Awards - The Teamcore Research Group

Research Awards

Certificate of Appreciation, IRIS Project The IRIS research team led by Prof. Milind Tambe was presented the Certificate of Appreciation for IRIS Project, by the Office of Law Enforcement/Federal Air Marshal Service, 2011
Commander, First Coast Guard District’s Operational Excellence Award, 2011 CREATE's ARMOR research team, led by Dr. Milind Tambe was presented the Award for their work on the PROTECT project being carried out at Boston Harbor	Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation Homeland Security Award, 2010 From the award ceremony held at the Mansfield room, US Capitol
USC Parents Association Teaching and Mentoring Award, 2010 Milind Tambe (center) with USC president Nikias (right) and Executive Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Jean Morrison (left)	USC Viterbi Use-Inspired Research Award In recognition and appreciation of Distinguished Performance, 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.
Los Angeles World Airports police special commendations from the city of Los Angeles, 2009	Certificate of Recognition for ARMOR to CREATE by Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate, Office of University Programs, 2009
Fellow of Association for Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2007	ACM Autonomous Agents Research Award, 2005
The Okawa foundation for information and telecommunication research grant, 2003	Scientific Challenge Award, RoboCup 1999 International Robotic Soccer competitions, held in conjunction with IJCAI 1999, for outstanding research at a RoboCup competition

Most Influential Papers

Best Paper, IFAAMAS '2012: The following paper was awarded the most influential paper award by the International Foundation for Agents and Multiagent Systems (IFAAMAS) in 2012 "Towards Flexible Teamwork" (Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, Volume 7, pages 83-124, 1997)

Best Papers

Best Paper, IVA'2011: Our paper at the 11th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA) was given the best paper award. The paper is entitled "Empirical Evaluation of Computational Emotional Contagion Models"
Rist Prize'2011, Military Operations Research Society: The RIST prize recognizes the practical benefits of sound Operations Research. Our abstract is entitled “Software Assistants for Patrol Planning at LAX, Federal Air Marshals Service, and Transportation Security Administration”.
Best paper, AAMAS'2011 Innovative Application track Our paper from the International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2011) was given the best paper award in the AAMAS'2011 innovative application track. The paper is entitled "GUARDS - Game Theoretic Security Allocation on a National Scale".
2010 Finalist, EURO Excellence in Practice Award EEPA'2010: Our paper from the journal "Interfaces" was selected to be a finalist for the EEPA'2010 award. The paper is entitled "Software Assistants for Randomized Patrol Planning for The LAX Airport Police and The Federal Air Marshals Service."
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

Manish Jain wins the Outstanding Research Assistant Award from the Computer Science Department.

James Pita won the student merit award for security and defense at the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) annual meeting held during December 5 - December 8 in 2010, for his abstract on Risk allocation decisions against adaptive adversaries

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

Below: Jonathan Pearce receives the award for best Research Assistant for the year 2006 from the CS department chair.

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.