IJCAI-11 Awards

The IJCAI-11 Award for Research Excellence and the Computers and Thought Award are awarded by the IJCAI Board of Trustees, upon recommendation by the IJCAI-11 Awards Selection Committee, which consists this year of :
Jaime Carbonell, Carnegie Mellon University (USA)
Tom Dietterich, Oregon State University (USA)
Fausto Giunchiglia, University of Trento (Italy)
Ramon Lopez de Mantaras, IIIA-CSIC (Chair), and
Peter Stone, University of Texas at Austin (USA) .

The IJCAI Awards Selection Committee receives advice from members of the IJCAI-11 Awards Review Committee, who comment on the accuracy of the nomination material and provide additional information about the nominees. The IJCAI-11 Awards Review Committee is the union of the former Trustees of IJCAI, the IJCAI-11 Advisory Committee, the Program Chairs of the last three IJCAI conferences, and the past recipients of the IJCAI Award for Research Excellence and the IJCAI Distinguished Service Award, with nominees excluded.

IJCAI-11 Award for Research Excellence

The Research Excellence award is given to a scientist who has carried out a program of research of consistently high quality yielding several substantial results.  Past recipients of this honor are the most illustrious group of scientists from the field of Artificial Intelligence;
They are: John McCarthy (1985), Allen Newell (1989), Marvin Minsky (1991), Raymond Reiter (1993), Herbert Simon (1995), Aravind Joshi (1997), Judea Pearl (1999), Donald Michie (2001), Nils Nilsson (2003), Geoffrey E. Hinton (2005), Alan Bundy (2007), and Victor Lesser (2009).

The winner of the 2011 Award for Research Excellence is Robert Anthony Kowalski, Senior Research Investigator and Emeritus Professor of Computer Science, at the Department of Computing of the Imperial College London. Professor Kowalski is recognized for his contributions to logic for knowledge representation and problem solving, including his pioneering work on automated theorem proving and logic programming.

IJCAI-11 Computers and Thought Award

The Computers and Thought Award is presented at IJCAI conferences to outstanding young scientists in artificial intelligence.  The award was established with royalties received from the book, Computers and Thought, edited by Edward Feigenbaum and Julian Feldman. It is currently supported by income from IJCAI funds.  Past recipients of this honor have been: Terry Winograd (1971), Patrick Winston (1973), Chuck Rieger (1975), Douglas Lenat (1977), David Marr (1979), Gerald Sussman (1981), Tom Mitchell (1983), Hector Levesque (1985), Johan de Kleer (1987), Henry Kautz (1989), Rodney Brooks (1991), Martha Pollack (1991), Hiroaki Kitano (1993), Sarit Kraus (1995), Stuart Russell (1995), Leslie Kaelbling (1997), Nicholas Jennings (1999), Daphne Koller (2001), Tuomas Sandholm (2003), Peter Stone (2007), Carlos Guestrin (2009) and Andrew Ng (2009).
There are two winners of the 2011 IJCAI Computers and Thought Award: Vincent Conitzer, Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and the Economics Department of Duke University, and Malte Helmert, Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department of the University of Freiburg.
Professor Conitzer is recognized for his seminal work at the boundary of microeconomic theory and artificial intelligence, in particular for groundbreaking work on computational aspects of game theory, social choice, and mechanism design. Professor Helmert is recognized for his fundamental contributions to the theory and practice in automated planning and combinatorial search.

Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award

The IJCAI Distinguished Service Award was established in 1979 by the IJCAI Trustees to honor senior scientists in AI for contributions and service to the field during their careers. Previous recipients have been: Bernard Meltzer (1979), Arthur Samuel (1983), Donald Walker (1989), Woodrow Bledsoe (1991), Daniel G. Bobrow (1993), Wolfgang Bibel (1999), Barbara Grosz (2001), Alan Bundy (2003), Raj Reddy (2005), Ronald J.Brachman (2007), and Luigia Carlucci Aiello (2009).

At IJCAI-11, the Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award will be given to Raymond C. Perrault, Director of the Artificial Intelligence Center at SRI International. Dr. Perrault is recognized for his substantial contributions, as well as his extensive service to the field of Artificial Intelligence throughout his career. He served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Artificial Intelligence Journal for many years and made significant contributions to the success of the journal and to the wider dissemination of AI into the scientific community.

IJCAI-JAIR Best Paper Prize

The Annual IJCAI-JAIR Best Paper Prize is awarded to an outstanding paper published in JAIR in the preceding five calendar years. The prize committee is comprised of associate editors and members of the JAIR Advisory Board; their decision is based on both the significance of the paper and the quality of presentation. The recipient(s) of the award receives a prize of US$500 (to be split amongst the authors of a co-authored paper). Funding for this award is provided by the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization.

The winner of the 2011 IJCAI-JAIR Best Paper Prize, is:

"Computationally Feasible VCG Mechanisms", N. Nisan and A. Ronen, JAIR, 29:19-47, 2007.