Andrew Barto

Andrew G. Barto (born c. 1948) is a professor emeritus of computer science at University of Massachusetts Amherst. He joined the department in 1977, and served as its chair from 2007 to 2011.[1] His main research area is reinforcement learning.

Barto received his B.S. in mathematics from the University of Michigan in 1970 and five years later got his Ph.D. in computer science. In 1977, Barto joined the College of Information and Computer Sciences of the University of Massachusetts Amherst as a postdoctoral research associate and was promoted to associate professor in 1982, and full professor in 1991. He was a department chair from 2007 to 2011 and is a co-director of the Autonomous Learning Laboratory and faculty member of the Neuroscience and Behavior Program of the University of Massachusetts Amherst.[1]

Barto is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow and Senior Member of the IEEE,[2] and a member of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence and the Society for Neuroscience.

He has published over one hundred papers or chapters in journals, books, and conference and workshop proceedings. He is co-author with Richard Sutton of the book Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction, MIT Press 1998, and co-editor with Jennie Si, Warren Powell, and Don Wunch II of the Handbook of Learning and Approximate Dynamic Programming, Wiley-IEEE Press, 2004.[3]