Leslie Pack Kaelbling is an American

roboticist Robotics is the interdisciplinary study and practice of the design, construction, operation, and use of robots. Within mechanical engineering, robotics is the design and construction of the physical structures of robots, while in computer s ...

and the Panasonic Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

. She is widely recognized for adapting

partially observable Markov decision process A partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) is a generalization of a Markov decision process (MDP). A POMDP models an agent decision process in which it is assumed that the system dynamics are determined by an MDP, but the agent cannot ...

es from

operations research Operations research () (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a branch of applied mathematics that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve management and ...

for application in

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

and robotics. Kaelbling received the

IJCAI Computers and Thought Award The IJCAI Computers and Thought Award is presented every two years by the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), recognizing outstanding young scientists in artificial intelligence. It was originally funded with royal ...

in 1997 for applying

reinforcement learning Reinforcement learning (RL) is an interdisciplinary area of machine learning and optimal control concerned with how an intelligent agent should take actions in a dynamic environment in order to maximize a reward signal. Reinforcement learnin ...

to embedded control systems and developing programming tools for

robot navigation Robot localization denotes the robot's ability to establish its own position and orientation within the frame of reference. Path planning is effectively an extension of localization, in that it requires the determination of the robot's current pos ...

. In 2000, she was elected as a

Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

of the

Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) is an international Learned society, scientific society devoted to promote research in, and responsible use of, artificial intelligence. AAAI also aims to increase public under ...

Career

Kaelbling received an A. B. in Philosophy in 1983 and a Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1990, both from Stanford University. During this time she was also affiliated with the

Center for the Study of Language and Information Stanford University has many centers and institutes dedicated to the study of various specific topics. These centers and institutes may be within a department, within a school but across departments, an independent laboratory, institute or center ...

. She then worked at

SRI International SRI International (SRI) is a nonprofit organization, nonprofit scientific research, scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California, United States. It was established in 1946 by trustees of Stanford Univer ...

and the affiliated robotics spin-off Teleos Research before joining the faculty at

Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...

. She left Brown in 1999 to join the faculty at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

. Her research focuses on decision-making under uncertainty,

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

, and sensing with applications to

robotics Robotics is the interdisciplinary study and practice of the design, construction, operation, and use of robots. Within mechanical engineering, robotics is the design and construction of the physical structures of robots, while in computer s ...

Journal of Machine Learning Research

In the spring of 2000, she and two-thirds of the editorial board of the

Kluwer Wolters Kluwer N.V. is a Dutch information services company. The company serves legal, business, tax, accounting, finance, audit, risk, compliance, and healthcare markets. Wolters Kluwer in its current form was founded in 1987 with a merger bet ...

-owned journal ''

Machine Learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

'' resigned in protest to its pay-to-access archives with simultaneously limited financial compensation for authors. Kaelbling co-founded and served as the first

editor-in-chief An editor-in-chief (EIC), also known as lead editor or chief editor, is a publication's editorial leader who has final responsibility for its operations and policies. The editor-in-chief heads all departments of the organization and is held accoun ...

of the ''

Journal of Machine Learning Research The ''Journal of Machine Learning Research'' is a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal covering machine learning. It was established in 2000 and the first editor-in-chief was Leslie Kaelbling. The current editors-in-chief are Francis Bac ...

'', a peer-reviewed

open access journal Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...

on the same topics which allows researchers to publish articles for free and retain copyright with its archives freely available online. In response to the mass resignation,

changed their publishing policy to allow authors to self-archive their papers online after

peer-review Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...

. Kaelbling responded that this policy was reasonable and would have made the creation of an alternative journal unnecessary, but the editorial board members had made it clear they wanted such a policy and it was only after the threat of resignations and the actual founding of ''JMLR'' that the publishing policy finally changed.

Selected works

*
Reinforcement Learning: A Survey
' (LP Kaelbling, ML Littman, AW Moore). Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR) 4 (1996) 237-285. ''A highly cited survey on the field of

''. * ''Planning and acting in partially observable stochastic domains'' (LP Kaelbling, ML Littman, AR Cassandra).

Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

101 (1), 99-134. * ''Acting under uncertainty: Discrete Bayesian models for mobile-robot navigation'' (AR Cassandra, LP Kaelbling, JA Kurien). Intelligent Robots and Systems (2) 963-972. * ''The synthesis of digital machines with provable epistemic properties'' (SJ Rosenschein, LP Kaelbling). Proceedings of the 1986 Conference on Theoretical Aspects of Reasoning about Knowledge, 83-98. * ''Practical reinforcement learning in continuous spaces'' (WD Smart, LP Kaelbling). 2000 International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 903-910. * ''Hierarchical task and motion planning in the now'' (LP Kaelbling, T Lozano-Pérez). 2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 1470-1477.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kaelbling, Leslie P. Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American roboticists Women roboticists American women computer scientists Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Machine learning researchers American computer science educators Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences alumni SRI International people Brown University faculty American artificial intelligence researchers Stanford University School of Engineering alumni American women academics 21st-century American women