Leslie Pack Kaelbling is an American

roboticist Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrat ...

and the Panasonic Professor of Computer Science and Engineering 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 ...

. She is widely recognized for adapting

partially observable Markov decision process A partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) is a generalization of a Markov decision process (MDP). A POMDP models an agent decision process in which it is assumed that the system dynamics are determined by an MDP, but the agent cannot ...

from

operations research Operations research ( en-GB, operational research) (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a discipline that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve deci ...

for application in

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 re ...

and robotics. Kaelbling received the

IJCAI Computers and Thought Award The IJCAI Computers and Thought Award is presented every two years by the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), recognizing outstanding young scientists in artificial intelligence. It was originally funded with royalt ...

in 1997 for applying

reinforcement learning Reinforcement learning (RL) is an area of machine learning concerned with how intelligent agents ought to take actions in an environment in order to maximize the notion of cumulative reward. Reinforcement learning is one of three basic machine ...

to embedded control systems and developing programming tools for

robot navigation Robot localization denotes the robot's ability to establish its own position and orientation within the frame of reference. Path planning is effectively an extension of localisation, in that it requires the determination of the robot's current pos ...

. In 2000, she was elected as a

Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

of the

Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence 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 ...

Career

Kaelbling received an A. B. in Philosophy in 1983 and a Ph. D. in Computer Science in 1990, both from Stanford University. During this time she was also affiliated with the

Center for the Study of Language and Information Stanford University has many centers and institutes dedicated to the study of various specific topics. These centers and institutes may be within a department, within a school but across departments, an independent laboratory, institute or center ...

. She then worked at

SRI International SRI International (SRI) is an American nonprofit scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The trustees of Stanford University established SRI in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic d ...

and the affiliated robotics spin-off Teleos Research before joining the faculty at

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

. She left Brown in 1999 to join the faculty at

MIT 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 mo ...

. Her research focuses on decision-making under uncertainty,

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

, and sensing with applications to

robotics Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrat ...

Journal of Machine Learning Research

In the spring of 2000, she and two-thirds of the editorial board of the

Kluwer Wolters Kluwer N.V. () is a Dutch information services company. The company is headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, Netherlands (Global) and Philadelphia, United States (corporate). Wolters Kluwer in its current form was founded in 1987 with a m ...

-owned journal ''

Machine Learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

'' resigned in protest to its pay-to-access archives with simultaneously limited financial compensation for authors. Kaelbling co-founded and served as the first

editor-in-chief An editor-in-chief (EIC), also known as lead editor or chief editor, is a publication's editorial leader who has final responsibility for its operations and policies. The highest-ranking editor of a publication may also be titled editor, managing ...

of the ''

Journal of Machine Learning Research The ''Journal of Machine Learning Research'' is a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal covering machine learning. It was established in 2000 and the first editor-in-chief was Leslie Kaelbling. The current editors-in-chief are Francis Ba ...

'', a peer-reviewed

open access journal Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...

on the same topics which allows researchers to publish articles for free and retain copyright with its archives freely available online. In response to the mass resignation,

changed their publishing policy to allow authors to self-archive their papers online after

peer-review Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work (peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...

. Kaelbling responded that this policy was reasonable and would have made the creation of an alternative journal unnecessary, but the editorial board members had made it clear they wanted such a policy and it was only after the threat of resignations and the actual founding of ''JMLR'' that the publishing policy finally changed.

Selected works

*
Reinforcement Learning: A Survey
' (LP Kaelbling, ML Littman, AW Moore). Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR) 4 (1996) 237-285. ''A highly cited survey on the field of

''. * ''Planning and acting in partially observable stochastic domains'' (LP Kaelbling, ML Littman, AR Cassandra). Artificial intelligence 101 (1), 99-134. * ''Acting under uncertainty: Discrete Bayesian models for mobile-robot navigation'' (AR Cassandra, LP Kaelbling, JA Kurien). Intelligent Robots and Systems (2) 963-972. * ''The synthesis of digital machines with provable epistemic properties'' (SJ Rosenschein, LP Kaelbling). Proceedings of the 1986 Conference on Theoretical Aspects of Reasoning about Knowledge, 83-98. * ''Practical reinforcement learning in continuous spaces'' (WD Smart, LP Kaelbling). 2000 International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 903-910. * ''Hierarchical task and motion planning in the now'' (LP Kaelbling, T Lozano-Pérez). 2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 1470-1477.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kaelbling, Leslie P. Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American roboticists Women roboticists American women computer scientists American computer scientists Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Machine learning researchers Computer science educators Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences alumni SRI International people Brown University faculty Artificial intelligence researchers Stanford University School of Engineering alumni American women academics 21st-century American women