Jaime Carbonell, Carnegie Mellon University (USA)

Anthony G. Cohn, University of Leeds (Chair)

Tom Dietterich, Oregon State University (USA)

Malik Ghallab, INRIA-CNRS (France) and,

Fausto Giunchiglia, University of Trento, (Italy)

The IJCAI Awards Selection Committee receives advice from members of the IJCAI-09 Awards Review Committee, who comment on the accuracy of the nomination material and provide additional information about the nominees. The IJCAI-09 Awards Review Committee is the union of the former Trustees of IJCAI, the IJCAI-09 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-09 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), and Alan Bundy (2007).

The winner of the 2009 Award for Research Excellence is Professor Victor Lesser, who holds a chair at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Professor Lesser is recognized for his seminal work on the foundations of blackboard control architectures and multi-agent systems and his foundational role in the formation of the multi-agent systems community.

IJCAI-09 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), and Peter Stone (2007).

There are two winners of the 2009 IJCAI Computers and Thought Award: Carlos Guestrin, Assistant Professor in the Machine Learning Department and the Computer Science Department of Carnegie Mellon University, and Andrew Ng Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department of Stanford University.

Professor Guestrin is recognized for significant contributions to machine learning, probabilistic reasoning, and intelligent distributed sensor networks.

Professor Ng is recognized for fundamental contributions to the application of machine learning to robot perception and control, for leadership in constructing robots that perform unscripted tasks in real environments, and for major contributions to machine learning.

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), and Ronald J. Brachman (2007).

At IJCAI-09, the Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award will be given to Professor Luigia Carlucci Aiello, who holds a chair at the Dipartimento di Informatica e Sistemistica, Università di Roma ``La Sapienza'. Professor Aiello is recognized for her substantial contributions and extensive service to the field of Artificial Intelligence throughout her career.