Satinder Singh Baveja Elected as an AAAI Fellow

Prof. Satinder Singh Baveja, Director of the department’s Artificial Intelligence Lab, has been elected a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) for his “significant contributions to reinforcement learning, including seminal theoretical results on algorithm properties and the foundations of dynamical system representations.”

Prof. Baveja’s main research interest is in building autonomous agents that can learn to be broadly competent in complex, dynamic, and uncertain environments. The field of reinforcement learning (RL) has focused on this goal and is the area where he has made the greatest contributions. In RL, he has made tremendous progress by adopting the formalisms of Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) and Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) from operations research and optimal control. New algorithms, convergence and sample complexity analyses of algorithms, hierarchical methods for scaling, a new approach to state estimation in dynamical systems that does not use latent variables, and most recently the formulation of a new optimal reward problem along with algorithms for solving it are some of his notable contributions.

Prof. Baveja holds a a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts. He joined the University of Michigan in 2002.

About the AAAI and the AAAI Fellows Program

Founded in 1979, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (formerly the American Association for Artificial Intelligence) is a nonprofit scientific society devoted to advancing the scientific understanding of the mechanisms underlying thought and intelligent behavior and their embodiment in machines.

The AAAI Fellows program was started in 1990 to recognize individuals who have made significant, sustained contributions – usually over at least a ten-year period – to the field of artificial intelligence. In February of each year, the AAAI membership nominates individuals whom they consider to have achieved unusual distinction in the field. These nominations are then considered by the Fellows Selection Committee, comprising 9 AAAI Fellows who are current members of AAAI and chaired by the immediate Past President of AAAI. The committee generally selects 5-10 new Fellows each year.

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AAAI website: List of AAAI Fellows by year of election