Microsoft researcher Eric Horvitz wins ACM-AAAI award for work in artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence researcher and Managing Director of Microsoft's Redmond, Washington, research lab Eric Horvitz has just won the ACM-AAAI Allen Newell Award, Microsoft shared on a blog post today. The award acknowledges his groundbreaking contributions in artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction as well as "his persistent focus on using those discoveries as the basis for practical applications that make our lives easier and more productive." Horvitz first got interested in practical applications of artificial intelligence when he was pursuing his Ph.D. on principles of bounded rationality, as he wanted to "understand how computing systems immersed in the real world could make the best decisions in time-critical situations." Since then, Horvitz has combined multiple computer science disciplines through his work and he has been leading the research in exploring the interrelationships between artificial intelligence and fields like decision science, cognitive science, and neuroscience. Horvitz even collaborated with NASA's Mission Control Center to help them providing flight engineers with the most valuable information about space shuttle systems under intense time pressure.