Awards and Awards Nominations
Birgit Endrass wins the IFAAMAS Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award
Dr. Birgit Endrass, whose thesis titled "Cultural Diversity for Virtual Characters: Investigating Behavioral Aspects across Cultures" was supervised by Prof. Dr. Elisabeth André is the winner of the Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award.
The two runners-up are:
Dr. Bradley Knox, whose thesis titled "Learning from Human-Generated Reward" was supervised by Prof. Peter Stone
and
Dr. Akshat Kumar, whose thesis titled "Exploiting Domain Structure in Multiagent Decision-Theoretic Planning and Reasoning" was supervised by Prof. Shlomo Zilberstein
Dr. Endrass will give a presentation about her research during the AAMAS
conference (Thursday, May 8, 430pm)
Cristiano Castelfranchi wins the IFAAMAS Influential Paper Award
Cristiano Castelfranchi is the winner of this year's IFAAMAS Influential Paper Award, in recognition of his distinguished contributions to the field as exemplified by the following two influential papers:
- Cristiano Castelfranchi, "Modelling social action for AI agents." Artificial Intelligence, Volume 103, Issues 1-2, August 1998, Pages 157-182.
- Cristiano Castelfranchi, “Commitment: From individual intentions to groups
and organizations.” First International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems,
pages 41-49, 1995.
Cristiano Castelfranchi will give a presentation on his work on Friday May 10.
Jeff Rosenschein wins the ACM/SIGART Autonomous Agents Research Award
The selection committee for the ACM/SIGART Autonomous Agents Research Award is pleased to announce that the recipient of the 2013 award is Professor Jeffrey S. Rosenschein (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel). Professor Rosenschein is honoured for his pioneering work on the use of game theory in multi-agent systems. Among Professor Rosenschein's many contributions in this area are techniques for automated negotiation, computational social choice, multi-agent planning, and mechanism design in computational settings. In addition, Professor Rosenschein has a substantial track record of community service, having been general co-chair for the AAMAS conference in 2003, president of the International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (IFAAMAS), and serving as co-editor-in-chief for the journal "Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems".
Nominations for Best Paper, Best Challenges and Vision Papers, Best Student Paper, Best SPC Member, and Best PC Member
The winners of these awards will be announced at the AAMAS 2013 banquet.
Best Paper Nominations
The following papers (in alphabetical order by author) have been nominated for Best Paper:
- Weighted Electoral Control
Piotr Faliszewski (AGH University of Science and Technology, Poland)
Edith Hemaspaandra (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)
Lane A. Hemaspaandra (University of Rochester, USA) - Game-Theoretic Randomization for Security Patrolling with Dynamic
Execution Uncertainty
Albert Xin Jiang (University of Southern California, USA)
Zhengyu Yin (University of Southern California, USA)
Chao Zhang (University of Southern California, USA)
Milind Tambe (University of Southern California, USA)
Sarit Kraus (Bar-Ilan University, Israel) - WINNER: Mechanisms for Multi-Unit Combinatorial Auctions with a Few Distinct Goods
Piotr Krysta (University of Liverpool, Greece)
Orestis Telelis (Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece)
Carmine Ventre (Teesside University, UK)
Best Challenges and Visions Paper Nominations
The following papers (in alphabetical order by author) have been nominated for Best Challenges and Visions paper:
- 2nd place: Collaborative Health Care Plan Support
Ofra Amir (Harvard University, USA)
Barbara J. Grosz (Harvard University, USA)
Edith Law (Harvard University, USA)
Roni Stern (Harvard University, USA) - 1st place: Curing Robot Autism: A Challenge
Gal A. Kaminka (Bar Ilan University, Israel) - 3rd place: Systems Resilience: a Challenge Problem for Dynamic Constraint-Based Agent Systems
Nicolas Schwind (National Institute of Informatics, Japan)
Tenda Okimoto (Transdisciplinary Research Integration Center, Japan)
Katsumi Inoue (National Institute of Informatics, Japan)
Hei Chan (Transdisciplinary Research Integration Center, Japan)
Tony Ribeiro (The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, Japan)
Kazuhiro Minami (Transdisciplinary Research Integration Center, Japan)
Hiroshi Maruyama (Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Japan)
Best Student Paper Nominations
The following papers (in alphabetical order by author) have been nominated for Best Student Paper:
- WINNER: Cooperative Energy Exchange for the Efficient Use of Energy and Resources in Remote Communities
Muddasser Alam (University of Southampton, UK)
Sarvapali D. Ramchurn (University of Southampton, UK)
Alex Rogers (University of Southampton, UK) - An Evolutionary Model for Constructing Robust Trust Networks
Siwei Jiang (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)
Jie Zhang (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)
Yew-Soon Ong (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) - Efficient Parking Allocation as Online Bipartite Matching with Posted Prices
Reshef Meir (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel)
Yiling Chen (Harvard University, USA)
Michal Feldman (Harvard University & The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, USA) - Towards a Deeper Understanding of Cooperative Equilibrium: Characterization and Complexity
Nan Rong (Cornell University, USA)
Joseph Y. Halpern (Cornell University, USA)
Best Demonstration
WINNER: Divas 4.0: A Framework for the Development of Situated Multi-Agent Based Simulation Systems
Frederico Araujo (University of Texas at Dallas, USA)
Junia Valente (University of Texas at Dallas, USA)
Mohammad Al-Zinati (University of Texas at Dallas, USA)
Dane Kuiper (University of Texas at Dallas, USA)
Rym Zalila-Wenkstern (University of Texas at Dallas, USA)
Best SPC Member Nominations
For their outstanding efforts in handling the PC members and reviewing of the AAMAS 2013 submissions the following people (in alphabetical order) have been nominated for Best SPC member of AAMAS 2013:
- Vicent Botti
- WINNER: Craig Boutilier
- Pradeep Varakantham
The nominees were selected for the quality of their meta-reviews, for their way of motivating PC members to write high quality reviews and initiating a high quality debate, for their high quality reviews, and their general troubleshooting skills.
Best PC Member Nominations
For their outstanding efforts in reviewing the AAMAS 2013 submissions the following people (in alphabetical order) have been nominated for Best PC member of AAMAS 2013:
- Stephane Airiau
- WINNER: Ulle Endriss
- Atsushi Iwasaki
The nominees were selected for the quality of their reviews, responding to the rebuttal where appropriate, and their efforts to have a high quality discussion about the paper with the other reviewers. Finally, the sheer amount of reviews was taken into account.
Call for IFAAMAS-12 Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award nominations
Nominations are invited for the 2012 Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation
Award sponsored by IFAAMAS, the International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (http://www.ifaamas.org) and to be presented at AAMAS-2013 (http://aamas2013.cs.umn.edu/).
Eligible doctoral dissertations are those defended between January 1, 2012 and December 31, 2012 in the area of Autonomous Agents or Multiagent Systems.
This award includes a certificate signed by the IFAAMAS Chair and a 1500EUR payment.
The selection of the dissertation will be based on the originality, significance, and impact of the work. Evidence of such impact include publications at highly selective conferences and journals in the field with due importance given to the AAMAS conference series and JAAMAS. Research output that resulted primarily from the student's initiative will be considered more favourably. The selection committee will be the final arbiter in the decision process. The selection committee might decide to consult external assessors and reserves the right to not award the prize if the nominations do not meet the expected quality level.
The dissertation must be nominated by the thesis supervisor and must be supported by the following documents (the documents must be placed on a web page and only a link to this page e-mailed to the chair of the selection committee, Michael Winikoff, michael.winikoff@otago.ac.nz, on or before February 28, 2013):
1. A PDF file of the dissertation. If the dissertation is not written in English, the nomination must include a substantial manuscript in English, with the nominee as the first author, published in a journal or a prestigious conference.
2. A list of citations to published papers based primarily on this dissertation with links to corresponding PDF files.
3. A recommendation from the dissertation supervisor, on departmental letterhead, nominating the dissertation for the IFAAMAS-12 Victor LesserDistinguished Dissertation Award. The recommendation should argue the merit of the dissertation and highlight, where relevant, how the work resulted from the initiative of the student. This document, not to exceed 500 words, should also certify the eligibility of the PhD by asserting that the PhD was defended in calendar year 2012.
4. The names, email addresses, and affiliations of at most three referees, familiar with the research of the candidate and experts in the pertinent research area, who will directly email their recommendations for the candidate to the chair of the selection committee. It is the responsibility of the dissertation supervisor to contact the referees and ensure that the letters are submitted by the deadline. A reference letter should be no more than 500 words in length and should be on official letterhead, signed and emailed as scanned PDF file.
Though the nomination is to be submitted by the nominee's dissertation supervisor, it is required that the nominee has consented that the dissertation be considered for this award and, if selected for the award, commits to attend the AAMAS-2013 conference, where he/she will receive the award, and will give an hour-long presentation in a special session of the conference on the work contained in the dissertation. The cost of attending the conference is not covered by the award.
Call for Nominations ACM SIGART AUTONOMOUS AGENTS RESEARCH AWARD 2013
Nominations are solicited for the 2013 ACM SIGART Autonomous Agents Research Award. This award is made for excellence in research in the area of autonomous agents. It is intended to recognize researchers in autonomous agents whose current work is an important influence on the field. The award is an official ACM award, funded by an endowment created by ACM SIGART from the proceeds of previous Autonomous Agents conferences. The recipient of the award will receive a monetary prize and a certificate, and will be invited to present a plenary talk at the AAMAS 2013 conference in St Paul, MN.
Previous winners of the ACM SIGART Autonomous Research Award were: Moshe Tennenholtz (2012), Joe Halpern (2011), Jonathan Gratch and Stacy Marsella (2010), Manuela Veloso (2009), Yoav Shoham (2008), Sarit Kraus (2007), Michael Wooldridge (2006), Milind Tambe (2005), Makoto Yokoo (2004), Nicholas R. Jennings (2003), Katia Sycara (2002), and Tuomas Sandholm (2001). For more information on the award, see: http://sigart.acm.org/aaaward.htm.
HOW TO NOMINATE
Anybody can make a nomination. Nominations should be made by email to the chair of the award committee, Michael Wooldridge (mjw@cs.ox.ac.uk
NOTE: a candidate can only be considered for the award if they are explicitly nominated. If you believe that someone deserves the award, then NOMINATE THEM -- don't assume that somebody else will!
IMPORTANT DATES
Friday 7 December 2012 -- Deadline for nominations
early 2013 -- announcement of 2013 winner