Jason Bernard

Jason Bernard

Assistant Professor

Contact information

Email: jason.bernard@athabascau.ca

Phone:

Dr. Jason Bernard is an Assistant Professor at Athabasca University. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Saskatchewan, a Master’s degree from Athabasca University, and a BSc from Bishop's University. Most recently, he completed a BA in Music at Carleton University.

Dr. Bernard has held postdoctoral positions at both McMaster University and Athabasca University. At McMaster, his work focused on educational technology for medical education, while at Athabasca, he contributed to research on using language models for automated question generation. Both projects remain active.

He has received several prestigious awards, including the Canada Graduate Scholarship – Doctoral (CGS-D3) and the NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship (NSERC PDF). His primary research interests include grammatical inference, grammar-based modelling, and educational technology. Dr. Bernard resolved a long-standing open problem in grammatical inference, originally posed in the 1970s and widely considered intractable. This breakthrough has led to several publications in top-tier conferences and journals and was nominated for the ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award in 2020. His work on educational technology has similarly been published in high-tier outlets.

Prior to graduate school, Dr. Bernard served in the Canadian Armed Forces, and worked in software development for 10 years. As a software developer, he was a pioneer in using artificial intelligence for internet routing and online lead generation.

Outside of academia, Dr. Bernard is an accomplished composer and singer-songwriter, composing works ranging from solo piano pieces to full orchestral scores. He is currently working on his first science-fiction novel.

Research interests

  • Applied and theoretical grammars
  • Applied and theoretical grammatical inference
  • Theoretical optimization algorithms
  • Educational technology

Educational credentials

  • PhD - Computer Science - University of Saskatchewan (2016-2020)
  • MSc - Information Systems - Athabasca University (2012-2016)
  • BSc - Computer Science - Bishop's University (1991-1995)
  • BA - Music - Carleton University (2022-2024)

Professional affiliations

  • International Association of Smart Learning Environments 2015 - present
  • IEEE Computer Society 2015 - present
  • Vector Institute Postgraduate Affiliate 2021 - 2025
  • Society of Composers, Authors, and Music Publishers of Canada 2022 - present
  • Canadian League of Composers 2023 - present