Michael Lederman Littman (born August 30, 1966) is a computer scientist, researcher, educator, and author. His research interests focus on

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 ...

. He is currently a University Professor of Computer Science at Brown University, where he has taught since 2012.

Career

Before graduate school, Littman worked with Thomas Landauer at

Bellcore iconectiv is a supplier of network planning and network management services to telecommunications providers. Known as Bellcore after its establishment in the United States in 1983 as part of the break-up of the Bell System, the company's name ...

and was granted a patent for one of the earliest systems for

cross-language information retrieval Cross-language information retrieval (CLIR) is a subfield of information retrieval dealing with retrieving information written in a language different from the language of the user's query. The term "cross-language information retrieval" has man ...

. Littman received his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includi ...

from Brown University in 1996. From 1996 to 1999, he was a professor at Duke University. During his time at Duke, he worked on an automated crossword solver PROVERB, which won an Outstanding Paper Award in 1999 from

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 competed in the

American Crossword Puzzle Tournament The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is a crossword-solving tournament held annually in February, March, or April. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 tournament was canceled. In April 2021, the 43rd tournament was held virtually. Founded ...

. From 2000 to 2002, he worked at

AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile te ...

. From 2002 to 2012, he was a professor at

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and was ...

; he chaired the department from 2009-12. In Summer 2012 he returned to Brown University as a full professor. He has also taught at Georgia Institute of Technology, where he was listed as an adjunct professor. Littman is currently on rotation from Brown University as a Division Director at the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...

Research

Littman's research interests are varied but have focused mostly on

and related fields, particularly, in

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 ...

more generally, game theory,

computer networking A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are ...

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 ...

solving, computer solving of analogy problems and other areas. He is also interested in computing education more broadly and has authored a book on programming for everyone.

Awards

* Elected as an

ACM Fellow ACM or A.C.M. may refer to: Aviation * AGM-129 ACM, 1990–2012 USAF cruise missile * Air chief marshal * Air combat manoeuvring or dogfighting * Air cycle machine * Arica Airport (Colombia) (IATA: ACM), in Arica, Amazonas, Colombia Computing * ...

in 2018 for "contributions to the design and analysis of sequential decision-making algorithms in artificial intelligence". * Winner of th
IFAAMAS Influential Paper Award
(2014) * * Winner of the AAAI “Shakey” Award fo
Overfitting: Machine Learning Music Video
(2014) * * Elected as a

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 2010 for "significant contributions to the fields of reinforcement learning, decision making under uncertainty, and statistical language applications". * * Winner of the AAAI �
Shakey
�� Award for Short Video fo
Aibo Ingenuity
(2007) * * Winner of th
Warren I. Susman Award for Excellence in Teaching
at Rutgers (2011) * * Winner of th
Robert B. Cox Award
at Duke (1999) * * Winner of th
AAAI Outstanding Paper Award
(1999)

References

Bibliography

* * * *

External links

*
Michael Littman's Homepage

YouTube page

Music Videos

Press references

Smart Home Programming: If-Then Statements Make A Comeback
Science 2.0

New York Times
Many Scientists Dismiss the Fear of Robots
Fortune
Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of MIME Email Attachments
NJ Tech Weekly
Humans Beat Poker Bot… Barely
-NBC News

* ttp://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/going-cruciverbalistic Going Cruciverbalistic American Scientist

Udacity Courses

Intro to Algorithms
(over 88k student signups)
Machine Learning
(over 83k student signups)
Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making
{{DEFAULTSORT:Littman, Michael L. Living people American computer scientists Machine learning researchers Brown University alumni Duke University faculty Rutgers University faculty Brown University faculty 1966 births Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence 2018 Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Yale University alumni