Bart Selman is a Dutch-American professor of

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

. He is also co-founder and principal investigator of the

Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence The Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence (CHAI) is a research center at the University of California, Berkeley focusing on advanced artificial intelligence (AI) safety methods. The center was founded in 2016 by a group of academi ...

(CHAI) at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, led by Stuart J. Russell, and co-chair of the Computing Community Consortium's 20-year roadmap for AI research.

Education

Selman attended the Technical University of Delft, from where he received a master's degree in physics, graduating in 1983. He received his master's and PhD in computer science from the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

in 1985 and 1991 respectively.

Career

Selman has been working at

AT&T Bell Laboratories Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey, the compa ...

before becoming professor of computer science at Cornell University. His research areas include tractable inference,

knowledge representation Knowledge representation (KR) aims to model information in a structured manner to formally represent it as knowledge in knowledge-based systems whereas knowledge representation and reasoning (KRR, KR&R, or KR²) also aims to understand, reason, and ...

, stochastic search methods, theory approximation, knowledge compilation, planning, default reasoning,

satisfiability In mathematical logic, a formula is ''satisfiable'' if it is true under some assignment of values to its variables. For example, the formula x+3=y is satisfiable because it is true when x=3 and y=6, while the formula x+1=x is not satisfiable over ...

solvers like

WalkSAT In computer science, GSAT and WalkSAT are Local_search (optimization), local search algorithms to solve Boolean_satisfiability_problem, Boolean satisfiability problems. Both algorithms work on Well-formed formula, formulae in Boolean logic that ar ...

, and connections between computer science and

statistical physics In physics, statistical mechanics is a mathematical framework that applies statistical methods and probability theory to large assemblies of microscopic entities. Sometimes called statistical physics or statistical thermodynamics, its applicati ...

, namely

phase transition In physics, chemistry, and other related fields like biology, a phase transition (or phase change) is the physical process of transition between one state of a medium and another. Commonly the term is used to refer to changes among the basic Sta ...

phenomena. Selman co-founded in 2016 an

AI alignment In the field of artificial intelligence (AI), alignment aims to steer AI systems toward a person's or group's intended goals, preferences, or ethical principles. An AI system is considered ''aligned'' if it advances the intended objectives. A '' ...

research organization named Center for Human-Compatible AI (CHAI), and became one of its principal investigators. His role in CHAI and some of his recent lectures notably focus on the

safety Safety is the state of being protected from harm or other danger. Safety can also refer to the control of recognized hazards in order to achieve an acceptable level of risk. Meanings The word 'safety' entered the English language in the 1 ...

and

ethical Ethics is the philosophical study of moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches include normative ethics, applied e ...

aspects of advanced artificial intelligence.

Honors and awards

Selman has received six Best Paper Awards for his work. He also received the Cornell Stephen Miles Excellence in Teaching Award, the Cornell Outstanding Educator Award, a

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

Career Award, and an

Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship The Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded annually by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation since 1955 to "provide support and recognition to early-career scientists and scholars". This program is one of the oldest of its kind in the United States. ...

. He is a Fellow of the

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 ...

, the AAAS, and the ACM.

Notable research papers

Selman is the author or co-author of more than 100 publications, including: * ''Statistical regimes across constrainedness regions'', Carla P. Gomes, Cesar Fernandez, Bart Selman, and Christian Bessiere. Proc. 10th Intl. Conf. on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP-04), Toronto, Ont., 2005. Distinguished Paper Award. * ''Towards efficient sampling: Exploiting random walk strategies'', Wei Wei, Jordan Erenrich, and Bart Selman. Proc. AAAI-04. San Jose, CA, 2004. * ''Tracking evolving communities in large linked networks'', John Hopcroft, Brian Kulis, Omar Khan, and Bart Selman. Proc. Natl. Acad. of Sci. (PNAS), Feb., 2004. * ''Natural communities in large linked networks'',

John Hopcroft John Edward Hopcroft (born October 7, 1939) is an American theoretical computer scientist. His textbooks on theory of computation (also known as the Cinderella book) and data structures are regarded as standards in their fields. He is a professo ...

, Brian Kulis, Omar Khan, and Bart Selman. Proc. KDD, August 2003. * ''Backdoors to typical case complexity'', Ryan Williams, Carla Gomes, and Bart Selman. Proc. IJCAI-03 Acapulco, Mexico, 2003. * ''Dynamic restart policies'', Kautz, Henry, Horvitz, Eric, Ruan, Yongshao, Gomes, Carla, and Selman, Bart. Proceedings of the Eighteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-02) Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, 2002, 674–682. * ''Generating hard satisfiability problems'', Bart Selman, David G Mitchell, Hector J Levesque, Artificial intelligence, 1996 * ''Noise strategies for improving local search'', Bart Selman, Henry A Kautz, Bram Cohen, AAAI, 1994

References

External links

Selman's website

{{DEFAULTSORT:Selman, Bart Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American computer scientists Cornell University faculty Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence American artificial intelligence researchers 2012 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Scientists at Bell Labs Dutch computer scientists Delft University of Technology alumni University of Toronto alumni Sloan Research Fellows