Ian Horswill

Ian Horswill is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Northwestern University, with joint appointments in the Departments of Electrical Engineering/Computer Science and Radio/Television/Film. He directs the Division of Graphics and Interactive Media and the Animate Arts Program, blending AI research with interactive art and entertainment.

• Research Focus: Autonomous agents, emotion/personality modeling for virtual characters, procedural animation via the Twig system, and interdisciplinary education in the Animate Arts Program.
• Key Projects: Twig (procedural animation), Meta (Scheme-like programming language), and role-passing architectures for efficient inference in robotics.

Publications span AI, robotics, and games, with a focus on real-time decision-making, believable character behaviors, and cognitive architecture. His work has been recognized with the 2001 Nils Nilsson Prize.

• Students: Robin Hunicke, Magy Seif El-Nasr, and Rob Zubek, all of whom contributed to systems for game difficulty adjustment, dynamic lighting design, and natural-language dialog with NPCs.
• Affiliations: Chair of the Doctorial Consortium for the 2009 Foundations of Digital Games conference, member of the IGDA Education Committee.