Hector Geffner is an Argentinian computer scientist and a

Alexander von Humboldt Professor The Alexander von Humboldt Professorship is an academic prize named after Alexander von Humboldt and awarded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation since 2008. The prize is intended to attract internationally leading scientists from abroad to Ger ...

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 ...

at RWTH Aachen University and Wallenberg Guest Professor in AI at

Linköping University Linköping University (, LiU) is a public research university based in Linköping, Sweden. Originally established in 1969, it was granted full university status in 1975 and is one of Sweden's largest academic institutions. The university has fou ...

. His research interests are focused on artificial intelligence, especially

automated planning Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, namely by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machines ...

and the integration of model-based AI and data-based AI. He is best known for his work on domain-independent heuristic planning and received several

International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling The International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS) is a leading international academic conference in automated planning and scheduling held annually for researchers and practitioners in planning and scheduling. ICAPS is sup ...

(ICAPS) influential paper awards. Previously he held a research professorship at ICREA and the Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Group at University Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona since 2001. He was a staff researcher at the

IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center The Thomas J. Watson Research Center is the headquarters for IBM Research. The center comprises three sites, with its main laboratory in Yorktown Heights, New York, U.S., 38 miles (61 km) north of New York City, Albany, New York and wit ...

from 1990 to 1992 and a professor at Simón Bolívar University in Caracas, Venezuela from 1992 to 2001. Geffner was awarded an

ERC Advanced Grant The European Research Council (ERC) is a public body for funding of scientific and technological research conducted within the European Union (EU). Established by the European Commission in 2007, the ERC is composed of an independent Scientific ...

in 2020 to explore the connection between machine learning and model-based AI, and is a former board member and current fellow of the European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI).. He was elected an

AAAI Fellow Fellowship of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (abbreviated as AAAI Fellow or FAAAI) is an award granted to individuals that the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), judged to have made ...

in 2007. Geffner received his PhD in computer science at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California S ...

in 1989 under the supervision of

Judea Pearl Judea Pearl (born September 4, 1936) is an Israeli-American computer scientist and philosopher, best known for championing the probabilistic approach to artificial intelligence and the development of Bayesian networks (see the article on beli ...

on the topic ''Default Reasoning: Casual and Conditional Theories'', for which he received an

ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award The ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award is awarded annually by the Association for Computing Machinery to the authors of the best doctoral dissertations in computer science and computer engineering. The award is accompanied by a prize of US $20,000 ...

References

External links

Hector Geffner's homepage

at the RWTH Aachen University Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Artificial intelligence researchers Argentine computer scientists University of California, Los Angeles alumni Academic staff of RWTH Aachen University Academic staff of Linköping University Academic staff of Simón Bolívar University (Venezuela) {{Academic-bio-stub Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence