News

SIFT Principal Researcher Dan Thomsen has two chapters in the new Handbook of Human Computation, edited by Pietro Michelucci and published by Springer in December 2013.

The first chapter "Solving Wicked Problems" discusses using crowds to solve problems so challenging people cannot even tell if a problem is solved. The second chapter "Applying Security Lessons Learned to Human Computation Solving Systems" tries to ensure this emerging field doesn't fall into the same old security pitfalls.

Three papers by SIFT researchers have been accepted for presentation at the AAAI Spring Symposia Series to be held in Palo Alto, CA on March 24-26:

The paper "Landmark-based Distance Measures for Diverse Planning" authored by SIFT Senior Researcher Dr. Dan Bryce has been accepted for the 24th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS-14).

Paper Details:

Bryce, D. Landmark-based Distance Measures for Diverse Planning. In the Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling, 2014.

Abstract:

Dr. Joseph Mueller recently joined the SIFT team in the Minneapolis office. Dr. Mueller is an aerospace engineer with expertise in formation flying and UAVs, and has led several SBIR projects for NASA and DoD. His primary research interests are in robust control, trajectory optimization, autonomous planning, and data fusion.

SIFT Researcher Dr. Ugur Kuter is collaborating with Dr. Florent Teichteil-Königsbuch (ONERA, The French AeroSpace Lab) and Dr. Andrey Kolobov (Microsoft Research) to organize the ICAPS-14 Workshop on Models and Paradigms for Planning under Uncertainty to be held at the 2014 International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling, Portsmouth, NH. The workshop focuses on planning models and approaches to planning under uncertainty.

A paper co-authored by SIFT Senior Researcher, Dr. David McDonald, has been accepted for presentation at the Second Annual Conference on Advances in Cognitive Systems (ACS 2013). Dr. McDonald will present the paper, titled "On the Representation of Inferences and their Lexicalization" at the conference in Baltimore Maryland on December 13, 2013.

SIFT's Fuzzbuster team has published two papers on meta-control and metrics for adaptive cybersecurity. The papers describe advances to the state-of-the-art in program analysis for rapidly and automatically identifying, characterizing, and repairing vulnerabilities in software. The publications include:

David J. Musliner, Scott E. Friedman, Jeffrey M. Rye, Tom Marble. (2013). Meta-control for Adaptative Cybersecurity in FUZZBUSTER. Proceedings of SASO 2013. Philadelphia, PA.

SIFT received the Patriot Award from the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve (ESGR). The Patriot Award reflects the efforts made to support employees serving in the National Guard or Reserve, including flexible schedules, time off prior to and after deployment, caring for families and granting leaves of absence if needed.

For the SAFE-P II SBIR project, NASA has evaluated SIFT as "Exceptional" on all aspects of NASA's official Contractor Performance Assessment Report, including Quality of Product, Schedule, and Cost Control.

Dr. J. Benton has been awarded patent 8,473,447, "AI planning based quasi-monte carlo simulation method for probabilistic planning," with Dr. Sungwook Yoon, Dr. Minh Do, and Prof. Wheeler Ruml. This patent has a variety of applications including planning and scheduling in manufacturing, finding plans for mobile robots, and traffic management.

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