Benjamin Kuipers (born 7 April 1949) is an American computer scientist at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

, known for his research in qualitative simulation.

Biography

Kuipers graduated from Swarthmore College in 1970 with a

B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

in Mathematics. He then did two years of alternate service as a conscientious objector to military service, working in the Psychology Department at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

. He began his doctoral studies in pure mathematics at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

. He soon discovered the field of

Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...

, and spent most of his time at the

MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence Lab ...

, where his advisor was

Marvin Minsky Marvin Lee Minsky (August 9, 1927 – January 24, 2016) was an American cognitive and computer scientist concerned largely with research of artificial intelligence (AI), co-founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, ...

. He received his PhD in Mathematics from MIT in 1977. He spent a post-doctoral year as a research associate at the MIT Division for Study and Research in Education, funded by a DARPA grant to support collaborative research with BBN psychologist

Albert Stevens Albert Stevens (1887–1966), also known as patient CAL-1 and most radioactive human ever, was a house painter from Ohio who was subjected to an involuntary human radiation experiment and survived the highest known accumulated radiation dose in ...

. Kuipers joined the Computer Science Department at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,07 ...

in 1985 and became department chair in 1997. In January 2009, he moved to the University of Michigan, where he is now a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering. Kuipers is an elected fellow of the

AAAI The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) is an international scientific society devoted to promote research in, and responsible use of, artificial intelligence. AAAI also aims to increase public understanding of artif ...

and the AAAS.

Personal stance on military funding

Kuipers is also well known for his personal stance against accepting military funding for his research. As he explains in his essay, "Why don't I take military funding?", during a DARPA-funded post-doctoral year he discovered that the primary interest in his early work on cognitive maps came from military agencies with the goal of building intelligent cruise missiles. As explained in his essay, he felt that he did not want his life's work to contribute to war.

Selected publications

* Kuipers, Benjamin. ''Qualitative reasoning: modeling and simulation with incomplete knowledge.'' MIT press, 1994. ;Articles, a selection:Google Scholar profile
/ref> * Kuipers, Benjamin.
Modeling Spatial Knowledge
" ''Cognitive science'' 2.2 (1978): 129-153. * Kuipers, Benjamin. "Qualitative simulation." Artificial intelligence 29.3 (1986): 289-338. * Kuipers, Benjamin, and Yung-Tai Byun. "A robot exploration and mapping strategy based on a semantic hierarchy of spatial representations." ''Robotics and autonomous systems'' 8.1 (1991): 47-63.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kuipers, Benjamin 1949 births Living people American computer scientists Artificial intelligence researchers Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni University of Michigan faculty