PITTSBURGH—Manuela M. Veloso, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University who studies how robots can learn, plan and work together to accomplish tasks, is the winner of the 2009 Autonomous Agents Research Award from the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence (ACM/SIGART).
The award, presented annually in collaboration with the International Conference on Autonomous Agents, recognizes researchers who are doing influential work in the area of autonomous agents — robots, software agents or any other system that can sense its environment and act on that information in pursuit of its own goals.
Veloso, who holds the Herbert A. Simon Chair in Computer Science, is known for her research in artificial intelligence and robotics, and her pioneering work on robot soccer, which has emerged as an important research tool for studying how autonomous agents can work cooperatively in complex, uncertain environments. She is president of the International RoboCup Federation, which sponsors annual world championships in robot soccer. She and her students have fielded RoboCup teams since 1997, and have been international champions several times.
"Professor Veloso's research is particularly noteworthy for its focus on the effective construction of teams of robot agents, where cognition, perception and action are seamlessly integrated to address planning, execution and learning tasks," according to the SIGART award citation. "Her impact and visibility have been consistently high over the past two decades for her technical contributions, for her impressive robot teams and for her leadership within the research community."
Veloso will present a lecture and receive her award at the Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems Conference, May 10-15 in Budapest, Hungary. Previous winners from Carnegie Mellon include Katia Sycara, research professor in the Robotics Institute, and Tuomas Sandholm, professor of computer science.
Veloso received her doctor's degree in computer science from Carnegie Mellon in 1992. She earned her bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, and a master's degree in electrical and computer engineering from the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, Portugal. Her honors include being named a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and holding Carnegie Mellon's Finmeccanica Junior Faculty Chair from 1995 to 1999. She is a recipient of a National Science Foundation Career Award and the university's Allen Newell Medal for Excellence in Research.
About Carnegie Mellon: Carnegie Mellon is a private research university with a distinctive mix of programs in engineering, computer science, robotics, business, public policy, science and social science, fine arts and the humanities. More than 11,000 undergraduate and graduate students receive an education characterized by its focus on creating and implementing solutions for real problems, interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation. A small student-to-faculty ratio provides an opportunity for close interaction between students and professors. While technology is pervasive on its 145-acre Pittsburgh campus, Carnegie Mellon is also distinctive among leading research universities for its world-renowned programs in its College of Fine Arts. A global university, Carnegie Mellon has campuses in California's Silicon Valley and Qatar, and programs in Asia, Australia and Europe. For more, see www.cmu.edu.