Keith S. Decker

Research Interests

Education

University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts. September 1987 -- May 1995.

Doctor of Philosophy: Computer Science.

PhD Thesis: Environment Centered Analysis & Design of Coordination Mechanisms

Advisor: Dr. Victor R. Lesser

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York. September 1984 -- June 1987.

Master of Science: Computer Science

Master's Thesis: DESCANT: A distributed expert system control architecture for non-independant tasks

Advisor: Dr. Piero P. Bonissone

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA. September 1980 -- June 1984.

Bachelor of Science: Applied Math / Computer Science

Employment

Associate Professor, Department of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Delaware. June 2002 --- present.

Co-Director, Delaware Biomedical Research Infrastructure Network Bioinformatics Core. September 2001 --- present.

Research Scientist, Quantum Leap Innovations, August 1999 --- present.

Assistant Professor, Department of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Delaware. September 1996 --- June 2002.

Consultant, subcontract to University of Massachusetts, subcontract to Boeing Defense & Space Group, Rotorcraft Division, MADEsmart/RaDEO. August 1996 --- present.

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, The Robotics Institute, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University. August 1995 --- August 1996.

Senior Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Computer Science, University of Massachusetts. March 1995 --- August 1995.

Research Assistant, Department of Computer Science, University of Massachusetts. September 1987 --- March 1995.

Computer Scientist, General Electric Corporate Research and Development, Schenectady, New York. June 1984 --- September 1987.

Computer Programmer, Carnegie-Mellon University Computer Science Department, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. October 1982 -- May 1984.

Computer Science Co-op, IBM Communication Products Division, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. May 1983 --- August 1983.

Computer Science Co-op, Harris Computer Systems Division, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. May 1982 --- August 1982.

Journal Articles

• Keith Decker, Salim Khan, Carl Schmidt, Gang Situ, Ravi Makkena, Dennis Michaud. Biomas: A multi-agent system for genomic annotation International Journal of Cooperative Information Systems, 11 (3-4): 265-292, 2002
• Keith Decker and Jinjiang Li.  Coordinating mutually exclusive resources using GPGP. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 3(2): 133--158, 2000.
• Keith Decker and Katia Sycara. Intelligent Adaptive Information Agents. Journal of Intelligent Information Systems, 9 : 239--260, 1997.
• Katia Sycara, Keith Decker, Anandeep Pannu, Mike Williamson, and Dajun Zeng. Distributed Intelligent Agents. IEEE Expert, 11(6):36--46, December 1996.
• Keith S. Decker and Victor R. Lesser. Quantitative modeling of complex environments. International Journal of Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance, and Management, 2(4):215--234, December 1993. Special issue on ``Mathematical and Computational Models of Organizations: Models and Characteristics of Agent Behavior''. A more complete version is here.
• Keith S. Decker and Victor R. Lesser. Analyzing a quantitative coordination relationship. Group Decision and Negotiation, 2(3):195--217, 1993.
• Keith S. Decker, Alan J. Garvey, Marty A. Humphrey, and Victor R. Lesser. Control heuristics for scheduling in a parallel blackboard system. International Journal of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence, 7(2):243--264, 1993.
• Keith S. Decker, Alan J. Garvey, Marty A. Humphrey, and Victor R. Lesser. A real-time control architecture for an approximate processing blackboard system.International Journal of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence, 7(2):265--284, 1993.
• Keith S. Decker and Victor R. Lesser. Generalizing the partial global planning algorithm. International Journal of Intelligent and Cooperative Information Systems, 1(2):319--346, June 1992.
• Keith S. Decker, Victor R. Lesser, and Robert C. Whitehair. Extending a blackboard architecture for approximate processing. The Journal of Real-Time Systems, 2(1/2):47--79, 1990.
• Keith S. Decker. Distributed problem solving: A survey. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, 17(5):729--740, September 1987.

Highly Refereed Conference Papers

• K. Decker, S. Khan, C. Schmidt, D. Michaud. Extending a Multi-Agent System for Genomic Annotation. In Proceedings of the Fifth International Workshop on Cooperative Information Agents, Modena, September 2001. LNAI 2182, Springer-Verlag, 2001.
• K. Decker, X. Zheng, C.Schmidt. A Multi-Agent System for Automated Genetic Annotation. In Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Autonomous Agents, pp. 433--440, Montreal, June 2001.
• John Graham and Keith Decker. Towards a Distributed, Environment-Centered Agent Framework. In Proceedings of the 1999 Intl. Workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages [ATAL-99], Orlando, July 1999.
• Keith Decker and Jinjiang Li. Coordinated Hospital Patient Scheduling. In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems, Paris, France, July 1998. A longer version is here.
• Keith Decker, Katia Sycara, and Mike Williamson. Middle-Agents for the Internet. In Proceedings of the 15th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Nagoya, Japan, August 1997.
• Keith Decker, Anandeep Pannu, Katia Sycara, and Mike Williamson, Designing behaviors for Information Agents. In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Autonomous Agents, Marina del Rey, February 1997.
• M.V. Nagendra Prasad, Keith Decker, Alan Garvey, and Victor Lesser, Exploring Organizational Designs with TAEMS: A Case Study of Distributed Data Processing. In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Multi-agent Systems, Kyoto, Japan, December1996.
• Keith S. Decker and Victor R. Lesser. Designing a Family of Coordination Algorithms. In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems, San Francisco, July 1995. Selected for reprinting, see Book Chapters below.
• Keith S. Decker and Victor R. Lesser. An approach to analyzing the need for meta-level communication. In Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Chambéry, August 1993.
• Keith S. Decker and Victor R. Lesser. A one-shot dynamic coordination algorithm for distributed sensor networks. In Proceedings of the Eleventh National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pages 210--216, Washington, July 1993.
• Keith S. Decker and Victor R. Lesser. Quantitative modeling of complex computational task environments. In Proceedings of the Eleventh National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pages 217--224, Washington, July 1993. A more complete version is here.
• Keith S. Decker, Alan J. Garvey, Marty A. Humphrey, and Victor R. Lesser. Effects of parallelism on blackboard system scheduling. In Proceedings of the Twelfth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pages 15--21, Sydney, Australia, August 1991.
• Piero P. Bonissone, Steven S. Gans, and Keith S. Decker. RUM: A layered architecture for reasoning with uncertainty. In Proceedings of the Tenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, August 1987.

Book Chapters

• Keith S. Decker. Coordinating Human and Computer Agents. In Wolfram Conen, Gustaf Neumann, editors, Coordination Technology for Collaborative Applications - Organizations, Processes, and Agents. LNCS #1364, pp. 77--98, Springer-Verlag, 1998.
• Katia Sycara, Keith Decker, and Dajun Zeng. Intelligent Agents in Portfolio Management. In N. Jennings and M. Wooldridge, editors, Agent Technology: Foundations, Applications, and Markets. Chapter 14, Springer 1998, pp. 267-283. <\LI>
• Keith S. Decker. Task Environment Centered Simulation. In M. Prietula, K. Carley, and L. Gasser, editors, Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups. AAAI Press/MIT Press, 1998.
• Keith S. Decker and Victor R. Lesser. Designing a Family of Coordination Algorithms. Reprinted in M. Huhns and M. Singh, editors, Readings in Agents. Morgan Kaufmann,1997.
• Keith S. Decker, Katia Sycara, and Mike Williamson. Cloning in Intelligent, Adaptive Information Agents. In C. Zhang and D. Lukose, editors, Multi-Agent Systems: Methodologies and Applications, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence #1286, Springer-Verlag, 1997.
• Keith S. Decker. Distributed Artificial Intelligence Testbeds. In G. O'Hare and N. Jennings, editors, Foundations of Distributed Artificial Intelligence. Wiley Inter-Science, 1995 (Chapter 3, invited).
• Keith S. Decker. TÆMS: A framework for analysis and design of coordination mechanisms. In G. O'Hare and N. Jennings, editors, Foundations of Distributed Artificial Intelligence. Wiley Inter-Science, 1995 (Chapter 16, invited). See also here.
• Keith S. Decker, Alan J. Garvey, Victor R. Lesser, and Marty A. Humphrey. An approach to modeling environment and task characteristics for coordination. In Charles J. Petrie, Jr., editor, Enterprise Integration Modeling: Proceedings of the First International Conference, pages 379--388. MIT Press, 1992.
• Keith S. Decker, Edmund H. Durfee, and Victor R. Lesser. Evaluating research in cooperative distributed problem solving. In L. Gasser and M. N. Huhns, editors, Distributed Artificial Intelligence, Vol. II, pages 485--519. Pitman Publishing Ltd., 1989.
• D. Besemer, K. Decker, D. Politi, J. Schnoor. A Synergy of Industrial and Academic Education. In R. Fairley and P. Freeman, editors, Issues in Software Engineering Education, pages 399--413. Springer-Verlag, 1989. Also includes transcript of my panel session, pages 527--563.
• Piero P. Bonissone and Keith S. Decker. Selecting uncertainty calculi and granularity: An experiment in trading-off precision and complexity. In L. N. Kanal and J. F. Lemmer, editors, Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence. North Holland, 1986.

Invited Talks & Articles

• K.Decker, M. Fisher, M. Luck, M. Tennenholz, et al. Continuing Research in Multi-Agent Systems. Knowledge Engineering Review, to appear, 1999.
• "Coordination", Invited Lecturer, European Agent Systems Summer School, Utrect/Amsterdam, the netherlands, July 1999.
• "Coordinating Intelligent Agents," UK Workshop on Multi-Agent Systems, Manchester UK, December 1998.
• Participant (invitation only), International Workshop on Multi-Agent Systems, MIT Endicott House, October 12-14, 1998
• "Coordinating Intelligent Agents," NASA /UVA Workshop on Intelligent Agents and Their Potential for Future Design and Synthesis Environments, NASA Langley, September 1998.
• Participant (invitation only), International Workshop on Multi-Agent Systems, MIT Endicott House, October 12-14, 1997
• ``Designing Behaviors for Information Agents,'' Presented at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, October 6, 1997
• ``Task-Environment Centered Design of Organizations,'' Presented at the Symposium on Distributed Cognition, 1997 Cognitive Science Conference, Stanford University, August 1997.
• ``Distributed Coordination and Multi-Agent Organizations,'' Presented at the NSF Workshop on Intelligent Agents, Porto Alegre, Brazil, March 1997.
• ``Applying Organization Theory to the Analysis and Design of Multi-Agent Systems,'' Presented at the NSF Workshop on Coordination Theory and Collaboration Technology, University of Michigan, March 1995.
• ``Environment Centered Coordination in Multi-Agent Systems,'' Presented at Washington University, Rice University, Purdue University, and Columbia University, Spring 1995.
• ``Task Environment Centered Design of Organizations,'' Presented at the TIMS College on Organization Fourth Annual Workshop on Mathematical and Computational Organization Theory, April 23, 1994.
• ``Environment Centered Analysis and Design of Coordination Mechanisms,'' Presented at the University of Pennsylvania, February 22, 1994.
• ``Modeling Complex Computational Task Environments,'' Presented at BBN, Cambridge, MA., September 15, 1993.
• Keith S. Decker. Blackboard Systems. IEEE Expert, 6(5):71--72, October 1991.
• Keith S. Decker and Victor R. Lesser. Extending the partial global planning framework for cooperative distributed problem solving network control. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Innovative Approaches to Planning, Scheduling and Control, pages 396--408, San Diego, November 1990. Morgan Kaufmann.

Selected Reports and Presentations

• Terrence Harvey, Keith Decker, and Owen Rambow. Integrating the Communicative Plans of Multiple, Independent Agents. Workshop on Communicative Agents: The use of natural language in embodied systems, Third International Conference on Autonomous Agents, May 1999.
• J. Barbour and K. Decker. Coordinated Planning for Distributed Agents. AAAI Fall Symposium on Distributed Continual Planning, October, 1998.
• K. Decker, T. Finin, C. Manning, M. Singh, and J. Treur. Implementing multi-agent systems: languages, frameworks, and standards (a report from the 1997 IWMAS workshop). AAAI-98 Workshop on Software Tools for Developing Agents, AAAI-TR WS-98-10, August 1998.
• L. Obrst, M. Woytowitz, D. Rock, S. Lander, K. Gallagher, K. Decker. Agent-Based Integrated product Teams. Proc. Engineering Information and Management Symposium (EIM97) of the ASME Design Engineering Technical Conferences, September, 1997.
• Mike Williamson, Keith Decker, and Katia Sycara. Executing Decision-theoretic Plans in Multi-agent Environments. AAAI Fall Symposium on Plan Execution, AAAI Report FS-96-01. November 1996.
• Mike Williamson, Keith Decker, and Katia Sycara. Unified Information and Control Flow in Hierarchical Task Networks. Working Notes of the AAAI-96 workshop on "Theories of Action, Planning, and Control". August 1996.
• Keith Decker, Katia Sycara, and Mike Williamson. Modeling Information Agents: Advertisements, Organizational Roles, and Dynamic Behavior. Working Notes of the AAAI-96 workshop on "Agent Modeling". AAAI Report WS-96-02. August 1996.
• Keith Decker, Mike Williamson, and Katia Sycara. Intelligent Adaptive Information Agents. Working Notes of the AAAI-96 workshop on "Intelligent Adaptive Agents". AAAI tech report "Intelligent Adaptive Agents". WS-96-04 August 1996.
• Keith Decker, Victor Lesser, M.V. Nagendra Prasad, and Thomas Wagner MACRON: An Architecture for Multi-agent Cooperative Information Gathering. In Proceedings of the CIKM Workshop on Intelligent Information Agents, Baltimore, Maryland, December, 1995
• Keith Decker and Victor Lesser. Coordination Assistance for Mixed Human and Computational Agents. In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Concurrent Engineering Research and Applications, McLean, Virginia, August 1995. Also UMASS Computer Science TR-95-31.
• Tim Oates, M.V. Nagendra Prasad, Victor Lesser, and Keith Decker. A Distributed Problem Solving Approach to Cooperative Information Gathering. AAAI Spring Symposium on Information Gathering in Distributed Environments, Stanford University, March 1995.
• Keith S. Decker and Victor R. Lesser. Designing a Family of Coordination Algorithms. In Proceedings of the 13th International Distributed AI Workshop, Washington, July 1994. Also UMASS Computer Science TR-94-14, January 1994.
• Keith S. Decker and Victor R. Lesser. Communication in the Service of Coordination. AAAI Workshop on Planning for Interagent Communication, Seattle, July 1994.
• Alan J. Garvey, Keith S. Decker, and Victor R. Lesser. A Negotiation-based Interface Between a Real-time Scheduler and a Decision-maker.AAAI Workshop on Models of Conflict Management, Seattle, July 1994. Also UMASS Computer Science TR-94-8, January 1994.
• Keith S. Decker and Victor R. Lesser. Task Environment Centered Design of Organizations. AAAI Spring Symposium on Computational Organization Design, Stanford University, March 21-23, 1994. An experimental HTML version is located HERE.
• Keith S. Decker, Alan J. Garvey, Victor R. Lesser, and Marty A. Humphrey. A blackboard system for real-time control of approximate processing. In Proceedings of the 25th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, January 1992.
• Keith S. Decker, Alan J. Garvey, Victor R. Lesser, and Marty A. Humphrey. Real-Time Control of Approximate Processing. In Proceedings of the Fifth Annual AAAI Workshop on Blackboard Systems, Anaheim, July 1991.
• Keith S. Decker and Victor R. Lesser. A scenario for cooperative distributed problem solving. In Proceedings of the Tenth International Workshop on Distributed AI, Texas, October 1990.
• Keith S. Decker, Marty A. Humphrey, and Victor R. Lesser. Effects of Parallelism in Blackboard System Scheduling. In Proceedings of the Fourth Annual AAAI Workshop on Blackboard Systems, Boston, July 1990.
• Keith S. Decker and Victor R. Lesser. Some initial thoughts on a generic architecture for {CDPS} network control. In Proceedings of the Ninth Workshop on Distributed AI, September 1989. Also in COINS TR-90-81.
• Keith S. Decker, Marty A. Humphrey, and Victor R. Lesser. Experimenting with control in the {DVMT}. In Proceedings of the Third Annual AAAI Workshop on Blackboard Systems, Detroit, August 1989. Also COINS TR-89-85.
• Keith S. Decker. DESCANT: A distributed expert system control architecture for non-independant tasks. Master's thesis, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, May 1987. Also GE Corporate R&D Tech Report 87-CRD-030.

Professional Activities

Editorial board, Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Workshop Chair, Fourth Intl. Conf. on Autonomous Agents, Barcelona, 2000

Publicity Chair, Second International Conference on Autonomous Agents, Minneapolis, 1998

Organizing Committee, AAAI Fall Symposium on Distributed Continual Planning, MIT, 1998

UPE and ACM faculty coordinator, 97-98

Site Director, U. Delaware, MidAtlantic Division, ACM Programming Contest 97

Graduate Committee member, CIS, University of Delaware, 96-97

Session Chair, IJCAI 97.

Program Committee, AAAI 96, 97

Program Committee, International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems[ICMAS], 96, 98, 2000

Program Committee, International Workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages, 97, 98

Program Committee, Intl. Conf. on AI Planning Systems, 2000

Program Committee, International Workshop on Cooperative Information Agents, 98

Program Committee, Australian DAI Workshop 95, 96, 97

Reviewer, IJCAI 95, 97

Reviewer, AI Journal

Reviewer, Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research

Reviewer, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics

Reviewer, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering

Reviewer, IEEE Expert

Reviewer, Bioinformatics

Reviewer, National Science Foundation

Reviewer, Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence

Reviewer, International Journal of Intelligent Systems

Reviewer, International Journal of Intelligent & Cooperative Information Systems

Reviewer, Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory

Reviewer, International Journal of Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance, and Management

Reviewer, Journal of Management Information Systems

Reviewer, ASME Design for Manufacturing Conference 98

Co-chair, Fifth AAAI Workshop on Blackboard Systems, Anahiem, CA 1991

 

 
 
 

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decker@cis.udel.edu

 

 
 
 

Last Update: 9/18/02