COUNCIL TRUSTEES
Mr. Randall Davis
Research Director, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab
Randall Davis received his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth, graduating summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa in 1970, and received a PhD from Stanford in artificial intelligence in 1976.
In 1978 he joined the faculty of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at MIT, where from 1979-1981 he held an Esther and Harold Edgerton Endowed Chair. He later served for 5 years as Associate Director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He is currently a Full Professor in the Department, and a Research Director of CSAIL, the newly-formed Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory that resulted from the merger of the AI Lab and the Lab for Computer Science. He and his research group are developing advanced tools that permit natural, sketch-based interaction with software, particularly for computer-aided design and design rationale capture.
Dr. Davis has been one of the seminal contributors to the field of knowledge-based systems, publishing some 50 articles and playing a central role in the development of several systems. He serves on several editorial boards, including Artificial Intelligence, AI in Engineering, and the MIT Press series in AI. He is the co-author of Knowledge-Based Systems in AI, and was selected in 1984 as one of America's top 100 scientists under the age of 40 by Science Digest. In 1986 he received the AI Award from the Boston Computer Society for his contributions to the field. In 1990 he was named a Founding Fellow of the American Association for AI and in 1995 was elected to a two-year term as President of the Association. In 2003 he received MIT’s Frank E. Perkins Award for graduate advising. From 1995–1998 he served on the Scientific Advisory Board of the U. S. Air Force.
