SIFT Staff

Chief Scientist

Christopher A. Miller

Ph.D. Cognition and Communication Psychology

Dr. Miller has pioneered work in computational models of human etiquette and politeness perception and their applications for nearly 10 years.

Vice President, R&D

Harry B. Funk

B.A. Psychology

B.S. Computer Science

Mr. Funk's main areas of expertise and responsibility include technical project and program management.

Chief Manager

Amy Bromberg Funk

Ms. Funk is an attorney at Target and performs legal reviews for SIFT.

President

Andrea Bell

Ph.D. Spanish

Dr. Bell is an associate Professor at Hamline University while simultaneously performing management duties at SIFT.

Principal Researcher

Dr. Goldman is a principal scientist, specializing in Artificial Intelligence. His particular research interests involve the intersection between planning and control theory, plan recognition, and reasoning under uncertainty.

Eric Engstrom

B.A. Computer Science and Philosophy

Mr. Engstrom is a senior SIFT researcher whose expertise is broadly in Software Engineering. In particular, his experience and interests lie in the areas of Model-Based Development and Formal Methods.

David Musliner

Ph.D. Computer Science

Mr. Musliner specializes in real-time planning and control, intelligent autonomy, and agent-based systems.

Kip Smith

Ph.D. Business Administration

Mr. Smith specializes in cognitive systems engineering and decision making; design and analysis of empirical studies; cultural norms for team cohesion.

Dan Thomsen

M.S. Computer Science

Mr. Thomsen's main areas of interest include computer security research ranging from high assurance operating systems, multilevel database security, and security policy management.

Mark Burstein

Ph.D. Computer Science

Dr. Burstein's research interests include reflective multi-strategy learning, especially for planning and action, mixed-initiative approaches to planning and scheduling and associated techniques for explanation in decision-making, mixed-initiative control of software agent organizations.

Senior Researcher

John Maraist

Dr.,Rer.,Nat. Computer Science

M.E. Computer Science

Specializes in software engineering, programming languages, scheduling and planning.

Peggy Wu

B.Sc. Computer Engineering

Ms. Wu specializes in human factors, interaction design, cross cultural implications on design, and leveraging sociology based theory to enhance human-computer and computer mediated human-human interactions.

Michael Pelican

M.S. Computer Science

Mr. Pelican specializes in planning and control for autonomous systems in dynamic and uncertain environments.

David McDonald

Ph.D. Artificial Intelligence

Dr. McDonald is a senior research at SIFT specializing in Artificial Intelligence. His research focus is on natural language and the representation of world knowledge.

Terry Zimmerman

PhD, Computer Science & Engineering, Arizona State University

Dr. Zimmerman’s interests lie broadly in artificial intelligence and particularly in automated planning, scheduling and learning augmentations.

Jeffrey Rye

B.S. Computer Science

Mr. Rye's main areas of interest are in software development and design, particularly in designing tools for user interface development.

Researcher

Josh Hamell

Mr. Hamell's interests include software development and multi-agent coordination. He is experienced in Java, database and test methodologies.

Sonja Schmer-Galunder

M.S. Cultural Anthropology

Mrs. Schmer-Galunder's areas of research include Social and Cognitive Psychology and Neuroscience.

Tammy Ott

M.A. Experimental Psychology

Ms. Ott's research interests include various areas of experimental psychology.

Mike Boldt

M.S. Computer Science

Mr. Boldt has a broad Computer Science background as a researcher and a software engineer.

Tim Woods

M.S. Computer Science

Mr. Woods main research interests are in machine learning in adversarial and non-cooperative environments, and in the the security of adaptive systems.

Ugur Kuter

Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Maryland, College Park, USA

Dr. Kuter specializes in Artificial Intelligence. His primary research activities focus on problems that are primarily on Automated Planning and Learning and related to Game Theory, Evolutionary Computation, Social Networks, and Semantic Web Service Composition.

Chief Research Pilot

Howard Bell

M.S. Aeronautical Science

Mr. Bell serves as SIFT's Subject Matter Expert for flying operations.

Controller

Linda Holje

Ms. Holje is responsible for SIFT's financial and administrative functions.

Intern

Amie Lasserre

B.S. Psychology

Ms. Lasserre's areas of interest include cognitive psychology as it relates to human performance and human computer interaction.