Alan
Fern
Professor and Associate Head of Research
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: alan.fern@oregonstate.edu
Postal Address: Kelley Engineering Center, Corvallis, OR 97330-5501, U.S.A.
Quick Links: Teaching Research
Publications
Students Resources
Education
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B.S.
Electrical Engineering, University of Maine, 1997
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M.S.
Computer Engineering, Purdue University, 2000
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Ph.D.
Computer Engineering, Purdue University, 2004 (advised by Robert Givan)
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Teaching
Research
My primary research interests are in the field of artificial
intelligence, where I focus on the sub-areas of machine learning, automated
planning, and computer vision. I am particularly interested in the intersection
of these areas. Some example projects include:
·
Digital Scout
Project: where we study computer vision and machine learning techniques
for interpreting raw video of American football, basketball, and other sports.
·
Learning to
Speedup Automated Planning Algorithms: where we study how to speed up planning
performance in both deterministic and stochastic domains by learning from past
planning experience.
·
Integrating
Expressive Feedback into Reinforcement and Imitation Learning: where we study
how to learn from richer forms of feedback and interaction than considered in
traditional imitation and reinforcement learning.
·
Anomaly Detection
and Explanation: were we study how to best detect and explain anomalies with a
particular focus on insider threat detection.
·
Automated
Planning for Complex Experimental Design: where we study planning and learning algorithms
for planning out the experimental activities with the goal of maximizing some
experimental objective. Bioengineering is one application domain that motivates
this work.
·
Large Scale
Stochastic Planning: where we study planning algorithms for scaling to very large
stochastic domains.
Current Graduate Students
- Sheng Chen, PhD
- Nima Dolatnia, PhD
- Jesse Hostetler, PhD (co-advised w/ Tom Dietterich)
- Md Amran
Siddiqui, PhD
- Shan Xu, PhD
- Jeff Juozapaitis, PhD
- Erich Merril, MS
- Trevor Fiez, MS
Former Students
- Jervis Pinto, PhD 2015, Thesis: Incorporating and Learning Behavior Constraints for Sequential Decision Making
- Vikedo Terhuja, MS 2015, Thesis: Automatic Detection of Possessions and Shots from Raw Basketball Video
- Qingkai Lu, MS 2015, Thesis: Offensive Direction Inference in Real-World Football Video
- Kshitij Judah, PhD 2014, Thesis: New Learning Modes for Sequential
Decision Making
- Janardhan Rao ( Jana ) Doppa, PhD 2014 (co-advised
w/ Prasad Tadepalli), Thesis: Integrating Learning and Search for
Structured Prediction
- Kranti Kumar, MS 2013 (co-advised
with Prasad Tadepalli), Thesis: Coactive
Learning for Multi-Robot Search and Coverage
- Shikhar Mall, MS 2013, Project: Reinforcement
Learning for P2P Backup Applications
- Joe Selman, MS 2012, Project: REPEL: An Inference Engine for
Probabilistic Event Logic
- Aaron
Wilson,
PhD 2012 (co-advised with Prasad Tadepalli),
Thesis: Bayesian Methods for
Knowledge Transfer and Policy Search in Reinforcement Learning
- Rob Hess, PhD 2012, Thesis: Toward Computer Vision for
Understanding American Football in Video
- Brian King, MS 2012, Thesis: Adversarial Planning by Strategy
Switching in a Real-Time Strategy Game
- 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"
Resources
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ICAPS 2010 Monte-Carlo Planning Tutorial (PDF,
PPT)