معرفی
Sridhar Mahadevan is an Adjunct Professor in the College of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has held previous academic positions at Michigan State University, the University of South Florida, and was a visiting scholar at Carnegie Mellon University. His research focuses on machine learning, multi-agent systems, planning, perception, robotics, and probabilistic models, with recent emphasis on hierarchical frameworks for autonomous learning and sequential decision-making using Markov decision processes. Mahadevan is an Associate Editor of Machine Learning and Journal of Machine Learning Research, and has contributed to editorial boards of major AI journals. He co-founded LookAhead Decisions Inc. and has been recognized with the NSF CAREER Award (1995) and best paper awards at international conferences.
Education:
- PhD in Computer Science, Rutgers University, 1990
Research Interests: Mahadevan’s work spans foundational AI topics including reinforcement learning, causal inference, and generative models. His applied research includes robotics navigation, active vision systems, and spectroscopic analysis for space science. He pioneered methods for autonomous learning from perceptual data streams and developed frameworks like manifold alignment for cross-domain data integration.
Key Contributions:
- Developed hierarchical hidden Markov processes and semi-Markov decision processes
- Advanced manifold learning techniques for spectroscopic calibration under non-stationary conditions
- Contributed to theoretical foundations of proximal reinforcement learning and variational inequalities
Awards:
- NSF CAREER Award (1995)
- Best Student Paper Award at Autonomous Agents Conference (2001)
- Best Paper Award Runner-Up at International Conference on Machine Learning (1999)
Advising & Grants: Advised students Rajbala Makar and Mohammad Ghavamzadeh. His NSF-funded projects include research on spectroscopic analysis and reinforcement learning theory. Collaborative grants include work on generative AI for Mars mineral analysis.
Labs & Teams: Co-founder of LookAhead Decisions Inc., a company advancing decision-making systems using causal inference and reinforcement learning. Active in interdisciplinary teams applying AI to space science and robotics.
