News

July 2014: I will be program co-chair of the Twenty-Seventh AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI).

July 2013: We won first place in the Power Trading Agent Competition (PowerTAC) with our new TacTex agent.

July 2013: My former student Dr. Brad Knox was included on AI's "10 to watch" list.

June 2013: I was awarded the Regents' Outstanding Teaching Award. [details]

March 2013: I spoke at TEDxYouth Austin on "Robot Soccer" (14 minute video).

[more]

I am the founder and director of the Learning Agents Research Group (LARG) within the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in the Department of Computer Science at The University of Texas at Austin.

My main research interest in AI is understanding how we can best create complete intelligent agents. I consider adaptation, interaction, and embodiment to be essential capabilites of such agents. Thus, my research focuses mainly on machine learning, multiagent systems, and robotics. To me, the most exciting research topics are those inspired by challenging real-world problems. I believe that complete successful research includes both precise, novel algorithms and fully implemented and rigorously evaluated applications. My application domains have included robot soccer, autonomous bidding agents, autonomous vehicles, autonomic computing, and social agents.