Date: Mon, 25 Nov 1996 23:11:15 GMT Server: NCSA/1.5.1 Last-modified: Mon, 14 Nov 1994 16:12:35 GMT Content-type: text/html Content-length: 4407 John E. Laird's Homepage

John E. Laird


Associate Professor
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
University of Michigan

Office Address:
120 ATL Building
1101 Beal Avenue
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2110

Email: laird@umich.edu
Phone: (313) 747-1761
FAX: (313) 763-1260

Prof. John Laird received his B.S. from the University of Michigan in 1975 and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1983. The title of his thesis was "Universal Subgoaling" and his thesis advisor was Allen Newell. Before joining the faculty at the University of Michigan, Dr. Laird was a member of research staff at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center from 1984 to 1986. Prof. Laird is currently the director of the University of Michigan's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.


Research Activities:

Prof. Laird's primary research interests are in the nature of the architecture underlying artificial and natural intelligence. Since 1981, his work has centered on the development and use of Soar, a general cognitive architecture. Over the years, this has led to research in both AI and cognitive science. Within AI his work has included research in general problem solving, the genesis of the weak methods, the origins of subgoals, general learning mechanism, interacting with external environments, learning by experience and by instruction, and integrating reactivity, planning, and learning, all in the service of constructing complete autonomous intelligent agents. Within cognitive science, his research has concentrated on detailed modeling of human behavior (reaction times and error rates) in visual attention and concept acquisition.

Prof. Laird is currently working on the construction of intelligent agents that interact with dynamic environments. This work is currently being pursued within the context of the Soar/IFOR component of the WISSARD/IFOR project (funded by ARPA/ASTO). The goal of Soar/IFOR is the development of autonomous computer agents whose behavior is tactically indistinguishable from humans. These synthetic agents must not only be lifelike, they must be humanlike with many of the capabilities we commonly associate with intelligent human behavior: real-time reactivity, goal-directed problem solving and planning, large bodies of knowledge, adaptation to changing situations, and interaction and coordination with other intelligent entities. The Soar/IFOR consortium, involving the University of Michigan, University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute, and Carnegie Mellon University , is developing such agents for air missions: air to air combat, air to ground attacks, helicopter missions. A long term goal of this research is to extend this technology to education, training, and entertainment where humans can interact with humanlike intelligent agents in a variety of synthetic environments.


Teaching Activities:


Professional Activities:

Prof. Laird has been actively involved in national activities in artificial intelligence. He has been general chair of the Machine Learning Conference, and has served on the program committees of AAAI and IJCAI. In 1994, he was area chair of AAAI in Agents and Architectures as well as being video co-chair. He is a member of AAAI, the Cognitive Science Society, and the American Psychological Society.


Last Updated: 11/14/94