Milind Tambe

Milind Tambe is Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science and Director of Center for Research on Computation and Society at Harvard University; he is also Director "AI for Social Good" at Google Research India. He is a fellow of AAAI (Association for Advancement of Artificial Intelligence),[1] ACM (Association for Computing Machinery).[2] He is also recipient of the IJCAI John McCarthy Award,[3] as well as ACM SIGART Autonomous Agents Research Award,[4] AAAI (Association for Advancement of Artificial Intelligence) Robert S. Engelmore Memorial Lecture Award, the Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation Homeland security award, the INFORMS Wagner prize for excellence in Operations Research practice and others. He has also received Distinguished Alumnus Award from Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani, India.[5]

Milind Tambe
Born	Maharashtra, India
Citizenship	American
Alma mater	Carnegie Mellon University
Awards	AAAI Robert S Engelmore Award (2019) IJCAI John McCarthy Award (2018) ACM Fellow (2013) AAAI Fellow (2007) ACM SIGART Autonomous Agents Research Award (2005)
Scientific career
Fields	Artificial Intelligence Computer Science
Institutions	Harvard University
Thesis	Eliminating combinatorics from production match (1991)
Doctoral advisor	Allen Newell Paul Rosenbloom
Website	teamcore.seas.harvard.edu/tambe

Previous to his position at Harvard and Google, he was Helen N. and Emmett H. Jones Professor in Engineering and a Professor of Computer Science and Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.[6]

Milind Tambe’s research focuses on advancing AI and multi-agent systems research for social good. Examples of topics he has worked on include: (i) AI for conservation; (iii) AI for public health and social work; and (iii) AI for public safety and security. His research focuses on fundamental problems in computational game theory, machine learning, automated planning, intelligent agents, and multi-agent interactions that are driven by these topics, ensuring a virtuous cycle of research and real-world applications. Prof. Tambe has contributed several foundational papers in Artificial Intelligence in these areas, for which he has received influential paper and best paper awards at a number of premier Artificial Intelligence Conferences and workshops, such as IJCAI, AAMAS and others. This research has led to significant practical impact, such as use of the green security games framework to assist wildlife conservation around the world, use of social networks and machine learning to assist in improving public health outcomes such as HIV prevention, and the use of pioneering security games research for security optimization by agencies such as the US Coast Guard and the Federal Air Marshals Service.

A key example is the PAWS AI system developed by him and his team that has been deployed in collaboration with wildlife conservation agencies to assist rangers around the world. PAWS has helped rangers in removing 1000s of traps used to kill endangered wildlife in national parks in countries such Cambodia and Uganda.[7] Furthermore, PAWS is integrated with the SMART software, making PAWS available for use at 100s of national parks around the globe.[8] Other examples include research in collaboration with NGOs for improving maternal health care outcomes, for HIV prevention, TB prevention and others. For example, in a recently completed study with 700 youth experiencing homelessness, Prof. Tambe & team's algorithms led to a significant reduction in HIV risk behaviors compared to traditional approaches.

In terms of public safety and security, the security games framework that Prof. Tambe pioneered has been deployed and tested for security optimization, both nationally and internationally, by agencies such as the US Coast Guard and the Federal Air Marshals Service. More specifically, his algorithms have been deployed by USA security agencies such as LAX police division,[9] the Federal Air Marshals Service,[10] the US Coast Guard[11] and the Transportation Security Administration.[12]