David Parkes awarded ACM/SIGAI Autonomous Agents Research Award

David C. Parkes, the George F. Colony Professor of Computer Science, has received the Autonomous Agents Research Award from the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence (ACM/SIGAI).

The award recognizes researchers in autonomous agents whose work has had an important influence on the field.

Parkes' research has explored a variety of topics in multiagent systems and economics. He has worked on computational mechanism design and investigated distributed optimization problems in light of rational agents. Recently, his research has applied machine learning to produce new results and techniques for human computation, mechanism design, and social choice.

Parkes, who also serves as Area Dean of Computer Science at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), received a M.Eng. in engineering and computing science from Oxford University and a Ph.D. in computer and information science from the University of Pennsylvania.

Among other honors, he has received the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and the Harvard's Roslyn Abramson Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching. He has also been named a Harvard College Professor in recognition of exceptional teaching.