Nate Derbinsky awarded Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship

Nate Derbinsky, doctoral candidate in computer science and engineering working with Prof. John Laird, has been awarded a 2011 Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship from the Rackham School of Graduate Studies at the University of Michigan.

The title of his thesis is “Long-Term Declarative Memory for Generally Intelligent Agents.” His goal is to extend artificial intelligence agents with human-inspired long-term memories so they can extract diverse, useful experiences from their interactions with the world; store large amounts of this information for long periods of time; and later retrieve knowledge when it is pertinent to making decisions and taking action. This work contributes to the development of intelligent systems that are more robust, adaptable, and capable of contending with real-world problems, such as personal caregiving, robot-assisted search-and-rescue, or long-term autonomous exploration in dangerous environments.

Rackham Predoctoral Fellowships support outstanding doctoral students who have achieved candidacy and are actively working on dissertation research and writing.