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I am a Senior Research Scientist in the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition in Pensacola. Since February 1, 1997, I have been on a leave at the NASA Ames Research Center, Computational Sciences Division, where I am Chief Scientist for Human-Centered Computing.
I received my undergraduate degree in Mathematics Sciences
(BA, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) at Rice
University in Houston, Texas in 1974. The courses that had
the greatest influence on my later work were "The philosophy
of knowledge" (Konstantin Kolenda), "Language, thought,
and culture" (Stephen Tyler), and "The radical sociology
of knowledge" (Kenneth Leiter). My advisor was Ken Kennedy,
who taught a fantastic course on compilers. Altogether, I took
40 courses in 13 departments, including six anthropology and three
philosophy courses. Rice's teachers were wonderful lecturers who
inspired you with their own enthusiasm and the clarity of their
thought.
I received a PhD in Computer Science at Stanford
University, California in 1979. My dissertation project was
the first attempt to use an expert system for instruction. I was
a member of the "Mycin Gang" in the Heuristic Programming
Project, which became the Knowledge
Systems Laboratory in the late 1970s. These projects were
directed by Bruce G. Buchanan. From 1979-1987 I managed research
on Neomycin (one of the first second-generation expert systems)
and a variety of associated explanation, instructional, and learning
programs funded by the Office of Naval Research and the McDonald
Foundation.
I joined the Institute for Research
on Learning (IRL) in 1987, with special interest in relating
the cognitive and social perspectives about knowledge and learning.
I worked on organizational change and work systems design projects
in corporate settings at the former Nynex Science and Technology,
Xerox (Customer Care Center, Dallas), and Kaiser-Permanente (Pasadena,
CA).
Involved in expert systems research from the early days of the MYCIN Project in 1975, I developed some of the earliest AI programs for explanation, the critiquing method of consultation, tutorial discourse, and student modeling. My work on "heuristic classification" and "model construction operators" has been influential in the design of expert systems and instructional programs.
I have published six books, including: Knowledge-Based Tutoring (1987), Contemplating Minds: A Forum for Artificial Intelligence (1994, with S. Smoliar and M. Stefik), and Situated Cognition: On Human Knowledge and Computer Representations (1997). I have presented this research in tutorials and keynote addresses in twenty countries.
My recent work re-examines the relation of descriptive cognitive theories to human experience and neural processes. A book synthesizing symbolic and connectionist approaches appeared in 1999, Conceptual Coordination: How the mind orders experience in time (Erlbaum).
In the Brahms multiagent simulation of situated action, I show how work flow diagrams may be generated from lower-level descriptions of practice, with applications to operations planning, training, and automated assistance.
My writing in the past few years has spanned a variety of topics that reconsider the relation of knowledge and memory: "situated robots," neuropsychological dysfunctions, and how policies and plans are interpreted in work settings.
This Research Programme seeks to advance our scientific understanding of human behavior as it pertains to the design of work systems, viewed as interacting organizations, procedures, facilities, and tools. The unit of analysis for studying work practice is called an "activity." The study of work activities is very broad, including not only assigned jobs, but also "off-task" activities (e.g., waiting), non-intellectual motives (e.g., hunger), sustained goals (e.g., playful interaction), and coupled perceptual-motor dynamics (e.g., following someone). The research involves relating diverse analytic concepts such as scripts, human factors, behavior settings, ensemble, and situated action. A simulation model makes the relationships concrete, through the explicit modeling of groups of agents, body states (e.g., posture), beliefs, communications, tools, and the physical setting. Example work practices being simulated include scientists on field expeditions, astronauts in the International Space Station, and mission controllers remotely operating a rover on Mars. Simulating work practice in this comprehensive way, combining social and psychological perspectives, is useful for better understanding human cognition, promoting learning, and designing better tools, including especially computer automation and robotics.
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