University of Southern California
Research Group

Research Awards

USC Viterbi Use-Inspired Research Award In recognition and appreciation of Distinguished Performance

Milind Tambe Award 2009

 Award recognizes significant work in four key areas — scientific understanding, technical knowledge, research promise and societal needs — that has culminated in a demonstrably useful contribution to a problem of national/societal importance.
Certificate of Recognition to CREATE by Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate, Office of University Programs

CREATE Award 2009

Los Angeles World Airports police special commendations from the city of Los Angeles

LAX Award 2009

Fellow of Association for Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)

ACM Autonomous Agents Research Award 2005

      

The Okawa foundation for information and telecommunication research grant, 2003

Scientific Challenge Award, RoboCup'99 International Robotic Soccer competitions, held in conjunction with IJCAI'99, for outstanding research at a RoboCup competition.

      

Best Papers

  • Best paper, AAMAS'2009 Industry track Our paper from the International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2009) given the best paper award in the industry track. The paper is entitled "IRIS - A Tool for Strategic Security Allocation in Transportation Networks".
  • Best student poster award, Third Annual Department of Homeland Security University Summit
    Graduate student Jason Tsai received the best student poster award for his presentation of IRIS, a program being perfected for use by Federal Air Marshals to randomize their security operations.
  • Best paper, CTS'2008 Our paper from the International Symposium on Collaborative Technologies and Systems (CTS 2008) given the best paper award. The paper is entitled "Multiagent Adjustable Autonomy Framework (MAAF) for multirobot multihuman teams".
  • Finalist for Best paper, AAMAS'2008 Industry track Our paper from the International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2008) a finalist for the best paper award. The paper is entitled "Deployed ARMOR protection: The Application of a Game Theoretic Model for Security at the Los Angeles International Airport".
  • Best paper, DCR’2007 Our paper from the International workshop on Distributed constraint reasoning (DCR2007), held in conjuction with IJCAI’2007, selected the best paper. The paper is entitled “Lower bounds on the quality of k-optimal DCOP solutions with respect to the global optimum”.
  • Best paper, SASEMAS’2005 Our paper from the International Workshop on Safety and Security in Multiagent Systems (SASEMAS’2005) selected as the best paper. This paper is entitled “Safety in multiagent systems via policy randomization”.
  • Finalist for Best Paper, CEEMAS’2005 Our paper from the Central and Eastern European Conference on Agents and Multiagent Systems 2005 (CEEMAS’2005) finalist for Best Paper Award. This paper is entitled “On Communication in Solving Distributed Constraint Satisfaction problems”.
  • Finalist for Best Student Paper AAMAS'03: Our paper from the International Joint Conference on Agents andMultiagent Systems 2003 (AAMAS’2003) finalist for Best Student Paper Award. This paper is entitled “An asynchronous complete method for distributed constraint optimization” (first author: Pragnesh Jay Modi, PhD student).
  • Best Paper AAMAS'02: Our paper from the First International Joint conf on Autonomous Agents and Multiagents'02 "Multiagent teamwork: Analyzing the complexity and optimality of key theories and models" was selected the best paper.
  • "Best of" Agents'99: Our paper from the International conf on Autonomous Agents'99 "Experiences acquired in the design of RoboCup teams" was selected for publication in the "Best of Agents'99" special journal issue of JAAMAS.
  • "Best of" ICMAS'98: Our paper from the International conf on Multi-agent Systems'98 "Towards flexible teamwork in persistent teams" was selected for publication in the "Best of ICMAS'98" special journal issue of JAAMAS.

Awards of excellence in research and teaching for Teamcore members

Emma Bowring wins the Outstanding teaching assistant award from the Center for Excellence in Teaching, University of Southern California

Jonathan Pearce receives the award for best Research Assistant for the year 2006 from the CS department chair (below).

      

Above(left): Pradeep Varakantham receives the award for best Research Assistant for the year 2005 from the CS department chair.

Above(right): Emma Bowring receives a special award for proposing and creating an outline for a new innovative course in AI, titled Intelligent Agents and Science Fiction (CS 499).

Chairs excellence award for Steven Okamoto: For his master's thesis "The story of distributed constraint optimization in LA: Relaxed" (awarded by Computer Science Department at USC).

      

Robotic competitions, software prototype award winners

  • Silver medal, RoboFesta'2001 International Robotic Games Festival, for our agent teams for RoboCup Rescue.
  • Third place prize, RoboCup'2001 International Robotic Soccer and Rescue competition and symposium, for our agent teams for RoboCup Rescue.
  • Third place prize, RoboCup'97 International Robotic Soccer Competitions, held in conjunction with IJCAI'97, in the simulation league.