Blazej Bulka University of Maryland, Baltimore County Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering 1000 Hilltop Circle Baltimore, MD 21250 Phone: (410) 455 8894 e-mail: bulka1@umbc.edu or BlazejBulka@umbc.edu

Research Interests

Artificial Intelligence. Planning, shape of planning search spaces, and heuristics to guide the search process. Learning efficient planning techniques and fact representations. Influence of social structure on the efficiency of a multi-agent system and propagation of information in such systems. Dynamic group creation and task negotiation in multi-agent societies. Distributed planning and coordination. Bioinformatics (sequence alignment).

Education

Employment history

Peer-reviewed publications

Pauline Berry, Blazej Bulka, Bart Peintner, Mark Roberts, and Neil Yorke-Smith. "Neptune: A Mixed-Initiative Environment for Planning and Scheduling." The 21st Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference (FLAIRS-08), Coconut Grove, FL, May 15-17, 2008. (Voted the best poster of FLAIRS-2008).

Blazej Bulka, and Marie desJardins. "Useful Topological Features of Planning State Spaces." The Third North East Student Colloquium on Artificial Intelligence (NESCAI08), Ithaca, NY, May 2-4, 2008.

Yi Lu, Blazej Bulka, Marie desJardins, and Stephen J. Freeland. "Amino Acid Quantitative Structure Property Relationship Database: A Web-based Platform for Quantitative Investigations of Amino Acids." Protein Engineering Design and Selection, PEDS Advance Access, June 8, 2007.

Gang Wu, Yuanpu Zheng, Imran Qureshi, Htar Thant Zin, Tyler Beck, Blazej Bulka, and Stephen J. Freeland. "SGDB: a Database of Synthetic Genes Re-designed for Optimizing Protein Over-expression." Nucleic Acids Research 35:D76-9, 2007.

Marie desJardins, Blazej Bulka, Ryan Carr, Andrew Hunt, Priyang Rathod, and Penny Rheingans, "Heuristic Search and Information Visualization Methods for School Redistricting." AI Magazine, Special Issue on Innovative Applications (Best Papers of IAAI-2006) 28(3):59-72, 2007.

Blazej Bulka, "Analyzing, Learning, and Shaping Planning Search Spaces." ICAPS Doctoral Consortium 2006.

Blazej Bulka, Marie desJardins, and Stephen J. Freeland, "An Interactive Visualization Tool to Explore the Biophysical Properties of Amino Acids and Their Contribution to Substitution Matrices." BMC Bioinformatics 7:329, 2006.

Blazej Bulka, Matthew Gaston, and Marie desJardins, "Local Strategy Learning in Networked Multi-Agent Team Formation." Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, Springer, OnlineFirst, 2006.

Marie desJardins, Blazej Bulka, Ryan Carr, Andrew Hunt, Priyang Rathod, and Penny Rheingans, "Heuristic Search and Information Visualization Methods for School Redistricting." Eighteenth Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-06), Boston, MA, July 16-20, 2006.

Blazej Bulka, Matthew Gaston, and Marie desJardins, "Local Learning to Improve Organizational Performance in Networked Multiagent Team Formation." AAAI Workshop on Multiagent Learning, Pittsburgh, PA, July 10, 2005.

Other publications

Blazej Bulka, and Marie desJardins, "Integrating Top-down Planning with a Bottom-up Approach that Learns to Locally Combine Actions." AAAI Spring Symposium on Distributed Plan and Schedule Management, Stanford, CA, March 27-29, 2006.

Gang Wu, Blazej Bulka, Yuanpu Zheng, and Stephen Freeland, "Creating RGDB: a Sequence Database of Recorded Genes," a poster at "ALA IX: Futures in Biomedical Research" Symposium, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, November 15, 2005.

Blazej Bulka, "Learning an Efficient Team Formation Strategy in a Networked Multiagent Environment," a poster at Fourth Americas School on Agents and Multiagent Systems, Pittsburgh, PA, July 8, 2005.

Blazej Bulka, Marie desJardins, and Stephen J. Freeland, "Impact of CLUSTALW parameters on the quality of protein sequence alignment," a poster at "ALA VIII: Futures in Biomedical Research" Symposium, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, November 17, 2004.

Yi Lu, Blazej Bulka, Stephen J. Freeland, and Marie desJardins, "Developing an Interactive Web Platform for Exploring Amino Acid Substitution Patterns," a poster at Evolution 2004 Conference, Fort Collins, CO, June 26-30, 2004.

Blazej Bulka, "Integrating Knowledge From Multiple Data Sources To Coordinate Activities of Independent Entities". Marie Curie Fellowships European Scientific Workshop "Developing a scientific career", Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain, November, 2002.

Blazej Bulka, "Perl scripting language" (in Polish; original title: Język skryptowy Perl). Internal publication of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland, 1999.

Teaching experience and mentoring activities

Honors and awards

• Best Poster Award at the 21st Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference (FLAIRS-08), Coconut Grove, FL, May 15-17, 2008 (together with Pauline Berry, Bart Peintner, Mark Roberts, and Neil Yorke-Smith)
• Departmental Scholarship for Outstanding Student Performance (1998 - 2002; renewed each year by the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland)
• Graduation Award of the Dean of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science for Outstanding Student Performance (2002; Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland)
• Award of the Dean of the Department ofMathematics and Computer Science for voluntary work in the computer laboratories of the department (1998; Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland)

Professional service

• Reviewing for Evolutionary Bioinformatics
• Reviewing for IJCAI 2005
• Reviewing for AAAI 2005

Affiliations

• AAAI (since 2005)
• Association for Computing Machinery (since 1999)
• Koliber Association of Poland (since 2002)
• Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society (since 2005)
• Polish Student Association in Washington, D.C. (since 2005)
• Upsilon Pi Epsilon Honor Society in the Computing and Information Disciplines (since 2005)