Biographical Information for Dana Nau

Dana Nau is a professor at the University of Maryland, in the Department of Computer Science and the Institute for Systems Research (ISR). He has affiliate appointments in the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS) and the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He co-directs the Laboratory for Computational Cultural Dynamics (LCCD).

Dana Nau does research on automated planning and game theory. He is known for the discovery of “pathological” games (in which, counter-intuitively, looking ahead leads to worse decision-making), and for influential work on the theory and applications of automated planning. The algorithms he and his students have developed for AI planning, manufacturing planning, zero-sum games, and non-zero-sum games have won many awards and championships. His SHOP and SHOP2 planning systems have been downloaded more than 13,000 times and have been used in thousands of projects worldwide. He has more than 300 published papers and several best-paper awards, and is co-author of Automated Planning: Theory and Practice. He is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI).