Awards for AAMAS 2013

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.

Previous winners of the 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), Nick Jennings (2003), Katia Sycara (2002), and Tuomas Sandholm (2001).

The 2013 ACM SIGART Autonomous Agents Research Award recipient is Jeffrey S. Rosenschein (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel). Professor Rosenschein is honored 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."

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 sponsored by the Agent Theories, Architectures and Languages foundation.

Cristiano Castelfranchi is the winner of the 2013 IFAAMAS Influential Paper Award, in recognition of his distinguished contributions to the field as exemplified by the following two influential papers:

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 2011 award, a dissertation had to have been written as part of a PhD defended during the year 2011, 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 Daniel Villatoro (2011), Bo An (2010), Andrew Gilpin (2009), Ariel Procaccia (2008), Radu Jurca (2007), and Vincent Conitzer (2006).

The 2012 IFAAMAS Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award recipient is Dr. Birgit Endrass, whose thesis titled "Cultural Diversity for Virtual Characters: Investigating Behavioral Aspects across Cultures" was supervised by Prof. Dr. Elisabeth André.

The two runner-ups 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.

Best Papers Nominees

Weighted Electoral Control (Page 367)
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 (Page 207)
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)

Mechanisms for Multi-Unit Combinatorial Auctions with a Few Distinct Goods (Page 691)
Piotr Krysta (University of Liverpool, Greece)
Orestis Telelis (Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece)
Carmine Ventre (Teesside University, UK)

Best Student Papers Nominees

Cooperative Energy Exchange for the Efficient Use of Energy and Resources in Remote Communities (Page 731)
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 (Page 813)
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 (Page 303)
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 (Page 319)
Nan Rong (Cornell University, USA)
Joseph Y. Halpern (Cornell University, USA)

Best Challenges and Visions Papers Nominees

Collaborative Health Care Plan Support (Page 793)
Ofra Amir (Harvard University, USA)
Barbara J. Grosz (Harvard University, USA)
Edith Law (Harvard University, USA)
Roni Stern (Harvard University, USA)

Curing Robot Autism: A Challenge (Page 801)
Gal A. Kaminka (Bar Ilan University, Israel)

Systems Resilience: A Challenge Problem for Dynamic Constraint-Based Agent Systems (Page 785)
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 Senior Program Committee Nominees

Vincent Airiau (Universidad Politecnica de Valencia)
Craig Boutilier (University of Toronto, Canada)
Pradeep Varakantham (Singapore Management University, Singapore)

Best Program Committee Nominees

Stephane Airiau (Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, Spain)
Ule Endriss (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Atsushi Iwasaki (Kyushu University, Japan)