Subbarao Kambhampati is a professor of Computer Science and
Engineering at Arizona State University. His research interests
include automated planning and information integration.  He is the
recipient of a 1994 NSF Young Investigator award, a 2002 college
teaching excellence award, and is a Fellow of AAAI (elected in 2004).
He loves teaching and has over the years taught six tutorials at
AAAI/IJCAI, in addition to invited talks at AAAI and ICAPS.

In addition to serving on the senior program committees of AAAI and
IJCAI, Kambhampati also co-chaired AIPS 2000 and AAAI 2005 (which
introduced several innovations in the conference structure that have
since become standard). He served on the executive council of ICAPS,
and is particularly proud of the Festivus! program that he popularized
at ICAPS.

Statement:

Half-a-century after its birth, the state of the AI community with its
myriad energetic sub-communities is coming to resemble antebellum
America, where a Jefferson would consider himself a Virginian first
and an American next. The field is thriving but more and more
practitioners consider themselves proponents first of the
sub-community, and only then of AI. That the sub-communities are
thriving is a cause for celebration no-doubt, but we all believe that
the enterprise of AI is bigger than the sum of its
sub-communities. For both intellectual and social reasons, AAAI must
seek and play an active role in fostering a re-dedication to this
larger enterprise.

While recent innovations in the conference structure, including the
NECTAR track (that evolved from the sister conference track, that we
introduced in 2005), and the integrated systems track, are in the right
direction, more can, and must, be done. 

To provide a common intellectual background across sub-disciplines,
AAAI can take part in curriculum development efforts.  To increase
practioners' own familiarity with developments across the breadth of
AI, AAAI can use AI Magazine as a forum for high quality, timely and
accessible technical overviews.  AAAI can help sponsor "ambassador"
talks at sub-community conferences.  AAAI can also proactively help
identify challenge problems and competitions that determinedly cross
sub-community boundaries.

I am interested in serving on the AAAI council to help explore these
and other ideas to renew a sense of shared purpose across the AI
community.


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