In Memoriam
Professor Pragnesh Jay Modi [1975–2007]
Professor Pragnesh Jay Modi, one of the bright young stars in the area of agents and multiagent systems, passed away on the 9th of April 2007. Jay received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Southern California in 2003, and after a post-doctoral position at Carnegie Mellon University, joined Drexel University in Philadelphia as an Assistant Professor in 2005. Among the recognitions for Jay's many accomplishments were an NSF-CAREER award and IEEE Intelligent Systems magazine's award for "AI's 10 to watch".
Jay's PhD thesis has been foundational in the area of distributed constraint optimization (DCOP). A key contribution of his PhD thesis was Adopt, the first asynchronous complete algorithm for DCOPs. Jay’s paper on Adopt was nominated for the best student paper award at AAMAS’2003, and has led the way for an exciting wave of competing DCOP algorithms and enhancements.
Jay had built up a strong record of service to the AAMAS community: as program committee member of several AAMAS conferences, as co-chair of the Americas School of Agents and Multiagent Systems (2005), as chair of the distributed constraints reasoning workshop (2004) and most recently as Publications Chair for AAMAS’2007. This “In Memoriam” page in the AAMAS’2007 proceedings is intended to pay tribute to Jay’s many contributions to the AAMAS community. Jay will be remembered with fondness as a dedicated colleague and loyal friend.
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