Alan Fern

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Associate Professor
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Oregon State University

Office Location: 2071 Kelley Engineering Center
(541) 737-9202 (office)(I never check phone messages, send an email instead)
(541) 737-1300 (fax)
E-mail: afern@eecs.oregonstate.edu
Postal Address: Kelley Engineering Center, Corvallis, OR 97330-5501, U.S.A.

Quick Links: Teaching Research Publications Students Resources

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Education

B.S. Electrical Engineering, University of Maine, 1997

M.S. Computer Engineering, Purdue University, 2000

Ph.D. Computer Engineering, Purdue University, 2004 (advised by Robert Givan)

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Teaching

• CS 533: Intelligent Agents and Decision Making (Winter '12)
• CS 321: Theory of Computation (Fall '11)
• CS 532: Advanced Artificial Intelligence (Winter '10)

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Research

My primary research interests are in the field of artificial intelligence, where I focus on the sub-areas of machine learning and automated planning. I am particularly interested in the intersection of these two areas where we develop algorithms that learn to plan more effectively based on past experiences.

A sample of some of my current and recent research projects include: Also see my Publications

• Probabilistic Event Logic for Activity Recognition in Video
• The OSU Digital Scout Project: Computer Vision Meets American Football
• Automated planning and learning for real-time strategy games
• StratagusAI: an open-source modification of the Stratagus RTS game engine to support AI research
• Machine learning for AI planning and search systems
• Incorporating Human Advice and Feedback into Reinforcement Learning
• Adaptation-Based Programming: Reinforcement Learning Meets Programming Lanugages
• JAVA Library for Adaptation-Based Programming

I co-organized the first learning track for the 2008 6th International Planning Competition that is held in conjunctions with the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling. See the competition web-site for details.

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Current Students

• Sheng Chen, PhD, Research: computer vision for American football video
• Scott Dejmal, PhD, Research: active error finding in databases
• Robin Hess, PhD, Research: computer vision for interpreting American football video
• Kshitij Judah, PhD, Research: active imitation learning
• Brian King, MS, Research: automated planning for real-time strategy games
• Jervis Pinto, PhD, Research: adaptation-based programming
• Saikat Roy, PhD, Research: integrating advice into reinforcement learning
• Joe Selman, PhD, Research: probabilistic event logic
• Shan Xu, PhD, Research: cascade optimization for spatial-temporal conservation planning

Former Students

• Yuehua Xu, PhD, 2010, Thesis: "Learning Ranking Functions for Efficient Search"
• Paul Lewis, MS, 2010,  Thesis: "Ensemble Monte-Carlo Planning: An Empirical Study"
• Ronny Bjarnason, PhD 2010 (co-advised with Prasad Tadepalli): "Monte-Carlo Planning for Probabilistic Domains"
• Guohua Hao, MS, 2009, Thesis: "Revisiting Output Coding for Sequential Supervised Learning"
• Radha-Krishna Balla, MS, 2009, Thesis: "UCT for Tactical Assaults in Real-Time Strategy Games"
• Sean McDougal, MS 2008, Project: "Automatic Panorama Stitching"
• Benjamin Brewster, MS 2007, Project: "Finding and Using Chokepoints in Stratagus"
• Christopher Ventura, MS 2007, Thesis: "A SAT-Based Planning Framework for Optimizing Resource Production"
• Sungwook Yoon, PhD 2006 (co-advised with Robert Givan), Thesis: "Learning Control Knowledge for AI Planning Domains"
• Daman Oberoi, MS 2006, Project: "Simulation-Based Optimization of Football Defenses"
• Hema Jyothi, MS 2006 (co-advised with Thinh Nguyen), Project: "Reinforcement Learning for Network Routing"

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Resources

· ICAPS 2010 Monte-Carlo Planning Tutorial (PDF, PPT)

• Machine Learning for AI Planning Resources (quite out-dated).
• AI Seminar
• Kelley room reservations
• OSU EECS Appointment database