The IJCAI Award for Research Excellence is given at the IJCAI conference to a scientist who has carried out a program of research of consistently high quality, yielding several substantial results. Past recipients of this award are John McCarthy (1985), Allen Newell (1989), Marvin Minsky (1991), Raymond Reiter (1993), Herbert Simon (1995), Aravind Joshi (1997), and Judea Pearl (1999).
The winner of the 2001 IJCAI Award for Research Excellence is Donald Michie, Professor Emeritus of Machine Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland. Professor Michie is recognized for his contributions to Machine Learning, Robotics, and Knowledge-Based Systems. The Research Excellence Lecture will be held Thursday, August 9.
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 IJCAII 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), and Nicholas Jennings (1999).
The winner of the 2001 IJCAI Computers and Thought Award is Daphne Koller, Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science of Stanford University, Stanford, USA. Professor Koller is recognized for her contributions to the theory and practice of probabilistic reasoning, machine learning, and computational game theory. The Computers and Thought Lecture, to be held Tuesday, August 7, is open to the public.
The IJCAI Distinguished Service Award was established in 1979 by the IJCAII 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) and Wolfgang Bibel (1999).
In 1993, the IJCAI Distinguished Service Award was renamed the Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award in memory of the late Donald E. Walker, who shaped the IJCAII organization as a Secretary-Treasurer.
At IJCAI-01, the Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award will be given to Barbara Grosz, Gordon McKay Professor for Computer Science at Harvard University, Cambridge, USA. As a pioneering researcher in discourse and collaboration in natural language, Professor Grosz is recognized for her outstanding service to the international AI community as President of AAAI (1993-95) and Chair of IJCAI (1989-1991), and for her contribution to enhancing the role of women in science.
The IJCAI Award for Research Excellence and the Computers and Thought Award are made by the IJCAII Board of Trustees, upon recommendation by the IJCAI Awards Selection Committee, which consists this year of Michael Georgeff (San Francisco, USA), Henry Kautz (Seattle, USA), C. Raymond Perrault (Menlo Park, USA, Chair), J. Ross Quinlan (Sydney, Australia), and Erik Sandewall (Linköping, Sweden).
The IJCAI Awards Selection Committee receives advice from members of the IJCAI Awards Review Committee, who comment on the accuracy of the nomination material and provide additional information about the nominees. The IJCAI Awards Review Committee is the union of the former Trustees of IJCAII, the IJCAI-01 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.