BBN Research Projects

Home ..... Publications ..... Professional Activities

Current Projects (as of October, 2011)

2011-present: Principal Investigator on the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) sponsored Mentally Engaging Training for Analytic Thinking (MENTAT) project, which is developing game-based techniques to train improved decision-making and reduce cognitive biases in intelligence community analysts.

Prior Projects

2011: Lead Designer of a prototype web-based game for training fire fighters on first response procedures for an accident involving an electric automobile.

2008-2011: Principal Investigator on the Office of Naval Research (ONR)-sponsored Tools for Game-Based Training and Assessment of Human Performance project, which advanced the state of understanding of game-based training through over 25 empirical and analytic studies; developed an open-source pedagogy authoring tool to facilitate rapid development and repeatable creation of high-quality, effective, low-cost training and assessment products for the U.S. Navy; and created and deployed a damage control training system to enhance training of Navy recruits. His role involved defining the technical vision, managing six subcontractors and an internal team of six designers and developers, guiding the design process, and interacting with government customers and subject matter experts. The Virtual Environments for Ship and Shore Experiential Learning (VESSEL) Damage Control Trainer, one of the products of the project, won the award for Best Game (Business Category) in the 2009 Serious Games Showcase and Challenge and a Training Magazine's 2010 Top 125 Award for Outstanding Initiative in Training. He and his team won the National Training and Simulation Association (NTSA) 2010 Modeling and Simulation Award for Outstanding Achievement in Training for their contributions to the training field.

See project website: vessel.bbn.com

2006-2007: Development lead on the DARPA-sponsored Plan Order Induction by Reasoning from One Trial (POIROT) project, which is applying a broad range of machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques to learning procedural knowledge based on a single observation of a human performing a medical evacuation planning task. His role involved helping manage the development activities of twelve subcontractors and an internal team of seven developers working closely with the PI, managing and participating in the design and development of semantic web-based services, and performing knowledge acquisition activities with an Army expert in medical evacuation procedures.

2005-2006: Technical contributor on the DARPA-sponsored Adaptive Dynamic Radio Open-source Intelligent Team (ADROIT) project, in which he developing cognitive control architecture and mechanisms for a reconfigurable network based upon software defined radios.

2005: Contributor to the DARPA-sponsored SPINDLE project (Survival Policy-Influenced Networking: Disruption Tolerance through Learning and Evolution), in which we explored the use of genetic-programming to evolve routing rules for a disruption-tolerant communication network.

2004-2005: Principal investigator on the DARPA-sponsored Gormans Gambit project, which studied the design issues involved in training human soldiers teamwork skills using modern multi-player game technology.

2004: Principal investigator on the ARL-sponsored Advocates and Critics for Tactical Behaviors (ACTB) project, which applied domain-dependent genetic algorithms to evolve the paths and actions of a simulated unmanned ground vehicle.

2001-2003: Contributor to Vishnu, BBN's reconfigurable scheduling software, developed and enhanced over several DOD-sponsored projects to produce a web-based, automated scheduling system whose data formats, scheduling logic, and displays can be reconfigured for different problems and domains without writing any new code. Vishnu Home Page

2003: Contributor to the DARPA-sponsored Ultra*Log project, in which he transitioned developments from the FCS UA Supportability project to the Ultra*Log system.

2003: Key contributor on the Future Combat Systems (FCS) Unit of Action Supportability project, which applied genetic algorithms to the problem of scheduling fuel distribution for moving combat vehicles.

2002: Lead investigator for the DARPA-sponsored Colonies of Neural Networks (CoNN) effort, which applied genetic algorithms, neural networks and attribute grammars for the representation and evolution of complex neural network solutions to a battlefield course-of-action prediction problem.

2000-2001: Technical lead on the DARPA-sponsored Salamander project, which applied evolutionary computation to the problem of optimizing the topology of a computer network in order to maintain quality-of-service.