Timothy Wilking Finin (born August 4, 1949) is the Willard and Lillian Hackerman Chair in Engineering and a retired

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

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, ...

and

Electrical Engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

at the

University of Maryland, Baltimore County The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) is a Public university, public research university in Catonsville, Maryland named after Baltimore County, Maryland, Baltimore County. It had a fall 2022 enrollment of 13,991 students, 61 un ...

(UMBC). His research has focused on the applications of

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 ...

to problems in information systems and has included contributions to

natural language processing Natural language processing (NLP) is a subfield of computer science and especially artificial intelligence. It is primarily concerned with providing computers with the ability to process data encoded in natural language and is thus closely related ...

expert systems In artificial intelligence (AI), an expert system is a computer system emulating the decision-making ability of a human expert. Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by Automated reasoning system, reasoning through bodies of knowl ...

, the theory and applications of multiagent systems, the

semantic web The Semantic Web, sometimes known as Web 3.0, is an extension of the World Wide Web through standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The goal of the Semantic Web is to make Internet data machine-readable. To enable the encoding o ...

, and

mobile computing Mobile computing is human–computer interaction in which a computer is expected to be transported during normal usage and allow for transmission of data, which can include voice and video transmissions. Mobile computing involves mobile commun ...

Education

Finin earned an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from

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 ...

in 1971 and a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in Computer Science from the

University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United States. Established in 1867, it is the f ...

in 1980.

Career

Prior to joining the UMBC, he held positions at the

Unisys Unisys Corporation is a global technology solutions company founded in 1986 and headquartered in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. The company provides cloud, AI, digital workplace, logistics, and enterprise computing services. History Founding Unis ...

Paoli Research Center, the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

, and the

MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence L ...

. Since 2007 he has been an affiliate faculty member at the Human Language Technology Center of Excellence at

Johns Hopkins University The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, J ...

. He is the author of more than 450 refereed publications and has received research grants and contracts from a variety of sources. He has mentored 31 doctoral students who have received their Ph.D. degrees from UMBC or the University of Pennsylvania. He has been an organizer of several major conferences, including the IEEE Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Applications, ACM

Conference on Information and Knowledge Management A conference is a meeting, often lasting a few days, which is organized on a particular subject, or to bring together people who have a common interest. Conferences can be used as a form of group decision-making, although discussion, not always d ...

, ACM Autonomous Agents conference, ACM Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing,

International Semantic Web Conference The International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC) is a series of academic conferences and the premier international forum for the Semantic Web, Linked Data and Knowledge Graph Community. Here, scientists, industry specialists, and practitioners m ...

and IEEE International Conference on Intelligence and Security Informatics. He served as an editor in chief of the

Journal of Web Semantics The ''Journal of Web Semantics'' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Elsevier. It covers knowledge technologies, ontology, software agents, databases and the semantic grid, information retrieval, human language technology, ...

from 2005 to 2016, is currently a co-editor of the Viewpoints section of

Communications of the ACM ''Communications of the ACM'' (''CACM'') is the monthly journal of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). History It was established in 1958, with Saul Rosen as its first managing editor. It is sent to all ACM members. Articles are i ...

and is on the editorial board of several other journals. Finin is a former

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 ...

councilor and board member of the Computing Research Association.

Awards

In 1997 he was selected as a fellow of the

Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents The Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA) is a body for developing and setting computer software standards for heterogeneous and interacting Software agent, agents and agent-based systems. FIPA was founded as a Swiss not-for-profit ...

for his work on agent communication languages. He received the Edward J. McCluskey Technical Achievement Award from the

IEEE Computer Society IEEE Computer Society (commonly known as the Computer Society or CS) is a technical society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) dedicated to computing, namely the major areas of hardware, software, standards and people ...

in 2009 "for pioneering contributions to distributed intelligent systems". In 2012 he was selected as UMBC's Presidential Research Professor for the three-year term 2012–2015. In 2013 he was named a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence for "significant contributions to the theory and practice of knowledge sharing in multiagent systems and on the Web, and for sustained service to the AI community". In 2018, the Association for Computing Machinery named him an

ACM Fellow ACM Fellowship is an award and fellowship that recognises outstanding members of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The title of ACM Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals ...

for his contributions to the theory and practice of knowledge sharing in distributed systems and the World Wide Web.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Finin, Tim 1949 births Living people Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence 2018 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery American artificial intelligence researchers American computer scientists MIT School of Engineering alumni Grainger College of Engineering alumni People from Walworth, Wisconsin University of Maryland, Baltimore County faculty Semantic Web people Natural language processing researchers