6. Biographical Sketch (Wolber)

6. Biographical Sketch (Wolber)

David Wolber, Principal Investigator.

Education

University of California, DavisB.S., Computer Science, 1986

University of California, DavisM.S., Computer Science, 1988

University of California, DavisPh.D. Computer Science, 1991

University of San Francisco, M.F.A., Creative Writing, expected Summer 2003.

Appointments

Chair, Computer Science Dept, University of San Francisco, 2002-present

Associate Professor, University of San Francisco, 2000-present

Assistant Professor, University of San Francisco, 1993-2000

Publications, Closely associated to project (Student collaborators marked with *)

• Wolber, D., Kepe, M.*, Ranitovic, I.*, “Exposing Document Context in the Personal Web”, Proceedings of the International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI), 2002.

Other Significant Publications

• Wolber, David, Su, Yingfeng *, Chiang, Yih Tsung *, “Designing Dynamic Web Pages in the WYSIWYG Interface”, Proceedings of the Sixth IFIP Working Conference on Visual Database Systems , Brisbane, Australia, May 2002.

• Wolber, D., Myers, B., "PBD Interface Builders: Demonstrating the When as Well as the What", Chapter in Your Wish is my Command, pp. 321-344, Lieberman, Henry, ed., Morgan Kauffman, 2001.

• Wolber, D., "Pavlov: Where PBD Meets Macromedia Director", Chapter in Your Wish is my Command, pp. 345-350, Lieberman, Henry, ed., Morgan Kauffman, 2001.

• Myers, B., McDaniel, R., Wolber, D., "Demonstrational Interfaces", ACM Communications, March 2000.

• Wolber, D., "An Interface Builder for Designing Animated Interfaces", Transactions on Computer-Human Interface( TOCHI), December 1997.

.

Synergistic Activities

The PI is leading the design of a new Master's Program in Internet Science at the University of San Francisco. This program will provide students with a rigorous 2-year education in the computational technology and techniques of Web-scale computing.

The PI is also a consultant at the Internet Archive. In the summer of 2002, he led fifteen USF interns in innovative projects at the Archive, including work on the first search engine for the Archive, the first collection of digital texts, an on-line video studio, and the integration of the Archive’s database with the WebTop project. This instructor-led on-site internship was incredibly successful, both in terms of productivity and in terms of educational value for the students.

The PI has experience integrating research into the curriculum of the courses he teaches. For instance, the development of a programming by example animation system, based on the PIs Pavlov system, has become a popular project in his Software Engineering course. In the past year, the PI also assigned a simple reconnaissance agent as a development project for his freshman programming students. Though it takes time to pare down such projects to make them work within short time periods and with various levels of students, the payoff can be incredible in terms of motivating students (it can also lead to enthusiastic research assistants after the course ends!).

The PI also routinely teaches the Senior/Master’s Project course in which students design and develop a significant software system for a company or research faculty sponsor. The project course provides an excellent opportunity to combine education and research, and it has given the PI a significant amount of experience working with undergraduates on long-term real-world projects.

While teaching computer science at USF, PI is also working on a Master’s degree in USF's creative writing program. This rather uncommon combination provides an excellent opportunity for targeting the power of software agents at the creative process. Specifically, the PIs peers and instructors within the writing program are an excellent pool of test users for the proposed tool, and can provide some excellent insight into how software agents can help them in the creative process.

Collaborators

Brad Myers, CarnegieMellonUniversity.

Rich McDaniel, CarnegieMellonUniversity.

Igor Ranitovic, Internet Archive (formerly USF).

Michael Kepe, StanfordUniversity (formerly USF)

Graduate Advisor

Gene Fisher

Department of Computer Science

College of Engineering

CalPolyUniversity, San Luis Obispo, 93407

(805)756-2416

Thesis Advisor (Served as)

Served on the Dissertation Committee for Richard McDaniel (CarnegieMellonUniversity)

Biographical Sketch (Brooks)

Christopher Brooks, Principal Investigator

Education

University of WisconsinB.A/J.B.A., English and Journalism, 1991

San FranciscoStateUniversityM.S., Computer Science, 1997

University of MichiganPh.D. Computer Science, 2002

Appointments

Assistant Professor, University of San Francisco, 2002-present

Graduate Student Research Associate, University of Michigan, 1998-2002

Graduate Student Instructor, University of Michigan, 1997-1998

Research Assistant, LawrenceBerkeley Laboratory, 1996-1997

Instructor, San Francisco State University, 1995-1996

Teaching Assistant, San Francisco State University, 1994-1995

Closely Related Publications:

Christopher H. Brooks and Edmund H. Durfee. “Congregation Formation in Multiagent Systems.” The Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, to appear, 2003.

Christopher H. Brooks, Edmund H. Durfee and Aaron Armstrong. “An Introduction to Congregating in Multiagent Systems.” Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Multiagent Systems (ICMAS-2000), pp. 79-86, July, 2000.

Christopher H. Brooks, Robert S. Gazzale, Rajarshi Das, Jeffrey O. Kephart, Jeffey K. MacKie-Mason and Edmund H. Durfee. “Model Selection in an Information Economy: Choosing What to Learn.” Computational Intelligence, 18(4), November2002.

Other Significant Publications:

Christopher H. Brooks and Edmund H. Durfee. “Using Landscape Theory to Measure Difficulty for Adaptive Agents.” To appear in Adaptive Agents, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Springer-Verlag, early 2003.

Christopher H. Brooks, Edmund H. Durfee and Rajarshi Das. “Price Wars and Niche Discovery in an Information Economy.” Proceedings of the 2nd ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce, pp. 95-106, October, 2000.

Christopher H. Brooks and Edmund H. Durfee. “Congregating and Market Formation.” Proceedings of the First International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, pp 96-103, July, 2002.

Christopher H. Brooks, Scott Fay, Rajarshi Das, Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason, Jeffrey O. Kephart and Edmund H. Durfee. “Automated Strategy Searches in an Electronic Goods Market: Learning and Complex Price Schedules.” Proceedings of the 1st ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce, pp. 31-40, November, 1999.

Synergistic Activities:

The PI is an active participant in the development of a Master's Program in Internet Science at the University of San Francisco. This program will provide students with a rigorous 2-year education in the computational technology and techniques of Web-scale computing.

The PI has also taught the Senior and Master’s Project courses for the past two semesters. These courses provide students with the opportunity to complete a directed research project through the course of a semester. This course has served as an effective way to introduce undergraduates into faculty research programs at USF.

Collaborators:

Aaron Armstrong

Rajarshi Das

Edmund H. Durfee

Scott Fay

Robert Gazzale

Jeffrey Kephart

Jeffrey MacKie-Mason

Graduate Advisor:

Edmund Durfee

Thesis Advisor:

None