Milind Tambe made AAAI Fellow

Prof. Milind Tambe, my PhD advisor, was elected as a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence on April 23 for "significant contributions to theory and software infrastructure for multi-agent systems and pioneering applications in teamwork systems".

The list of Fellows reads like the Who's who of AI. Milind through his hardwork and dedication to his research joins this esteemed list. This is a much deserved honour.

To paraphrase my colleague Jonathan Pearce, "For he's a jolly good Fellow, which nobody can deny" :).

Young Scientist's Prize

On April 17 2007, Dr. Takayuki Ito, a member of Germinait's scientific board, was awared the Young Scientists' Prize, part of the Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.

Takayuki informs me that he was very surprised because this award "is very selective and most people who got this are very famous engineers or doctors". Takayuki, I'm sure that those who know you are not surprised. Congratulations! This is very well deserved.

For those of you who can read Japanese, there are more details on the award here.

In Memoriam

On April 9, Prof. Pragnesh Jay Modi passed away and with his demise the AI community has lost one of its brightest sparks.

I admired him greatly for his sharpness, maturity and dedication to his work. He was always ready to lend a hand and give good advice. His demise will be impossibly heavy to bear for those of us fortunate enough to have him as a friend. Jay was very supportive of my decision to start Germinait, balancing his encouragement with words of caution.

At this time of grief, I wish his family my deepest condolence. Without doubt Jay was the best among us. Jay will be remembered with fondness as a dedicated colleague and loyal friend.