Alumni Hall Of Fame

Lee Spector

Photo of Lee Spector
Graduation Year:
1992
Dissertation:
Supervenience in Dynamic World Planning
Advisor(s):
Hendler

Lee Spector received his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in 1992 under the guidance of Professor James Hendler. His dissertation, "Supervenience in Dynamic-World Planning," incorporated perspectives from several disciplines in the cognitive sciences to address issues in artificial intelligence.

After graduating from Maryland Lee joined the faculty of the interdisciplinary School of Cognitive Science at Hampshire College, an innovative liberal arts college in Massachusetts. At Hampshire he  held the MacArthur Chair, served as the elected faculty member of the Board of Trustees, served as the Dean of the School of Cognitive Science, and taught and conducted research in several areas including genetic and evolutionary computation, quantum computation, planning in dynamic environments, artificial intelligence education, artificial intelligence and neuropsychology, and artificial intelligence in the arts. He returned to Maryland for one year, to supervise Professor Hendler's lab while Professor Hendler was away on a Fulbright fellowship.

Lee moved from Hampshire College to Amherst College in 2019, where he is now the Class of 1993 Professor of Computer Science. In addition to continuing his research and teaching at Amherst College, he also runs a program on Artificial Intelligence in the Liberal Arts. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science and member of the graduate faculty at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Lee is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines, an Associate Editor for the ACM Transactions on Evolutionary Learning and Optimization, and a member of the editorial board of Evolutionary Computation. He has won several awards and honors including the ACM SIGEVO Outstanding Contribution Award, two gold medals in the "Humies" Awards for Human-Competitive Results Produced By Genetic And Evolutionary Computation, and the highest honor bestowed by the National Science Foundation for excellence in both teaching and research, the NSF Director's Award for Distinguished Teaching Scholars.

 

Inductees

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J. Gary Augustson
Master's 1969

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David Baggett
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Photo of Suman Banerjee

Suman Banerjee
PhD 2003

Photo of Sergey Brin

Sergey Brin
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Photo of Paul Capriolo

Paul Capriolo
Bachelor's 2006

Photo of Anthony Casalena

Anthony Casalena
Bachelor's 2005

Photo of Charles Dyer

Charles Dyer
PhD 1979

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Gary Flake
PhD 1993

Photo of Rajiv Gandhi

Rajiv Gandhi
PhD 2003

Photo of Howard Gobioff

Howard Gobioff
Bachelor's 1993

Photo of Naresh Gupta

Naresh Gupta
PhD 1993

Photo of Patrick Jenkins

Patrick Jenkins
Bachelor's 2006

Photo of Vipin Kumar

Vipin Kumar
PhD 1982

Photo of Ronald Larsen

Ronald Larsen
PhD 1981

Photo of Haroon Mokhtarzada

Haroon Mokhtarzada
Bachelor's 2001

Photo of Idris Mokhtarzada

Idris Mokhtarzada
Bachelor's 2010

Photo of Zeki Mokhtarzada

Zeki Mokhtarzada
Bachelor's 2001

Photo of Shmuel Peleg

Shmuel Peleg
PhD 1979

Photo of Andrew Reisse

Andrew Reisse
Bachelor's 2001

Photo of Glenn Ricart

Glenn Ricart
PhD 1980

Photo of Debanjan Saha

Debanjan Saha
PhD 1995

Photo of Pooja Sankar

Pooja Sankar
Master's 2004

Photo of Jagdeep Singh

Jagdeep Singh
Bachelor's 1987

Photo of Aya Soffer

Aya Soffer
PhD 1995

Photo of Lee Spector

Lee Spector
PhD 1992

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Granger Sutton
PhD 1992

Photo of Qiang Yang

Qiang Yang
PhD 1989

Photo of Shayan Zadeh

Shayan Zadeh
Master's 2002