Barbara J. Grosz wins the ACM/AAAI Allen Newell award

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - March 18, 2009 - Barbara J. Grosz, Higgins Professor of Natural Sciences at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, was awarded the Allen Newell Award from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)/Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). The Newell Award recognizes career contributions that have breadth within computer science or that bridge computer science and other disciplines.

Grosz, an innovator in computer science well known for her contributions to artificial intelligence (AI) and for her leadership in efforts to increase the participation of women in science, was recognized for pioneering research in natural language processing and multi-agent systems, and leadership in the artificial intelligence field. Her highly interdisciplinary work draws on theories and results from economics, philosophy and psychology as well as computer science. She shares the award with colleague Joseph Y. Halpern, a Cornell University professor of computer science recognized for making fundamental advances in reasoning about knowledge, belief and uncertainty.

“I am delighted to be a recipient of this year’s Allen Newell Award,” said Grosz. “Allen was a hero for me from the earliest days of my time in AI, and he provided a role model for my research in the kinds of problems he chose, the breadth of fields he brought to bear on his research, and in his considering ‘how people work’ as well as how computer systems work. It’s very special to receive an award in his name.”

Newell (1927–1992)—considered a founder of two major disciplines, artificial intelligence and cognitive science—created some of the first computational models of human problem solving with psychologist and Nobel laureate Herbert Simon (1916–2001). Grosz’s research takes a similar multidisciplinary approach, focusing on how to build better systems for human-computer communication, or as she said in her first lecture as Radcliffe dean in October 2008, creating collaborative computer systems “that adapt to us rather [than us to them].”

In particular, the ACM cited Grosz’s contributions to natural language processing, the study of the basic structures and processes by which people use natural languages to communicate, and her more recent research on the development of multi-agent systems, “smart” and adaptable computer algorithms that collaborate with each other or with their human users.

“I am thrilled that Barbara’s work is being recognized in this manner,” said Greg Morrisett, Allen B. Cutting Professor of Computer Science and associate dean for computer science and electrical engineering at SEAS. “The great thing about her research on planning, collaboration, focus and intent is that it provides as much insight into human processes as the artificial.”

For example, Grosz helped to develop Colored Trails (www.eecs.harvard.edu/ai/ct/), a publicly available program that provides a platform for researchers to conduct decision-making studies. While such work involves core problems in computer science, she draws on fields as diverse as economics, philosophy and psychology to study everyday, but complex real life situations. With students and colleagues, she has recently studied interruption and created dynamic systems that know when a user might desire or need a certain piece of information (and how willing such a user would be to respond to a computer-based query).

“Through her influential research and selfless service to the field, Barbara Grosz has been an inspiration—and her work has been influential in the research trajectories of many AI researchers, including myself. She richly deserves this honor,” said Stuart Shieber, James O. Welch, Jr. and Virginia B. Welch Professor of Computer Science, Director for the Office for Scholarly Communication and 2006–2007 Radcliffe Institute fellow.

Grosz was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2008, the American Philosophical Society in 2003, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004. She is a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), the Association for Computing Machinery and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1993, she became the first woman president of the AAAI. She serves on the executive committee and is a former trustee of the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence and serves on the council of the American Philosophical Society. Grosz earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Cornell University and master’s and doctoral degrees in computer science from the University of California at Berkeley.

“Barbara is eminently worthy of the Newell Award and it is so fitting that this award is named after one of the initiators of the study of person-computer interactions,” remarked Michael Rabin, Thomas J. Watson, Sr. Professor of Computer Science at SEAS and a past winner of the ACM’s Turing Award. “Barbara did pioneering work on the computerized understanding of natural languages, on intention and structure of discourse, on agents and planning and other fundamentally important problems bearing on human-machine interactions. Her contributions are referenced thousands of times. She is both a leader in the field and a role model for women aspiring to enter computer science.”

The ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award is presented for career contributions that have breadth within computer science, or that bridge computer science and other disciplines. This endowed award is accompanied by a prize of $10,000, and is supported by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and individual contributions. Previous winners with connections to Harvard University include 1994 winner Frederick P. Brooks ’56 (Ph.D. in computer science, under Howard Aiken) and 2002 winner Peter Chen ’73 (Ph.D. in computer science; visiting professor).

Grosz will receive her award at the ACM Awards dinner on June 27, 2009, at the U.S. Grant Hotel in San Diego, California.