Dr. Kenneth Ford to discuss artificial intelligence at UWF

Mar. 19, 2015

The University of West Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Group (AIRG) will host Dr. Kenneth Ford, founder and chief executive officer of the Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition (IHMC), on March 24, 2015 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. in the UWF Pensacola Campus’ Science and Engineering Building Auditorium. His talk is titled, “Toward Cognitive Orthotics: A Human-Centered Future for AI.”

Dr. Ford is a computer scientist with research interests in artificial intelligence, cognitive science, human-centered computing and entrepreneurship in government and academia. He has authored hundreds of scientific papers and six books, and received many fellowships, awards and honors. Florida Trend Magazine recently named him one of Florida’s 4 most influential citizens working in academia.

Ford has served on the National Science Board and the Air Force Science Advisory Board. In 2007, he became a member of the NASA Advisory Council and in October 2008, he was named Chairman. In August 2010, Dr. Ford was awarded NASA’s Distinguished Public Service Medal – the highest honor the agency confers. In February of 2012, Dr. Ford was named to a two-year term on the Defense Science Board (DSB). In 2015, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) awarded Dr. Ford its Distinguished Service Award for “extraordinary and sustained service” to the AI community.

Ford will discuss human-centered computing, and how this technology is changing the way that people think about information technology. The AIperspective views this HCC framework as embodying a “systems view,” in which human thought and action are linked and equally important in terms of analysis, design and evaluation. This emerging technology provides a new research outlook for AI applications, with new research goals and agendas.

The AI Research Group at UWF was established in 2010 to provide opportunities for all interested undergraduate and graduate students to learn about AIand work on AI research projects. Under the guidance of the group’s Faculty Advisor, Dr. Eman El-Sheikh, AIRG students have worked on several AI research projects that involve the development and evaluation of AI and machine learning methods for intelligent agents, robotics and simulations.

For more information about the AIRG at UWF, visit https://uwfai.github.io.