AAMAS AWARDS 2009
There are a number of awards associated with the AAMAS conference, some of which are known in advance, and some of which are announced at the conference.
The list of the awards to be made at AAMAS 2009 is as follows:
ACM SIGART Autonomous Agents Research Award
The ACM SIGART Autonomous Agents Research Award is an annual award for excellence in research in the area of autonomous agents. The award 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. Candidates for the award are nominated through an open nomination process.
The 2009 ACM SIGART Autonomous Agents Research Award recipient is
Prof. Manuela Veloso, from Carnegie Mellon University . She will present a plenary talk entitled “Teams of Robots: A Fascinating Multiagent Research Adventure”.
IFAAMAS Influential Paper Award
The International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems set up an influential paper award in 2006 to recognize publications that have made seminal contributions to the field. Such papers represent the best and most influential work in the area of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. These papers might, therefore, have proved a key result, led to the development of a new sub-field, demonstrated a significant new application or system, or simply presented a new way of thinking about a topic that has proved influential. The award is open to any paper that was published at least 10 years before the award is made. The paper can have been published in any journal, conference, or workshop. The award is funded by the Agent Theories, Architectures and Languages foundation.
Previous awards are as follows:
2008
M. E. Bratman, D. J. Israel and M. E. Pollack (1988)
Plans and resource-bounded practical reasoning. Computational Intelligence, 4, pages 349-355.
E. H. Durfee and V. Lesser (1991)
Partial global planning: A coordination framework for distributed hypothesis formation. In: IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, 21, pages 1167-1183.
2007
J. S. Rosenschein and M. R. Genesereth (1985)
Deals Among Rational Agents. In: Proceedings of the 9th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Los Angeles , California , August 1985, pages 91-99.
A. Rao and M. Georgeff (1991)
Modelling rational agents within a BDI-architecture. In: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, Cambridge, Massachussets, pages 473-484.
B. J. Grosz and S. Kraus (1996)
Collaborative Plans for Complex Group Actions. Artificial Intelligence, 86, pages 269-358.
2006
Cohen, P. R. and Levesque, H. (1990)
Intention is choice with commitment. Artificial Intelligence , 42(2-3), pages 213-261.
Davis , R. and Smith, R. (1983)
Negotiation as a Metaphor for Distributed Problem Solving. Artificial Intelligence, 20(1), pages 63-109.
The 2009 IFAAMAS Influential Paper Award is given to the series of edited collections of papers on Distributed AI published in the late 1980s:
M. N. Huhns. (Ed.) (1987)
Distributed Artificial Intelligence. London, Pitman.
A. Bond and L. Gasser. (Eds.) (1988)
Readings in Distributed Artificial Intelligence. San Mateo, CA, Morgan Kaufmann.
L. Gasser and M. N. Huhns. (Eds.) (1989)
Distributed Artificial Intelligence (Volume II). Pitman and Morgan Kaufmann.
IFAAMAS Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award
This award was started for dissertations defended in 2006 and is named for Professor Victor Lesser, a long standing member of the AAMAS community who has graduated a large number of outstanding PhD students in the area. To be eligible for the 2008 award, a dissertation had to have been written as part of a PhD defended during the year 2008, and had to be nominated by the supervisor with three supporting references. Selection is based on originality, depth, impact and written quality, supported by quality publications. Previous winners of this award were Radu Jurca (2007) and Vincent Conitzer (2006).
The 2008 IFAAMAS Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award recipient is Ariel Procaccia for the dissertation entitled “ Computational Voting Theory: Of the Agents, By the Agents, For the Agents”.
There will be an invited talk in the Conference, named “New Insights on Where to Locate a Library”, based on the awarded Phd thesis.
The Pragnesh Jay Modi Best Student Paper Award
is made annually at the AAMAS conference to the paper that is judged to be the best paper at the conference whose main author is registered as a student at the time of paper submission. Typically the student is registered for a PhD, although undergraduate and masters student papers may also be considered.
The winning paper may have multiple authors, not all required to be students, but to be eligible, the main author of the paper must be a student.
The award is named for Pragnesh Jay Modi (1975--2007), an active and influential member of the AAMAS research community who died tragically young in April 2007. Jay obtained his PhD from the University of Southern California in 2003, and at the time of his death was a junior faculty member at Drexel University, Philadelphia. Jay's PhD thesis has been foundational in the area of distributed constraint optimization (DCOP), and among his many accomplishments were an NSF-CAREER award and IEEE Intelligent Systems magazine's award for "AI's 10 to watch".
Nominations for the award are made by Program Committee members, Senior Program Committee members, Area Chairs and Program Chairs. The nominees for the AAMAS 2009 Pragnesh Jay Modi Best Student Paper Award are the following:
On the Significance of Synchroneity in Emergent Systems
Adam Campbell, Annie S. WuIncreasing the Expressiveness of Virtual Agents--Autonomous Generation of Speech and Gesture for Spatial Description Tasks
Kirsten Bergmann, Stefan KoppCaching Schemes for DCOP Search Algorithms
William Yeoh, Pradeep Varakantham, Sven KoenigDecentralised Dynamic Task Allocation: A Practical Game-Theoretic Approach
Archie C. Chapman, Rosa Anna Micillo, Ramachandra Kota, Nicholas R. JenningsCharacterizing False-name-proof Allocation Rules in Combinatorial Auctions
Taiki Todo, Atsushi Iwasaki, Makoto Yokoo, Yuko Sakurai
Best Paper Award
This award is for a selected paper which does not have a student as primary author. Nominations are made by Program Committee members,Senior Program Committee members, Area Chairs and Program Chairs.
The nominees for the AAMAS 2009 Best Paper Award are the following:
Effects of Resource and Remembering on Social Networks
Chung-Yuan Huang, Yu-Shiuan Tsai, Chuen-Tsai SunPower in Normative Systems
Thomas Agotnes, Wiebe van der Hoek, Moshe Tennenholtz, Michael WooldridgeInvestigating the Benefits of Automated Negotiations in Enhancing People’s Negotiation Skills
Raz Lin, Yinon Oshrat, Sarit KrausNormative Framework for Normative System Change
Guido Boella, Gabriella Pigozzi, Leendert van der TorreA Mathematical Analysis of Collective Cognitive Convergence
H. Van Dyke Parunak
Best Industry Track Paper
This award is for a selected paper from the Industry track. The award selection will be done in consultation by the advisory board and the industry track co-chairs.
Best Demos
Demonstration submissions were divided in four different categories:
• Industrial software
• Academic software
• Robotics
• Student projects
A best demo award will be chosen separately for each category. A price of 1000 Euro is provided for the winner in the category “Student projects.” The award selection will be done in consultation by the advisory board and the exhibits and demo co-chairs.
Best Senior Program Committee member
This award is for a selected member of the Senior Program Committee based on outstanding contribution to the management of the paper selection process, including reviewing, encouraging discussion, obtaining extra reviews if needed, and dealing with any issues arising in the course of paper selection.
The nominees for the AAMAS 2009 Best Senior Program Committee member are the following:
Edmund Durfee
Amal El Fallah Seghrouchni
Gerhard Weiss
Best Program Committee member
This award is for a selected member of the Program Committee based on outstanding quality of reviews and discussion of papers.
The nominees for the AAMAS 2009 Best Program Committee member are the
following:
Beatriz López Ibáñez
Nicolas Maudet
Nir Oren