Robert Wilensky, professor emeritus of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of the campus's first faculty members in artificial intelligence when the field was just taking off, has died at age 61. He died at the Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland on Friday, March 15, of a bacterial infection. Wilensky's career at UC Berkeley spanned nearly 30 years, beginning in 1978 when he joined the faculty in computer science. He later was appointed a professor at the School of Information and Management Sciences (now the School of Information, or I School), which he helped form. His many research interests included the role of memory processes in natural language processing, language analysis and production and artificial intelligence in programming languages.

Computer scientist and AI pioneer EDWARD A. FEIGENBAUM has partnered with Stanford Libraries to make his personal papers available online, including more than 16,500 notes, scientific development documents, correspondence, Artificial Intelligence Lab memos, audio tapes and videos. Starting with the dawn of artificial intelligence research and computer science in 1956, the Edward A. Feigenbaum Papers allows users to explore a pivotal time in AI history by accessing documents from Feigenbaum's distinguished career as a scientist, book author, department chairman, government adviser and chief scientist of the U.S. Air Force. Feigenbaum joined the Stanford computer science faculty in 1965 as one of its founding members. That same year, he and Professor JOSHUA LEDERBERG, who had won a Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology in 1958, before coming to Stanford, started the DENDRAL project, the world's first expert system. DENDRAL's groundbreaking work moved artificial intelligence out of the laboratory and into the structure of countless software applications.

McCarthy created the term "artificial intelligence" and was a towering figure in computer science at Stanford most of his professional life. In his career, he developed the programming language LISP, played computer chess via telegraph with opponents in Russia and invented computer time-sharing. In 1966, John McCarthy hosted a series of four simultaneous computer chess matches carried out via telegraph against rivals in Russia. John McCarthy, a professor emeritus of computer science at Stanford, the man who coined the term "artificial intelligence" and subsequently went on to define the field for more than five decades, died suddenly at his home in Stanford in the early morning Monday, Oct. 24. McCarthy was a giant in the field of computer science and a seminal figure in the field of artificial intelligence.

Guy Bresler joined the MIT faculty in September 2015 as the Bonnie and Marty (1964) Tenenbaum Career Development Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). He also joined the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS) -- which addresses complex societal challenges by advancing education and research at the intersection of statistics, data science, information and decision systems, and social sciences -- as a member of the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS). Bresler's research investigates the relationship between combinatorial structure and computational tractability of high-dimensional inference in graphical models and other statistical models. His current work focuses on learning graphical models from data, and explores how both data and computation requirements can be reduced if the model is subsequently used for a specific inference task. Bresler is also interested in applications of these methods, especially to recommendation systems and computational biology.

Edward S. Boyden, a professor of media arts and sciences, biological engineering, and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, has won the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biomedicine for his role in the development of optogenetics, a technique for controlling brain activity with light. Gero Miesenböck of the Oxford University and Karl Deisseroth of Stanford University were also honored with the prize for their role in developing and refining the technique. The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards are given annually for "outstanding contributions and radical advances in a broad range of scientific, technological, and artistic areas." The 400,000-Euro prize in the category of biomedicine will be shared among the three neuroscientists. "If we imagine the brain as a computer, optogenetics is a keyboard that allows us to send extremely precise commands," says Boyden, a faculty member at the MIT Media Lab with a joint appointment at MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research.

Tired of dating people who stare at you blankly when you talk about your affection for Asimo? Online dating site Robot Passions says it can help you find a partner who shares your love of robots--or at least thinks Gundam is pretty cool. Robot lovers longing for a date with metal sexpot Roxxxy might be disappointed to learn that the site is currently restricted to humans. It does, however, note that it hopes to include robots among its members "once their AI is sufficiently advanced." Wait, what does one get a Roomba for Valentine's Day? Robot Passions is part of Passions Network's extensive roster of free online dating sites, which include such other geek offerings as Comic Book Passions, Zombie Passions, Trek Passions, and Ninja Passions.

At a gala charity event Saturday night featuring "Avatar" director James Cameron, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and a who's who of tech industry luminaries, the X Prize Foundation laid out its vision for the next five years. Already in 2004, the foundation has paid out $10 million in prize money for the winner of the Ansari X Prize, which in 2004 went to the first non-governmental team to launch a vehicle into space twice in two weeks. The prize winners were Burt Rutan and the Paul Allen-backed team that built SpaceShipOne. The foundation offers both X Prizes--$10 million or more for large-scale competitions focused on global problems that may take between three and eight years to solve--and X Challenges, awards on the order of $1 million for technology challenges and breakthroughs that have a time frame of one to two years. Currently, the foundation is offering up millions of dollars in prize money for the first teams to sequence 100 genomes in 10 days (the $10 million Archon X Prize); to send a robot to the moon, travel 500 meters and transmit video, data and images back to Earth (the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize); and to produce green, production-ready cars capable of exceeding 100 miles per gallon or its energy equivalent (the $10 million Progressive Automotive X Prize).

Robert Engelmore, a computer scientist and artificial intelligence pioneer, died March 25 during a family vacation in Kauai. He was a former executive director of the Knowledge Systems Laboratory who applied expert systems technology in scientific, industrial and military domains. Engelmore, 68, had been swimming in a rock-rimmed shoreline pool with his 5-year-old grandson, Jack, when they and other swimmers were overwhelmed by giant waves. Engelmore helped lift the child to safety but was pulled out to sea by currents. By the time lifeguards reached him, his heart had stopped beating.

Five years ago, when I was trying to name this column, I found that all the clever technology titles involving bytes, bits and so forth had already been taken. So I thought: since I'm interested in how technology will affect us in years to come, why not "Practical Futurist"? It seemed humorous at the time: how many futurists are known for practicality? But within months, people were referring to me as a futurist. And thus I learned my first lesson about the profession: the way you become a futurist is simply to call yourself one. So at the end of July I couldn't resist the opportunity to join more than a thousand fellow futurists at the World Future Society's annual meeting in Toronto, Canada.

BIG data is suddenly everywhere. Everyone seems to be collecting it, analyzing it, making money from it and celebrating (or fearing) its powers. Whether we're talking about analyzing zillions of Google search queries to predict flu outbreaks, or zillions of phone records to detect signs of terrorist activity, or zillions of airline stats to find the best time to buy plane tickets, big data is on the case. By combining the power of modern computing with the plentiful data of the digital era, it promises to solve virtually any problem -- crime, public health, the evolution of grammar, the perils of dating -- just by crunching the numbers. Or so its champions allege.