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ROBERT A. LEVINSON

levinson@cse.ucsc.edu
Professor of Computer Science, UCSC

Education
B.S., Mathematics, B.S., Computer Science,
University of Minnesota
Ph.D., Computer Science,
University of Texas at Austin

Curriculum Vitae (ps)

Publications Chess Links Bayesian Links AI Links Classes
Event Photos
Bob Levinson photo

Research

Robert Levinson's research crosses the broad spectrum of topics in Artificial Intelligence research - specifically in the areas of machine learning, heuristic search, knowledge representation, associative pattern retrieval and machine creativity. His major project, unifying his research, has been an adaptive pattern-oriented chess system named Morph, a system that learns to play respectable chess from its experience only.

Levinson's primary research goal is to give computers the benefit of experience. He believes that the fact that most computers do not make use of previous experience is a tremendous waste of computation. To serve his research goal he has developed a domain-independent learning architecture APS by which systems can improve their decision making and predictive abilities over time with little human assistance. To further his goal he has developed sophisticated algorithms for the content-based retrieval of structural patterns. These algorithms are being used in the Knowledge Representation community and commercially in Gerard Ellis's Santiago system. Levinson's methods have been or are currently being applied in the domains of organic chemistry, signal recognition, image alignment, medical diagnosis, and manufacturing systems design in addition to chess and other games.

Levinson is co-authoring a book called Scientific Thinking: A Systems Approach with Andrew Goodwin. The draft version of it is currently out for peer review.

He has consulted for Alphacet.com,Engineering Resource Associates, FMC,IBM, Minnesota Gas Company, TextWise, University of Minnesota, and the University of Texas.
Earth Tone Chess Players by Alan Boileau

Chess Links

World Champion Gary Kasparov in "The Test of Time"
Bob's collected chess quotes
Play The Turk!
Play TkChess
Chess Tutorial
More Chess Resources
Original sculpture by Alan Boileau on the web at douglasgallery

Bayesian Links

Bayesians Worldwide
David Heckerman's Bayesian Research
Probability Theory: The Logic of Science - Bob highly recommends this book by E.T.Jaynes, though not as a textbook but as a coherent solution to uncertain inference.
Reverand Thomas Bayes 1702-1761
Catch some history of Bayes at the Bayesian site

Some AI Links

AI Resource Center
A LISP Primer
John F. Sowa's web page
Some interesting web pages on Intelligent Agents
Artificial Intelligence - A Modern Approach (includes Lisp Code). This Intelligent Agent book has been used as a text book for the graduate class.

Classes

Note: The class web pages may not be upto date, please follow the respective class news groups.

CMPS80b - Systems and Simulation (General Science)
CMPS140 - Artificial Intelligence (Under-Graduate)
CMPS240 - Artificial Intelligence (Graduate) [Class Wiki].
CMPS241 - Knowledge Engineering (Graduate)
Studying Slug x