Lesser appointed Distinguished Professor

Computer scientist Victor Lesser has been appointed Distinguished Professor by President Jack M. Wilson. The appointment was made following its approval by the Board of Trustees on June 10.

A member of the Computer Science Department for 32 years, he was recommended for the honor by Chancellor Robert C. Holub and Provost Charlena Seymour, who said, “Professor Lesser has clearly established himself as a world-renowned leader in the field of artificial intelligence” and “the founder and one of the most influential researchers in multi-agents systems, a field that provides a powerful model for computing in the 21st century.”

One external evaluator of his nomination wrote, “The ideas developed in his research area are now an important part of most undergraduate curricula and are taught to thousands of students yearly worldwide.”

According to department chair Andrew Barto, Lesser made path-breaking research contributions to problem-solving architectures, multi-agent systems, real-time AI and signal understanding. His pioneering work in multi-agent systems helped build a thriving research community made up of thousands of researchers. Multi-agent systems provide a powerful model for computing in which networks of interacting, real-time, intelligent agents seamlessly integrate the work of people and machines, dynamically adapting problem solving to deal with changing use patterns, resource configurations and available sources of expertise and information. Lesser was the first to articulate the critical computational research issues in the field and to propose solutions for many of these issues, said Barto.

Lesser joined the faculty in 1977 after serving four years as a research computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University. He was promoted to associate professor the following year and to professor in 1982. He has held visiting faculty appointments at MIT, Stanford University and Southampton University in Great Britain.

Since his appointment to the faculty, he has published 73 journal articles, 127 refereed conference papers and 63 book chapters. As one of the most cited authors in the field, Lesser is in the top ranks of international computer scientists. Earlier this year, he was honored by the International Joint Commission on Artificial Intelligence with its 2009 Award for Research Excellence in recognition of “a program of research of consistently high quality yielding several substantial results.” In particular, Lesser’s “seminal work on the foundations of blackboard control architectures and multi-agent systems, and foundational role in the formation of the multi-agent systems community” were cited.

In 2008, Lesser was the co-winner of the International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (IFAAMAS) Influential Paper Award and in 2007, the group established the Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award to recognize his career-long contributions to the field. In 2006, he received a Special Recognition Award for his foundational research from the Information Processing Technology Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

On campus, Lesser was recognized last year with the Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Accomplishments in Research and Creative Activity and the Outstanding Faculty Award in the Area of Research (2008) and the Outstanding Teacher Award (2004) from the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.

July 8, 2009.

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