Alumni Hall Of Fame

Lee Spector

Photo of Lee Spector
Graduation Year:
1992
Dissertation:
Supervenience in Dynamic World Planning
Advisor(s):
Hendler

Lee Spector received his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in 1992 under the guidance of Professor James Hendler. His dissertation, "Supervenience in Dynamic-World Planning," incorporated perspectives from several disciplines in the cognitive sciences to address issues in artificial intelligence.

After graduating from Maryland Lee joined the faculty of the interdisciplinary School of Cognitive Science at Hampshire College, an innovative liberal arts college in Massachusetts. At Hampshire he has held the MacArthur Chair, served as the elected faculty member of the Board of Trustees, and served as the Dean of the School of Cognitive Science. He returned to Maryland for one year, to supervise Professor Hendler's lab while Professor Hendler was away on a Fulbright fellowship.

At Hampshire College Lee teaches and conducts research in computer science and in related areas of cognitive science. His areas of interest include genetic and evolutionary computation, quantum computation, planning in dynamic environments, artificial intelligence education, artificial intelligence and neuropsychology, and artificial intelligence in the arts.

In 2003 Lee received the highest honor bestowed by the National Science Foundation for excellence in both teaching and research, the NSF Director's Award for Distinguished Teaching Scholars. He has won several other awards and honors, including a gold medal in the Human Competitive Results contest of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference and election as a fellow of the International Society for Genetic and Evolutionary Computation.

Lee has produced over 70 professional scientific publications, including his recent book: Automatic Quantum Computer Programming: A Genetic Programming Approach, published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2004. He was Editor-in-Chief for the Proceedings of the 2001 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation conference and has served as track chair, organizer, or reviewer for several other conferences. He was lead editor for Advances in Genetic Programming, Volume 3, published by MIT Press. He also writes for general audiences, including a recent OpEd piece in The Boston Globe. His work has received funding from several sources including the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Lee is a member of the Executive Board of the Association for Computing Machinery's special interest group on evolutionary computation (ACM SIGEVO), an Associate Editor for the journal Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines, and a member of the editorial board of the journal Evolutionary Computation.

Lee lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, with his wife, son and daughter.

Inductees

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PhD 1979

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J. Gary Augustson
Master's 1969

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David Baggett
Bachelor's 1992

Photo of Suman Banerjee

Suman Banerjee
PhD 2003

Photo of Sergey Brin

Sergey Brin
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Photo of Paul Capriolo

Paul Capriolo
Bachelor's 2006

Photo of Anthony Casalena

Anthony Casalena
Bachelor's 2005

Photo of Charles Dyer

Charles Dyer
PhD 1979

Photo of Martin Farach

Martin Farach
PhD 1991

Photo of Gary Flake

Gary Flake
PhD 1993

Photo of Rajiv Gandhi

Rajiv Gandhi
PhD 2003

Photo of Howard Gobioff

Howard Gobioff
Bachelor's 1993

Photo of Naresh Gupta

Naresh Gupta
PhD 1993

Photo of Patrick Jenkins

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Bachelor's 2006

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Vipin Kumar
PhD 1982

Photo of Ronald Larsen

Ronald Larsen
PhD 1981

Photo of Haroon Mokhtarzada

Haroon Mokhtarzada
Bachelor's 2001

Photo of Idris Mokhtarzada

Idris Mokhtarzada
Bachelor's 2010

Photo of Zeki Mokhtarzada

Zeki Mokhtarzada
Bachelor's 2001

Photo of Shmuel Peleg

Shmuel Peleg
PhD 1979

Photo of Andrew Reisse

Andrew Reisse
Bachelor's 2001

Photo of Glenn Ricart

Glenn Ricart
PhD 1980

Photo of Debanjan Saha

Debanjan Saha
PhD 1995

Photo of Pooja Sankar

Pooja Sankar
Master's 2004

Photo of Jagdeep Singh

Jagdeep Singh
Bachelor's 1987

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Photo of Lee Spector

Lee Spector
PhD 1992

Photo of Granger Sutton

Granger Sutton
PhD 1992

Photo of Qiang Yang

Qiang Yang
PhD 1989

Photo of Shayan Zadeh

Shayan Zadeh
Master's 2002