AAAI/SIGART Doctoral Consortium History
Compiled by Marie desJardins and Kiri Wagstaff

The AAAI/SIGART Doctoral Consortium has been held annually in conjunction with the AAAI and IJCAI conferences since its inception in 1996. We are very grateful for the support we have received over the years from NSF, Microsoft, Google, and our other supporters and sponsors. In 15 years, 221 students from 104 universities have been invited to participate in the Doctoral Consortium, receiving feedback from senior researchers, having the opportunity to meet and network with other students, and attending panels and presentations on topics ranging from "how to do research" to career options.

The information on this page is based on a variety of sources, and was originally compiled in July 2010. Some of the information may be incomplete or incorrect. Please contact Marie desJardins with corrections and updates.

2010

Fifteenth SIGART/AAAI Doctoral Consortium
Atlanta, Georgia, July 11-12, 2010

Chris Brooks (Chair), University of San Francisco (DC '01)
Brad Clement (Co-Chair), Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Mentors

• David Aha, Office of Naval Research
• Stephanie August, Loyola Marymount University
• Marie desJardins, University of Maryland Baltimore County
• Maria Gini, University of Minnesota
• Sven Koenig, University of Southern California (DC '96)
• Dragos Margineantu, Boeing Research & Technology (DC '99)
• Ray Mooney, University of Texas--Austin
• Doina Precup, McGill University
• Betsy Sklar, Brooklyn College
• Gita Sukthankar, University of Central Florida (DC '04)
• Kiri Wagstaff, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (DC '00)

Participants

• Finale Doshi, MIT
• James MacGlashan, University of Maryland Baltimore County
• Ben Weber, University of California--Santa Cruz
• Megan Olsen, University of Massachusetts
• Shounan Dong, MIT
• Reyhan Aydogan, Bogazici University, Turkey
• Pooyan Fazli, University of British Columbia, Canada
• Mehdi Manshadi, University of Rochester
• Sofia Lemons, University of New Hampshire
• Michelle Leonhardt, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
• James McGlothin, University of Texas--Dallas
• Tom Erez, Washington University in St. Louis
• Lirong Xia, Duke University
• Lisa Friedland, University of Massachusetts
• Chris Simpkins, Georgia Institute of Technology

2009

Fourteenth SIGART/AAAI Doctoral Consortium
Pasadena, California, July 12-13, 2009

Scott Wallace (Chair), Washington State University Vancouver
Chris Brooks (Co-Chair), University of San Francisco (DC '01)

Mentors

• Stephanie August, Loyola Marymount College
• Berthe Choueiry, University of Nebraska--Lincoln
• Brad Clement, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
• Maria Gini, University of Minnesota
• Amy Greenwald, Brown University
• Sven Koenig, University of Southern California (DC '96)
• Dragos Margineantu, Boeing Research & Technology (DC '99)
• Cynthia Marling, Ohio University
• Sara Sood, Pomona College

Participants

• James Boerkoel, University of Michigan
• David Devlin, University College Cork, UK
• Kshanti Greene, University of New Mexico
• Laura Hiatt, Carnegie Mellon University [currently at Naval Research Laboratory]
• Ece Kamar, Harvard University
• John Kinnebrew, Vanderbilt University
• William Knox, University of Texas--Austin
• Mark Nelson, Georgia Institute of Technology
• Vit Novacek, National University of Ireland
• Marek Petrik, University of Massachusetts
• Jordan Thayer, University of New Hampshire
• Ko-Hsin (Cindy) Wang, Australian National University
• Samuel Wintermute, University of Michigan
• William Yeoh, University of Southern California

2008

Thirteenth SIGART/AAAI Doctoral Consortium
Chicago, Illinois, July 13-14, 2008

Colleen van Lent (Chair), California State University Long Beach (DC '01)
Scott Wallace (Co-Chair), Washington State University Vancouver

Mentors

• David Aha, Office of Naval Research
• Stephanie August, Loyola Marymount University
• Chris Brooks, University of San Francisco
• Marie desJardins, University of Maryland Baltimore County
• Dragos Margineantu, Boeing Research & Technology (DC '99)
• George Luger, University of New Mexico
• Cynthia Marling, Ohio University
• Mike van Lent, Soar Technology
• Kiri Wagstaff, Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Participants

• Adam Anthony, University of Maryland Baltimore County [currently at Baldwin-Wallace College]
• Sandeep Chintabathina, Texas Tech University
• Selina Chu, University of Southern California
• Faezeh Ensan, University of New Brunswick
• Paul Fodor, SUNY--Stony Brook
• Noam Hazon, Bar Ilan University, Israel
• Daylond Hooper, Air Force Institute of Technology [currently at ANTC, Air Force Institute of Technology]
• George Konidaris, University of Massachusetts
• Li Li, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia [currently at CSIRO ICT Centre, Australia]
• Paul Maier, Technische Universitat Munchen, Germany
• Masahiro Ono, MIT
• Siddharth Patwardhan, University of Utah [currently at IBM T. J. Watson Research Center]
• David L. Roberts, Georgia Institute of Technology [currently at North Carolina State University]
• Sushmita Roy, University of New Mexico [currently at Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard]
• Francesco Santini, IMT School of Advanced Studies, Italy

2007

Twelfth SIGART/AAAI Doctoral Consortium
Vancouver, British Columbia, July 22-23, 2007

Terran Lane (Chair), University of New Mexico
Colleen van Lent (Co-Chair), California State University Long Beach (DC '01)

Mentors

• David Aha, Office of Naval Research
• Michael Bowling, University of Alberta, Canada
• Chris Brooks, University of San Francisco
• Berthe Choueiry, University of Nebraska--Lincoln
• Marie desJardins, University of Maryland Baltimore County
• Terran Lane, University of New Mexico
• Michael Littman, Rutgers University
• Dragos Margineantu, Boeing Research & Technology (DC '99)
• Bhaskar Mehta, Google Zurich
• Ray Mooney, University of Texas--Austin
• Nicholas Roy, MIT
• Kiri Wagstaff, Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Participants

• Emma Brunskill, MIT [currently at University of California--Berkeley]
• Vibhav Gogate, University of California--Irvine [currently at University of Washington]
• Carlos Gomez Gallo, University of Rochester [currently at Harvard University]
• Brian Harrington, Oxford University, UK [currently at Keble College, Oxford, UK]
• Akshay Java, University of Maryland Baltimore County [currently at MSN]
• Christopher Kiekintveld, University of Michigan [currently at University of Southern California]
• Kate Lockwood, Northwestern University
• Scott McQuiggan, North Carolina State University
• Marc Pickett, University of Maryland Baltimore County
• Mark Roberts, Colorado State University
• Antonio Roque, University of Southern California [currently at University of Southern California / Institute for Creative Technologies]
• Murat Sensoy, Bogazici University, Turkey [currently at University of Aberdeen, UK]
• Sebastian Stein, University of Southampton, UK [currently at University of Southampton, UK]
• Matthew Taylor, University of Texas--Austin [currently at Lafayette College]
• David Thompson, Carnegie Mellon University [currently at JPL]
• Timothy Weale, Ohio State University
• Jie Zhang, University of Waterloo, Canada [currently at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore]

2006

Eleventh SIGART/AAAI Doctoral Consortium
Boston, Massachusetts, July 16-17, 2006

Kiri Wagstaff (Chair), Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology (DC '00)
Terran Lane (Co-Chair), University of New Mexico

Mentors

• David Aha, Office of Naval Research
• Marie desJardins, University of Maryland Baltimore County
• Sven Koenig, University of Southern California (DC '96)
• Michael Littman, Rutgers University
• Dragos Margineantu, Boeing Research & Technology (DC '99)
• Rada Mihalcea, University of North Texas
• Doina Precup, McGill University
• Rob St. Amant, North Carolina State University
• Colleen van Lent, California State University Long Beach (DC '01)

Participants (Oral Presentations)

• Abraham Bagherjeiran, University of Houston
• Yun Gyung Cheong, North Carolina State University
• Eric Eaton, University of Maryland Baltimore County [currently at Lockheed Martin ATL]
• Jacob Eisenstein, MIT (Jacob was accepted but withdrew due to a scheduling conflict with another conference)
• Andrew Fast, University of Massachusetts
• Janae N. Foss, Michigan Technological University
• Michel Galley, Columbia University
• Rachel Greenstadt, Harvard University
• Arnav Jhala, North Carolina State University
• Bhaskar Mehta, Fraunhofer IPSI, Germany
• Martin Michalowski, University of Southern California
• Mohan Sridharan, University of Texas--Austin
• Chaofan Sun, University of Houston
• Tao Wang, University of Alberta, Canada

Participants (Poster Presentations)

• Fernanda Caropreso, University of Ottawa, Canada
• Jinying Chen, University of Pennsylvania
• Pedro A. Diaz-Gomez, University of Oklahoma
• Laura Dietz, IPSI, Germany
• Seyda Ertekin, Pennsylvania State University
• Harry Halpin, University of Edinburgh, UK (Harry was accepted but withdrew due to a scheduling conflict with another conference)
• Ron Katz, Bar-Ilan University, Israel
• Wenhui Liao, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
• James Niehaus, North Carolina State University
• Peter Owotoki, Technische Universitaet Hamburg-Harburg, Germany
• Ashwin Satyanarayana, State University of New York, Albany
• Gita Sukthankar, Carnegie Mellon University [currently at University of Central Florida]
• Jim Thomas, North Carolina State University
• Rattapoom Tuchinda, University of Southern California

2005

Tenth SIGART/AAAI Doctoral Consortium
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, July 2004

Kiri Wagstaff (Chair), Jet Propulsion Laboratory (DC '00)
Rob St. Amant (Co-chair), North Carolina State University

Mentors

• Marie desJardins, University of Maryland Baltimore County
• Dan Gildea, University of Rochester
• Sven Koenig, University of Southern California (DC '96)
• Terran Lane, University of New Mexico
• Michael Littman, Rutgers University
• Rada Mihalcea, University of North Texas
• Rob St. Amant, North Carolina State University
• Katia Sycara, Carnegie Mellon University
• Manuela Veloso, Carnegie Mellon University

Participants

• Jacob Beal, MIT [currently at BBN Technologies]
• Ellen Campana, University of Rochester [currently at Arizona State University]
• Mark Carman, University of Trento, Italy [currently at University of Lugano, Switzerland]
• Vincent Conitzer, Carnegie Mellon University [currently at Duke University]
• Li Ding, University of Maryland Baltimore County [currently at Renssselaer Polytechnic Institute]
• Wolfgang Ketter, University of Minnesota [currently at Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam]
• Mykel Kochenderfer, University of Edinburgh, UK [currently at MIT Lincoln Laboratory]
• Xin Li, University of Illinois--Chicago
• Bhaskara Marthi, University of California--Berkeley [currently at Willow Garage]
• Ani Nenkova, Columbia University [currently at University of Pennsylvania]
• Jennifer Neville, University of Massachusetts [currently at Purdue University]
• Ozgur Simsek, University of Massachusetts [currently at Max Planck Institute]
• Trey Smith, Carnegie Mellon University [currently at Language Weaver, Inc.]
• Radu Soricut, University of Southern California
• Snehal Thakkar, University of Southern California [currently at Information Sciences Institute]
• Shimon Whiteson, University of Texas--Austin [currently at University of Amsterdam]

2004

Ninth SIGART/AAAI Doctoral Consortium
San Jose, California, July 2004

Rob St. Amant (Chair), North Carolina State University
Marie desJardins (Co-chair), University of Maryland Baltimore County

Mentors

• Christopher Elsaesser, MITRE Corporation
• Eric Hansen, Mississippi State University
• Tessa Lau, IBM Research
• David Parkes, Harvard University
• Ted Pedersen, University of Minnesota, Duluth (DC '97)
• Milind Tambe, University of Southern California
• Kiri Wagstaff, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (DC '00)
• Bob Wray, Soar Technology

Participants

• Sugato Basu, University of Texas--Austin [currently at Google Research]
• Mikhail Bilenko, University of Texas--Austin [currently at Microsoft Research]
• Gangshu Cai, North Carolina State University [currently at Kansas State University]
• Prashant Doshi, University of Illinois, Chicago [currently at University of Georgia]
• Noemie Elhadad, Columbia University [currently at Columbia University]
• Jamie Lennon, University of Maryland [currently at Naval Research Laboratory]
• Shou-de Lin, University of Southern California [currently at National Taiwan University]
• Sudip Misra, Carleton University, Canada [currently at Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur]
• Smaranda Muresan, Columbia University [currently at Rutgers]
• Hien Nguyen, University of Connecticut [currently at University of Wisconsin--Whitewater]
• Amit Ramesh, University of Southern California [currently at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center]
• Hakan Younes, Carnegie Mellon University [currently at Google]

2003

Eighth 2003 SIGART/AAAI/IJCAI Doctoral Consortium
Acapulco, Mexico, August 10-11, 2003

Marie desJardins (Chair), University of Maryland Baltimore County
Rob St. Amant (Co-chair), North Carolina State University

Mentors

• Eric Hansen, Mississippi State University
• Rob Holte, University of Alberta
• Joe Konstan, University of Minnesota
• Mark Maybury, MITRE
• Foster Provost, New York University
• Milind Tambe, University of Southern California/Information Sciences Institute
• Sheila Tejada, University of New Orleans

Participants

• Paul Bennett, Carnegie Mellon University [currently at Microsoft Research]
• Darse Billings, University of Alberta, Canada [currently at University of Alberta]
• Songsak Channarakul, University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee
• Harry Chen, University of Maryland Baltimore County [currently at Apple]
• Catherine Dolbear, Oxford University, UK [currently at Ordnance Survey Research Lab, UK]
• Tracy Anne Hammond, MIT [currently at Texas A&M University]
• Xin Li, University of Nebraska [currently at Microsoft]
• Ines Lynce, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal [currently at Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal]
• Jill Nickerson, Harvard University [currently at Nevo Technologies]
• Bart Peintner, University of Michigan [currently at SRI International]
• Karen Petrie, University of Huddersfield, UK [currently at University of Dundee, UK]
• Ranjit Nair, University of Southern California [currently at germinait Solutions]
• Venkatesh Rao, University of Michigan [currently at Xerox]
• Marcela Rodriguez, CICESE, Mexico
• G. Michael Youngblood, University of TexasArlington [currently at University of North Carolina--Charlotte]

2002

Marie desJardins (Chair), University of Maryland Baltimore County

Mentors

• Jose-Luis Ambite, University of Southern California/Information Sciences Institute
• Andrea Danyluk, Williams College
• Tim Finin, University of Maryland Baltimore County
• Carla Gomes, Cornell University
• Leslie Kaelbling, MIT
• Tim Oates, University of Maryland Baltimore County
• Peter van Beek, University of Waterloo
• Michael Wolverton, SRI Inernational

Participants

• Thorsten Bohnenberger, Saarland University, Germany
• Boris Brandherm, Saarland University, Germany [currently at National Institute of Informatics, Japan]
• Doina Caragea, Iowa State University [currently at Kansas State University]
• Murat Deviren, LORIA-INRIA, France [currently at Nuance Communications]
• Lyndon Drake, University of York
• Haipeng Guo, Kansas State University [currently at BNU-HKBU United International College, Hong Kong]
• Lalana Kagal, University of Maryland Baltimore County [currently at MIT]
• Svetlana Kiritchenko, University of Ottawa, Canada [currently at NRC Institute for Information Technology, Canada]
• Foster McGeary, University of Delaware
• Jay Modi, University of Southern California [Jay was an assistant professor at Drexel University when he passed away in 2007]
• Daniel Reeves, University of Michigan [currently at Yahoo! Research]
• Thomas Tran, University of Waterloo, Canada [currently at University of Waterloo]
• Tzong-Han Tsai, National Taiwan University, Taiwan [currently at Yuan Ze University, Taiwan]

2001

Marie Bienkowski (Chair), SRI International
Marie desJardins (Co-chair), University of Maryland Baltimore County

Mentors

• Rebecca Bruce, University of North Carolina at Asheville
• Pedro Domingos, University of Washington (DC '96)
• Maria Gini, University of Minnesota
• Craig Knoblock, Information Sciences Institute and University of Southern California
• Gerhard Lakemeyer, Aachen University of Technology
• Evangelos Milios, Dalhousie University
• Foster Provost, New York University
• Stuart Shapiro, State University of New York, Buffalo
• Robert St. Amant, North Carolina State University
• Shlomo Zilberstein, University of Massachusetts

Participants

• Myriam Abramson, George Mason University [currently at NRL]
• Regina Barzilay, Columbia University [currently at MIT]
• Michael Bowling, Carnegie Mellon University [currently at University of Alberta]
• Chris Brooks, University of Michigan [currently at University of San Francisco]
• Stefanie Brüninghaus, University of Pittsburgh
• Bryan Singer, Carnegie Mellon University
• Michael Fleming, University of Waterloo, Canada [University of New Brunswick]
• Han-Shen Huang, National Taiwan University, Taiwan
• Anthony Karageorgos, University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), UK
• Colleen E. McCarthy [van Lent], University of Pittsburgh [currently at the University of Michigan]
• Fumihide Tanaka, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan
• Ilaria Torre, University of Torino, Italy

2000

Marie Bienkowski (Chair), SRI International

Mentors

• Marie desJardins, SRI International
• Louis Hoebel, General Electric Corporate Research and Development
• Leora Morgenstern, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
• Munindar Singh, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center (DC '96)
• Janyce Weibe, University of Pittsburgh
• Christopher Welty, Vassar College

Participants

• Greg Aist, Carnegie Mellon University
• Dessa David, City University of New York
• Istvan T. Hernadvolgyii, University of Ottawa, Canada
• Haythem O. Ismail, SUNY--Buffalo
• Euna Jeong, National Taiwan University, Taiwan
• Frances Johnson, SUNY--Buffalo
• Ion Muslea, University of Southern California [currently at Language Weaver, Inc.]
• Daniel Nikovski, Carnegie Mellon University
• Nikunj C. Oza, University of California--Berkeley [currently at NASA Ames]
• Robert Sim, McGill University, Canada
• Kiri Wagstaff, Cornell University [curently at JPL]
• Eric Wilson, University of Alabama

1999

Janyce M. Wiebe (Chair), New Mexico State University

Mentors

• Bonnie Holte Bennett, University of St. Thomas
• Claire Cardie, Cornell University
• Mary P. Harper, Purdue University
• John E. Laird, University of Michigan
• Evangelos E. Milios, Dalhousie University
• Raymond J. Mooney, University of Texas--Austin
• Leora Morgenstern, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
• Nils J. Nilsson, Stanford University

Participants

• Eyal Amir, Stanford University [currently at University of Illinois--Urbana-Champaign]
• Valentina Bayer, Oregon State University
• Virginia Biris Brilhante, University of Edinburgh, UK
• Marcin Chady, University of Birmingham, UK
• Nancy Chang, University of California--Berkeley / International Computer Science Institute
• Eman M. ElSheikh, Michigan State University
• Daishi Harada, University of California--Berkeley
• Gal A. Kaminka, University of Southern California [currently at Bar Ilan University]
• Maria Lapata, University of Edinburgh, UK
• Cen Li, Vanderbilt University
• Stephen M. Majercik, Duke University
• Dragos Margineantu, Oregon State University [currently at Boeing Research & Technology]
• Shimei Pan, Columbia University
• Hanna Pasula, University of California--Berkeley
• Hana Rudova, Masaryk University
• Son Cao Tran, University of Texas--El Paso

1998

Janyce Wiebe (Chair), New Mexico State University

Mentors

• Doug Fisher, Vanderbilt University
• Russ Greiner, University of Alberta
• Mary Harper, Purdue University
• W. Lewis Johnson, University of Southern California/Information Sciences Institute
• Evangelos Milios, York University
• Leora Morgenstern, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

Participants

• Naveen Ashish, University of Southern California
• Juliet C. Bourne, University of Pennsylvania
• Simon Colton, University of Edinburgh, UK
• Jaime J. Davila, City University of New York
• Andrew Garland, Brandeis University
• William S. Gribble, University of Texas--Austin
• John Henderson, Johns Hopkins University
• Micheal Hewett, University of Texas--Austin
• Junling Hu, University of Michigan
• Mohammed Waleed Kadous, University of New South Wales, Australia
• Sylvain L`Etourneau, University of Ottawa, Canada
• Tom O'Hara, New Mexico State University
• Alexei Ourmanov, Institute of Physics and Power Engineering, Russia
• Grace Rumantir, Monash University, Canada
• Wayne Alan Smith, University of South Carolina

1997

Vibhu O. Mittal (Co-Chair), University of Pittsburgh
Loren G. Terveen (Co-Chair), AT&T Research

Mentors (partial, unvalidated list)

1. Yolanda Gil, Information Sciences Institute
2. Rob Holte, University of Alberta
3. Bruce Porter, University of Texas--Austin

Participants (partial list)

• Juan M. Corchado, Universidad de Salamanca, Spain [currently at Universidad de Salamanca]
• William H. Hsu, University of Illinois--Urbana-Champaign [now at Kansas State University]
• Ted Pedersen, Southern Methodist University [now at University of Minnesota]
• Mehran Sahami, Stanford University [currently at Stanford University]

1996

Vibhu O. Mittal (Co-Chair), University of Pittsburgh
Loren G. Terveen (Co-Chair), AT&T Research

Mentors (partial, unvalidated list)

1. Bruce Buchanan, University of Pittsburgh
2. Yolanda Gil, Information Sciences Institute
3. Barbara Grosz, Harvard University
4. Rob Holte, University of Alberta
5. Nils Nilsson, Stanford University
6. Bruce Porter, University of Texas--Austin

Participants

• Jody J. Daniels, University of Massachusetts [now at Lockheed Martin ATL]
• Pedro Domingos, University of California--Irvine [now at University of Washington]
• Toby Donaldson
• Claudia V. Goldman, Hebrew University [now at GM ATC Israel]
• Jihie Kim, University of Southern California [now at Information Sciences Institute]
• Sven Koenig, Carnegie Mellon University [now at University of Southern California]
• Cathie LeBlanc, Florida State University [now at Plymouth State University]
• Chengjiang Mao
• David C. Noelle, University of California--San Diego [now at UC Merced]
• Phoebe Sengers, Carnegie Mellon University [now at Cornell]
• Richard C. Simpson, Simon P. Levine
• Moninder Singh, University of Pennsylvania [now at IBM Research]
• Brian K. Smith
• Astro Teller, Carnegie Mellon University [now at Google]
• Botond Virginas