Ekaterini Panagiotou Sycara ( el, Κάτια Συκαρά) is a Greek computer scientist. She is an Edward Fredkin Research Professor of Robotics in the

Robotics Institute The Robotics Institute (RI) is a division of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. A June 2014 article in ''Robotics Business Review'' magazine calls it "the world's best robo ...

, School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University internationally known for her research in

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...

, particularly in the fields of

negotiation Negotiation is a dialogue between two or more people or parties to reach the desired outcome regarding one or more issues of conflict. It is an interaction between entities who aspire to agree on matters of mutual interest. The agreement c ...

autonomous agent An autonomous agent is an intelligent agent operating on a user's behalf but without any interference of that user. An intelligent agent, however appears according to an IBM white paper as: Intelligent agents are software entities that carry out ...

s and

multi-agent systems A multi-agent system (MAS or "self-organized system") is a computerized system composed of multiple interacting intelligent agents.Hu, J.; Bhowmick, P.; Jang, I.; Arvin, F.; Lanzon, A.,A Decentralized Cluster Formation Containment Framework fo ...

. She directs the Advanced Agent-Robotics Technology Lab at Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University. She also serves as academic advisor for PhD students at both Robotics Institute and

Tepper School of Business The Tepper School of Business is the business school of Carnegie Mellon University. It is located in the university's campus in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US. The school offers degrees from the undergraduate through doctoral levels, in addition ...

Education and early life

Born in

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders ...

, she went to the United States to pursue advanced education through various scholarships, including a Fulbright (1965-1969). She received a B.S. in

applied mathematics Applied mathematics is the application of mathematical methods by different fields such as physics, engineering, medicine, biology, finance, business, computer science, and industry. Thus, applied mathematics is a combination of mathemati ...

from Brown University, M.S. in electrical engineering from the

University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (UW–Milwaukee, UWM, or Milwaukee) is a public urban research university in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It is the largest university in the Milwaukee metropolitan area and a member of the University of Wiscon ...

, and PhD in

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 Georgia Institute of Technology.

Research and career

Sycara is a pioneer in the field of semantic web,

case-based reasoning In artificial intelligence and philosophy, case-based reasoning (CBR), broadly construed, is the process of solving new problems based on the solutions of similar past problems. In everyday life, an auto mechanic who fixes an engine by recallin ...

s and

.Pioneers in Artificial Intelligence
Retrieved 2017-10-31. She has authored or co-authored more than 700 technical papers dealing with

, software agents, web services, semantic web,

human–computer interaction Human–computer interaction (HCI) is research in the design and the use of computer technology, which focuses on the interfaces between people (users) and computers. HCI researchers observe the ways humans interact with computers and design te ...

, human-robot interaction,

and the application of these techniques to crisis action planning,

scheduling A schedule or a timetable, as a basic time-management tool, consists of a list of times at which possible tasks, events, or actions are intended to take place, or of a sequence of events in the chronological order in which such things are ...

manufacturing Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to ...

, healthcare management, financial planning and

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain managem ...

br>
She has led multimillion-dollar research effort funded by

DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Ad ...

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

, AFOSR, ONR,

AFRL The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is a scientific research organization operated by the United States Air Force Materiel Command dedicated to leading the discovery, development, and integration of aerospace warfighting technologies, pl ...

, NSF and industry. Through an ONR MURI program and though the COABS

program, Prof. Sycara's group has developed the RETSINA multiagent infrastructure, a toolkit that enables the development of heterogeneous software agents that can dynamically coordinate in open information environments (e.g. the Internet). RETSINA has been used in multiple applications including supporting human joint mission teams for crisis response; creating autonomous agents for situation awareness and information fusion; financial portfolio management, negotiations and coalition formation for e-commerce, and coordinating robots for

Urban Search and Rescue Urban search and rescue (abbreviated as USAR or US&R) is a type of technical rescue operation that involves the location, extrication, and initial medical stabilization of victims trapped in an urban area, namely structural collapse due to natu ...

. Sycara is one of the contributors to the development of OWL-S, the Darpa-sponsored language for Semantic Web services, as well as matchmaking and brokering software for agent discovery, service integration and semantic interoperation.

Academic service

Sycara is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems; Editor-in-Chief, of the

Springer Springer or springers may refer to: Publishers * Springer Science+Business Media, aka Springer International Publishing, a worldwide publishing group founded in 1842 in Germany formerly known as Springer-Verlag. ** Springer Nature, a multinationa ...

Series on Agents; and Area Editor of AI and

Management Science Management science (or managerial science) is a wide and interdisciplinary study of solving complex problems and making strategic decisions as it pertains to institutions, corporations, governments and other types of organizational entities. It is ...

, the journal "Group Decision and Negotiation." She is a member of the Editorial Board, the

Kluwer Wolters Kluwer N.V. () is a Dutch information services company. The company is headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, Netherlands (Global) and Philadelphia, United States (corporate). Wolters Kluwer in its current form was founded in 1987 with a m ...

book series on "Multiagent Systems, Artificial Societies and Simulated Organizations"; member of the editorial board, the journals "Agent Oriented Software Engineering", "Web Intelligence and Agent Technologies", "Journal of Infonomics", "Fundamenda Informaticae", and "Concurrent Engineering: Research and Applications"; and member of the editorial board of the "ETAI journal on the Semantic Web" (1998–2001). She was on the Editorial Board of "IEEE Intelligent Systems and their Applications" (1992–1996), and "AI in Engineering" (1990–1996). She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of

France Telecom Orange S.A. (), formerly France Télécom S.A. (stylized as france telecom) is a French multinational telecommunications corporation. It has 266 million customers worldwide and employs 89,000 people in France, and 59,000 elsewhere. In 2015, ...

, 2003-2009; member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications of the Greek National Research Center Demokritos, 2004-2012; member of the AAAI Executive Council (1996–99); member of the OASIS Technical committee on the development of

UDDI Web Services Discovery provides access to software systems over the Internet using standard protocols. In the most basic scenario there is a ''Web Service Provider'' that publishes a service and a ''Web Service Consumer'' that uses this service. ...

(Universal Description and Discovery for Interoperability) software which is an industry standard; and an invited expert for W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium) Working Group on Web Services Architecture. She was a founding member of the Board of Directors of the International Foundation of Multiagent Systems (IFMAS), and founding member of the Semantic Web Science Association. Sycara served as the program chair of the Second International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2003); general chair, of the Second International Conference on Autonomous Agents (Agents 98); chair of the Steering Committee of the Agents Conference (1999–2001); scholarship chair of

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 ...

(1993–1999); and the US co-chair for the US-Europe Semantic Web Services Initiative.

Awards and honors

Sycara is a Fellow of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operat ...

), and a Fellow of American Association for Artificial Intelligence (

). Sycara is the recipient of the 2002 ACM/SIGART Agents Research Award. She is also the recipient of the 2015 Group Decision and Negotiation (GDN) Award of the

Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) is an international society for practitioners in the fields of operations research (O.R.), management science, and analytics. It was established in 1995 with the merger o ...

(INFORMS) GDN Section for her outstanding contributions to the field of group decision and negotiation. According to the citation of the award: Sycara's robot teams have won multiple international awards. In the 2005 Robocup Urban Search and Rescue (US Open) held in

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

, her team won the First-in-Class Award for Autonomy, and the First-in-Class Award for Mobility. Two years later, again in Atlanta, she led another team that became a world champions in the 2007 International Robocup Search and Rescue Simulation League Competition. In 2008, her robotic team placed third in the Worldwide Robocup Championship Competition in the Urban Search and Rescue Virtual robots League held in

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...

, China. In 2005, she received the Outstanding Alumnus Award from the

. She was awarded an

Honorary Doctorate An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hon ...

from the

University of the Aegean The University of the Aegean ( el, Πανεπιστήμιο Αιγαίου) is a public, multi-campus university located in Lesvos, Chios, Samos, Rhodes, Syros and Lemnos, Greece. It was founded on March 20, 1984, by the Presidential Act 83/1984 ...

in 2004.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sycara, Katia American women computer scientists University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee alumni Carnegie Mellon University faculty Artificial intelligence researchers American roboticists Women roboticists Machine learning researchers Academics of the University of Aberdeen Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence American people of Greek descent Greek computer scientists Greek women computer scientists American computer scientists Women systems scientists Brown University alumni