Maria Gini

College of Science & Engineering Distinguished Professor

Areas of interest: Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Intelligent Agents.

Mailing Address: 4-192 Keller Hall, 200 Union St SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455
Email: gini at umn dot edu
Office: Shepherd Labs 245 phone: (612) 625-5582, fax: (612) 625-0572

Honors and Awards

Winner of the IJCAI Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award, 2024.
Winner of the ACM/SIGAI Autonomous Agents Research Award, 2022.
ACM Fellow, 2019.
A. Nico Haberman Award for increasing numbers and successes of underrepresented members in computing, 2019.
President's Award for Outstanding Service, University of Minnesota, 2019.
NCWIT Harrold and Notkin Award Research and Graduate Mentoring Award, 2018.
IEEE Fellow, 2018.
2016 Distinguished Service Award from the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) "for her outstanding contributions to the field of artificial intelligence through sustained service leading AI societies, journals, and conferences; mentoring colleagues; and working to increase participation of women in AI and computing," 2016.
Outstanding Contributions to Post-Baccalaureate, Graduate and Professional Education Award, University of Minnesota, 2016.
Listed in 25 women in robotics you need to know about (2014).
Mullen-Spector-Truax Women's Leadership Award, University of Minnesota, 2011.
KNAW Visiting Professorship, Delft University of Technology, Sept-Dec 2010.
AAAI Fellow, 2008.
College of Science and Engineering Distinguished Professor, 2008-.
Ada Comstock Distinguished Women Scholars Lecture, University of Minnesota, 2008.
ACM Distinguished Scientist, 2006.
Winner of Inaugural Distinguished Woman Scholar Award, University of Minnesota, 2001.
Member of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers, University of Minnesota, 1998-.
Distinguished Teaching Award, Continuing Education and Extension, 1995.
Morse-Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor of Computer Science, University of Minnesota, 1987-.

Research

Note: material presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights in the papers are retained by authors and by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. These works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.

List of Publications

.. never complete...

Current Projects
Distributed Robotics	TAC-SCM: Autonomous Agents for Supply-Chain Management
MinERS: Minnesota Emergency Response Squad	Learning Robot Programming through Playing Computer Games
Past Projects
MinDART (Minnesota Distributed Autonomous Robotics Team)	MAGNET: Intelligent Agents for Electronic Commerce
Robot Motion Planning	Planning with Missing Information
Robot Learning	Logical Sensors/Actuators
Navigation with Moving Obstacles	Agents for the Web
Extending the Next Generation Robot Laboratory to Increase Diversity in Undergraduate CS Programs	Poker group
OUTOBOX: Machine Learning Reading Group	Medlang: Medical Language Study Group

Conferences, journals, and other activities

Organizer of the Summer Computing Academy for female high-school students. Follow the link for information. The program will run in June 2024.

Organizer of MinneWIC, the ACM-W Celebration of Women in Computing in the Upper Midwest. The last celebration in 2019 was in Duluth.

Member of the Board of the Computer Research Association's Committee on Widening Participation in Computing Research (CRA-WP), 2007-.

Member of the CRA Computing Community Consortium (CCC), 2019-2022.

Chair of committee on Diversity and Inclusion of AAAI. Organizer of diversity events at AAAI and other conferences

President of International Foundation on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (IFAAMAS), 2015-2019. Member of the Board of Directors, 2006-2012, 2014-2020, 2022-2028.

General Chair, IJCAI, Montreal, Canada, August 21-27, 2021.

Editor in Chief, Robotics and Autonomous Systems , 2016-.; Associate Editor 2011-2016.
Editorial Board, Artificial Intelligence, 2013-.
Associate Editor, Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 2007-.
Editorial Board, Integrated Computer-Aided Engineering, 1997-.
Associate Editor for the IEEE RAS Conference Editorial Board, 2006-

Recent Past Activities

Organizer of MinneWIC, the regional celebration of Women in Computing in the Upper MidWest.
Previous celebrations:
- February 12-13, 2010, http://minnewic-2010.cs.umn.edu/
- February 24-25, 2012, http://minnewic-2012.cs.umn.edu/
- February 20-21, 2015, http://minnewic-2015.cs.umn.edu/
- February 17-18, 2017, MinneWIC
- February 16-17, 2019, https://minnewic2019.umn.edu in Duluth.
Organizer of the Summer Computing Academy from 2015.
Co-Director of DREU: Distributed Research Experiences for Undergraduates. Organizer of a CRA-W/CDC Discipline Specific Workshop on Diversity in AI at AAAI 2017, Sunday February 5, 2017, San Francisco.
Organizer of a CRA-W/CDC Discipline Specific Workshop at IJCAI-2016, July 9 to 15, 2016 in New York City.
Co-organizer of Women in AI workshop at IJCAI 2015, July 25-31, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Co-organizer of CRA-W/CDC Broadening Participation in AI at AAAI-14: Twenty-Eighth Conference on Artificial Intelligence July 27-31 2014, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada
General co-chair and local chair of AAMAS 2013, the largest conference on agents and multiagent systems, Saint Paul, May 6-10, 2013.
Organizer in 2012 of NSF funded extended research visits of graduate students from the US to Europe to work with a research group in Cognitive Systems and Robotics.
Chair of ACM Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence, 2003-2010. SIGART has been renamed SIGAI, to be consistent with the use of the term AI. Visit SIGAI for information on activities, conferences, and opportunities.
Member of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Executive Council (2005-2008).
Editorial Board, Web Intelligence and Agent Systems (WIAS), 2005-2015.
Associate Editor, Electronic Commerce and Research Applications, 2006-2009.
Co-Program Chair, Int'l Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2017.
General Co-Chair and Local Organizer, Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS), St. Paul, MN, 2013.
Co-chair, Nectar Track, National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2010.
Co-Chair of the 9th International Conference on Electronic Commerce, Minneapolis, MN, August 19-22, 2007.
Chair of the 8th International Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS), Minneapolis, MN, July 12-14, 2006.
General Co-Chair for the First International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS 2002), July 15-19, 2002, Bologna, Italy.
General Chair for the 7th Int'l Conf on Intelligent Autonomous Systems (IAS-7), March 25-27, 2002, Marina del Rey, CA.

Teaching

Spring 2020

CSci 4511W: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, Spring 2020

Past Courses:

CSci 2041 - Advanced Programming Principles Spring 2016.
CSci 8551 - Intelligent Agents, Fall 2021
CSci 5511 - Artificial Intelligence I, Fall 2015
IofT 1910w -- Robot Pets - Fall 2006, a freshman seminar using the Sony dogs AIBO.
CSci 1901 - Structure of Computer Programming I - Spring 2007
Watch a video of the 2006 lab using the AIBO dogs or go to YouTube to see the videos of the some type of lab done in 2007. The lab was done in Scheme. Remember, you can do whatever you want in Scheme, even get a dog to dance! [Work partially supported by NSF under grant DUE-CCLI-0511304 and by the Bush Foundation program at the University of Minnesota to improve learning in large classes.]
For more information on the NSF project and the partner universities go to http://faculty.berea.edu/pearcej/aibo/
Video Project Course - Spring 2009
CSci 5980, sec 4 - Legged Robots - Spring 2005
LS 5100, Sec 15 - Computational Aspects of Intelligence - 2 credits, 7 weeks - Spring 2002.

AI Programming Information

Myro for ECEPS students

Look at http://wiki.roboteducation.org/Myro for the reference manual on Myro.

Visit this page for examples of programs written for myro.