Lecture/Reception to Recognize John E. Laird

You are cordially invited to join Computer Science and Engineering at a lecture/reception recognizing John E. Laird as the John L. Tishman Professor of Engineering.

Professor Laird's work has been featured in Artificial Intelligence, AI Magazine, Cognitive Systems Research, Computational Intelligence, the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research and at many cognitive science and artificial intelligence conferences.
"cognitive Architecture: Past, Present, and Future"

— Cognitive architectures are the computational infrastructure underlying cognition, providing the fixed structures that support the acquisition, encoding, and use of knowledge. Over the last twenty-five years, research on cognitive architecture has become the dominate approach for developing integrated theories of artificial and natural intelligence. Recently, there has been a surge in research in cognitive architecture, with renewed interest in using them to develop artificial systems with human-level intellectual capabilities. In this talk, I will trace the history of cognitive architecture, describe current progress, and speculate on the future of cognitive architecture research.

John E. Laird received the Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1983 and in 1984 held a research staff position at Xerox Corporation's Palo Alto Research Center. Since 1986, he has been with the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Professor Laird's primary research interests lie in creating human-level artificial intelligent entities, with an emphasis on the underlying cognitive architecture. He is the founder of Soar Technology, an Ann Arbor company specializing in creating autonomous AI entities. From 2000-2004, Professor Laird served as Associate Chair of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Computer Science and Engineering Division. He was Chair for the Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference (AIIDE) in 2006 and the International Conference on Modeling (ICCM) in 2007. Professor Laird is a Fellow of ACM, AAAI and the Cognitive Science Society.