First AAAI Feigenbaum Prize Awarded!

AAAI is delighted to announce that Sebastian Thrun, professor of computer science and electrical engineering and director of the Stanford AI Lab at Stanford University, and William A. "Red" Whittaker, professor, Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, have been selected as the winners of the inaugural 2011 AAAI Feigenbaum Prize. This prize is awarded biennially to recognize and encourage outstanding artificial intelligence research advances that are made by using experimental methods of computer science. Thrun and Whittaker, whose teams won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge and 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, respectively, are being recognized in particular for high-impact contributions to the field of artificial intelligence through innovation and achievement in autonomous vehicle research, transitioning the concept of an autonomous vehicle from the realm of fiction to reality. The associated cash prize of $10,000 is provided by the Feigenbaum Nii Foundation. The prize will be presented during the opening ceremony of AAAI-11, to be held Tuesday, August 9, at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco.