First of all, congratualations to Professor Pearl for receiving this major
and very well deserved award.
While I share Dan's satisfaction at the success of such a prominent member of
the UAI community, I think that we should all remember the major contribution
of Professor Pearl to the are of heuristic search. I wonder whether he
would want to comment on the relationship between his work on heuristic
search on one hand and his work on reasoning under uncertainty and
causality on the other. Superficially, these seem to be two separate
lines of research, but I think that there is a connection, and all
of us could benefit from seeing it exposed by the great man himself.
Marco
Marco Valtorta, Associate Professor and Undergraduate Director
Department of Computer Science internet: mgv@usceast.cs.sc.edu
University of South Carolina tel.: (1)(803)777-4641 fax: -3767
Columbia, SC 29208, U.S.A. http://www.cs.sc.edu/~mgv/ tlx: 805038 USC
>
> Judea Pearl will be presented with the "IJCAI Award for Research Excellence"
> at IJCAI and will deliver a lecture entitled,
> "Reasoning with Cause and Effect," in the evening of August 5, 1999.
> A full announcement is given below.
>
> This is the first time a UAI member receives this award, a sign that UAI
> methods and philosophy are becoming more accepted to general AI.
> It should raise morale and reflect positively on each UAI project,
> especially in light of the fact that UAI was formed in 1985 because there
> was no adequate trek to discuss uncertainty within the AI conferences
> at that time.
>
> I am thrilled about the change that took place.
> Dan Geiger
>
>
> *****************************
>
> The IJCAI Award for Research Excellence and the Computers and Thought
> Award are made by the IJCAII Board of Trustees, upon recommendation by
> the IJCAI Awards Selection Committee, which consisted this year of
>
> Daniel Bobrow (Palo Alto, USA)
> C. Raymond Perrault (Palo Alto, USA)
> Ross Quinlan (Sydney, Australia)
> Erik Sandewall (Linkoeping, Sweden)
> Wolfgang Wahlster (Saarbruecken, Germany, Chair)
>
> The IJCAI Awards Selection Committee receives advice from members of the
> IJCAI Awards Review Committee, who comment on the accuracy of the
> nomination material and provide additional information about the nominees.
> The IJCAI Awards Review Committee is the union of the former Trustees
> of IJCAII, the IJCAI-99 Advisory Committee, the Program Chairs of the
> last three IJCAI conferences, and the past recipients of the IJCAI Award
> for Research Excellence and the IJCAI Distinguished Service Award,
> with nominees excluded.
>
>
> IJCAI Award for Research Excellence
>
> The IJCAI Award for Research Excellence is given at the IJCAI
> conference to a scientist who has carried out a program of research of
> consistently high quality, yielding several substantial results. Past
> recipients of this award are John McCarthy (1985), Allen Newell
> (1989), Marvin Minsky (1991), Raymond Reiter (1993), Herbert Simon
> (1995), and Aravind Joshi (1997).
>
> The winner of the 1999 IJCAI Award for Research Excellence is Judea
> Pearl, Professor at the Computer Science Department of the University
> of California Los Angeles, USA. Professor Pearl is recognized for his
> fundamental work on heuristic search, reasoning under uncertainty, and
> causality. He will deliver a lecture entitled "Reasoning with Cause
> and Effect" in the evening of August 5, 1999.
>
>