I am a
Fellow
and
Senior Director for Major Strategic AI and Data Science Initiatives
at
USC
's
Information Sciences Institute (ISI)
, where I direct the
Center on Artificial Intelligence for Health
As Principal Scientist at USC/ISI I lead
the
Knowledge Capture and Discovery
research group, which is part
of
AI@ISI
We collaborate with scientists in many domains on AI research for
semantic workflows and metadata capture,
social knowledge collection, provenance and trust,
task-centered collaboration, and automated discovery.
I serve as a
member
of the
National Science Board
(2024-2030) whose mandate is to
recommend and encourage the pursuit of national policies for the promotion of research and education in science and engineering.
I am
Co-Director of the
Stanford AI Index
, working on the annual
AI Index Report
with comprehensive information and data about recent AI advances and its impact in society.
I am also
Research Professor in the
Department of Computer Science
and in the
Spatial Sciences Institute
at
USC
Before coming to ISI in 1992,
I received my PhD in Computer Science
from
Carnegie Mellon University
. My thesis focused
on the acquisition of planning knowledge through the
formulation of deliberate experiments with the environment.
I have always been fascinated with the challenge of enabling
computers to learn new knowledge
both autonomously and from being taught.
Quick Links
short bio
CV
awards and grants
research projects
publications
recent invited talks
teaching and advising
contact information
Research Interests and Projects
I have broad research interests in AI and data science.
The best way to learn about my work is through my
publications
and
recent invited talks
You can find more information about my research in the web pages of the
Interactive Knowledge Capture
research group.
Very new projects
are described briefly in the
new awards roster
Publications
Highlighted publications of broad interest:
I am very grateful to the sponsors of my research over the years:
Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR)
Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL)
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
JP Morgan Chase,
Kavli Foundation
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA)
National Science Foundation (NSF)
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Office of Naval Research (ONR)
Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
United States Geological Survey (USGS)
Professional Activities
American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)
I was President of the
Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)
(2018-2020)
and member of the AAAI Executive Committee for six years.
AAAI is the foremost international scientific society for AI.
AAAI sponsors several conferences, including AAAI, IAAI, EAAI, AIIDE, and numerous workshops and symposia.
It also organizes educational activities, competitions that test AI systems, and a range of other activities that support the AI community.
One of the most fun things I did for AAAI is be a judge at the
International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF)
where
students from many countries present science projects that many times include some aspects of AI.
These young researchers develop amazing projects and are incredibly inspiring!
ACM SIGAI
I was elected Chair of the
Special Interest Group in Artificial Intelligence (SIGAI)
of the
Association for Computing Machinery
for two terms (2010-2016) and served as Past-Chair unitl 2019.
Among other things, we started the
AI Matters
magazine and the
Career Network and Conference
for early career researchers in AI.
SIGAI supports the AI community with activities ranging from conference sponsorship,
student fellowships, research awards, and publications management in the ACM Digital Library.
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
I was chair of the Incubator Group on
Provenance
, which is part of the
Semantic Web Activity
at the
World Wide Web Consortium
Provenance refers to the sources, entities, and processes involved in
creating or delivering an artifact.
Provenance is a topic of great interest in a variety of contexts
including eBusiness, eGovernment, eScience, copyright and licensing,
and
linked data
in the
semantic web
The wiki contains several reports
produced by the group,
including its Final Report.
I was involved in the follow-on
W3C Provenance Working Group that led to the PROV standard
Teaching and Advising
I was
Director of the
Data Science Program
at USC until 2024, when the program marked its 10 year anniversary in 2024 with more than 1,000 students (undergraduate and graduate).
I was also
Director of the
USC
Center for Knowledge-Powered Interdisciplinary Data Science (CKIDS)
The center held DataFest, a recurring semester-long event where students from different backgrounds and programs get
hands-on experience in faculty-guided projects involving data science.
I designed
an innovative course for teaching data science to non-STEM students
I used to teach that class at USC as
DSCI549
You can see
the class syllabus and several papers about the design of the curriculum
Contact information:
Information Sciences Institute
University of Southern California
4676
Admiralty Way
, Suite 1001
Marina del Rey
, CA 90292
at isi.edu with user gil