KRISTEN BRENT VENABLE

Day 1 Speaker

Kristen has deep roots in Texas. She was born in Dallas, her parents being, respectively, from Houston and Amarillo. Kristen  then attended a private boarding school in Italy where she graduate from the Liceo Classico, a high school with a major in humanities (possibly the only high school in the world where students  study both Latin and Ancient Greek which is  renowned for its advanced curricula in philosophy, literature and history). Kristen then graduated Magna Cum Laude in Pure Mathematics at the University of Padova in Italy and then received her doctorate in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence with a dissertation on automatically learning preferences over schedules that she developed at NASA Ames in the context of the planners of the first two Mars Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. Kristen continued her career in research in Artificial Intelligence and is now a senior research scientist at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC)  where she serves as  director of the  IHMC-UWF PhD program in Intelligent Systems and Robotics. She is also professor of computer science at University of West Florida. Previously she was in joint appointment with Tulane University, which she joined in 2012 as associate professor and where she became  professor of computer science in 2018. Prior to that, she was a tenured Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Padova, Italy. Kristen’s research  is dedicated to providing a solid framework for the design and deployment of intelligent systems able to reason about preferences.  Automated preference models are needed in decision-support systems such as web-based recommender systems, human-machine teaming platforms and behavioral modeling. Her research has also recently addressed the important topic of AI for social good and the ethical implications of the deployment of artificial agents. She is also very active in supporting and championing women in computer science and research in general. Kristen is the co-author of two books, and has published over 100 scientific  papers including journal and conference publications in the most prestigious AI venues.  She maintains a lively collaboration with several research centers, among which NICTA, NASA Ames, and IBM Research. She has been successfully funded by several institutions including NASA, ONR, NIH, NSF, the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative and the Future of Life Institute. Kristen loves living in Dallas with her two children Robert (12), Jasmine (6) and her  husband Jeffery Bradley.  Kristen and Jeff also run their Dallas-based O&G and investments family business. The Venable-Bradleys love to travel, spend time outdoors and cook vegan meals.