University Times

Associate professor of computer science and intelligent systems Martha E. Pollack has been elected a fellow of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI).

The AAAI is a nonprofit scientific society devoted to the promotion and advancement of artificial intelligence.

Each year, the AAAI awards the title of fellow to a small number of individuals "for their unusual distinction in the profession and for their sustained contributions to the field for a decade or more." Since the late 1980s, Pollack's work has focused mainly on modeling planning and the control of reasoning in dynamic environments. Her early research was in natural-language processing. Pollack received her Bachelor of Arts from Dartmouth College in 1979, and her master's degree and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984 and 1986 respectively.

Prior to joining the Pitt faculty, Pollack worked as a senior computer scientist at the Artificial Intelligence Center at SRO International and as an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University.

Support for Pollack's research has come from the Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation.

Pollack is on the editorial board of the journal Artificial Intelligence, an associate editor of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence and program chair for the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence.

As a researcher, Pollack has won the Rubinoff Dissertation Prize, the Computers and Thought Award and the National Science Foundation's Young Investigator's Award.