering from the Department of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins, Jones has more than 30 years' experience in medical image processing, AI and neural network-based techniques.
"I strive to ensure my technical innovations translate effectively into real-world health-care contexts, ultimately supporting better decision-making and patient outcomes," says Jones.
"I am also committed to mentoring the next generation of researchers and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration across the medical AI field."
His research has focused on advancing artificial intelligence and deep learning in medical imaging to improve disease diagnosis, monitoring and clinical decision support, including building tools to find pancreatic cancer earlier from ultrasound scans, automatically grading blood vessel damage in the eye, and guiding neurosurgeons more safely using 3D brain imaging.
Jones is also director of The Center for the Advancement of Medical AI, which is part of Novagen Research, a not-for-profit initiative spun out of Axle Informatics that emphasizes collaborative research in medical imaging and large language model applications.
Between 2016 and 2019, Jones also did a brief stint at the Space Telescope Science Institute, creating and implementing image processing algorithms for the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes.
Along with other top AI experts from around the world, Jones has served as a scientific adviser and educator for the SPARK Academy, teaching the fundamentals of imaging to more than 400 students from Africa, Nepal, and Southeast Asia.
Born in Canada, Jones earned a BSc in computer science and mathematics from Simon Fraser University, an MSc in medical biophysics from the University of Western Ontario and a PhD in physics from the University of British Columbia. He began his career in magnetic resonance imaging, creating automated algorithms for multiple sclerosis lesion segmentation.
"Welcoming a researcher of Craig Jones' calibre as a Killam Memorial Chair is a significant milestone for the Faculty of Engineering. His career - from processing data for the James Webb Space Telescope to pioneering AI tools for early cancer detection - demonstrates the kind of world-class, multi-disciplinary expertise we strive to bring to the University of Alberta," says Ivan Fair, vice-dean in the Faculty of Engineering.
"His presence will undoubtedly accelerate our mission to develop engineering solutions to the most pressing challenges in global health care."
About the Killam Memorial Chairs
The Killam Memorial Chairs were created by Dorothy Killam in her will before her death in 1965 along with a suite of national annual scholarships and academic prizes - meant to attract international scholars to the U of A and "help in the building of Canada's future by encouraging advanced study."
The Killam Memorial Endowment supports at least two Killam Memorial Chairs at the U of A in scientific or engineering fields. Jones joins physicist Valeri Frolov as one of two memorial chairs. The U of A was one of just five institutions chosen as a beneficiary of the $500-million endowment.
