Chitta Baral

University of Texas at El Paso
Department of Computer Science, El Paso, TX 79902
Phone: (915) 747-6952 / (915) 747-5030 / (915) 581-3562 (office/fax/home)
E-mail: chitta@cs.utep.edu Home page: http://cs.utep.edu/chitta/chitta.html




Highlights of my Resume
      * One of my main research interest is on developing theories of change for dynamic systems (such as robots and agents in a changing world) and using it to verify and automatically generate their control. I have papers on this in several top conferences (IJCAI 93, AAAI 94, IJCAI 95, AAAI 96, KR 96, IJCAI 97, Agents 98), and journals (AI journal, Computational Intelligence, Journal of Automated Reasoning, Journal of Logic Programming). I have a mobile robot lab with 15 LEGO robots, 1 Pioneer, 1 Nomad Scout, 1 B-14 robot and several home-built robots. I took two groups of students to robot contests in AAAI. In AAAI 96, our team was 3rd in the Office navigation contest scoring 285/295 points. In AAAI 97, our team was 1st in the finals of the home vacuuming contest. I have also received a grant from NSF for an undergraduate laboratory for building and programming mobile robots under the NSF ILI program. I have been teaching courses on robots and agents for last 3 years, and have taught an undergraduate course 3 times, and 3 different graduate courses (Cognitive Robotics, Autonomous agents, and Robot Navigation). I also use our robot lab to give demonstrations and have robot building workshops for school students and teachers.


      * Another main (but recent) research interest of mine is multi-media and visualization, particularly from the database and web point of view. I have a paper in the journal of `Multi-media tools and applications', a paper in ACM Multi-media 98, a paper in a workshop on multi-media information systems and another paper in ICDE98 (International conference on Data Engineering). In the last paper I propose an extension to SQL for the visualization of answers that contain multi-media objects. We have built a prototype system for that.


      * I am also currently interested in other aspects of databases, particularly active databases and workflows. I have published several papers on the subject.


      * The common theme behind my interests is my desire to balance building systems with a proper foundation based on formal methods and logic and I have published on topics such as logic programming, non-monotonic reasoning, circumscription, and knowledge representation.


      * I have presented a tutorial on using action theories as a unifying concept behind database updates, active databases, workflows and agents in the DOOD 97 conference. I also presented another tutorial on using action theories for planning control strategies for reactive agents in AAAI 98.


      * I have received an NSF RIA award of $90,000 (1992), an NSF CAREER award of $135,000 (1995), a NASA grant of approximately $2.5 million for establishing a Network resources and training site at UTEP, an NSF ILI grant of $40,000 (with a $40,000 match from UTEP) for establishing an undergraduate robotics laboratory, and a grant of $57,000 from United Space Alliance for using action theories in shuttle control.


      * Finally, in case it matters my US immigration status is `permanent resident' and I am 32 years old.



Research Interests
      *     Robots and agents -- from theory to practice.
(mobile robots, robot control -- formal characterization and automatic generation, cognitive robotics, reasoning about actions, concurrent actions, complex actions, actions with causal effects, actions with non-deterministic effects, narratives, sensing actions, actions with probabilistic effects, Bayes networks, Markov decision processes, Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes, etc.)

      *     Multimedia and Visualization.
(Modeling of Multi-media data, object relational model, Multi-media database design using extended ER models, Modeling the web as a database, Visualization and display of multi-media data, etc.)

      *     Active, deductive and incomplete databases and workflows.
(Semantics of active databases, Formulating correctness of active databases, specification of the purpose of active databases and automatic derivation of active rules from this specification, modeling workflows as multiple co-operative agents, etc.)

      *     Non-monotonic Reasoning, Knowledge Representation, Logic Programming, Temporal Reasoning, Combining knowledge bases, and AI in general.



Education
Doctor of Philosophy, Computer Science             August 1991.
University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland.
Dissertation: Issues in Knowledge Representation : Semantics and Knowledge Combination.
Advisor: Prof. Jack Minker.

Master of Science, Computer Science             May 1990.
University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland.

Bachelor of Technology with Honors, Computer Science and Engineering         May 1987.
Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India.



Professional Experience
Associate Professor:(Fall 1996 - present)
Department of Computer Science, University of Texas at El Paso.(Was tenured one year earlier than the normal time frame at UTEP.)

Visiting Scientist: (June 1998 - Aug 98)
i2 Technologies, Dallas. Worked on planning and scheduling methods for supply chain planners. (I am consulting with them for the next several months.)

Visiting Professor: (Dec 1996 - Jan 97)
Department of Computer Science, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

Assistant Professor: (Fall 1991 - Summer 1996)
Department of Computer Science, University of Texas at El Paso.

Graduate Research Fellow: (Fall 1990 - Summer 1991)
University of Maryland, College Park. Research towards my dissertation.

Graduate Research Assistant: (Summer 1988 - Summer 1991)
Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland, College Park. Dissertation work on semantics of knowledge representation languages and theory of combining knowledge bases. Also investigated the use of semantic constraints to constrain the search space in a parallel logic programming environment.

Teaching Assistant: (Fall 87 - Spring 88)
Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland, College Park. Assisted courses in Computer Architecture, Compiler Design and Data structures.



PUBLICATIONS and SUBMISSIONS

Journal Articles:

[1]     C. Baral, J.Minker and S. Kraus. Combining Multiple Knowledge Bases. In IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, June 1991, volume 3, number 2, pages 208-221.

[2]     C. Baral and V. S. Subrahmanian. Stable and Extension Class Theory for Logic Programs and Default Logics. In Journal of Automated Reasoning, 8: 345-366, 1992.

[3]     C. Baral, J. Lobo and J. Minker. Generalized Disjunctive Well-founded Semantics for logic programs. In Annals of Math and Artificial Intelligence, 5 (1992) 89-132.

[4]     C. Baral, S. Kraus, J. Minker and V. S. Subrahmanian. Combining Knowledge Bases Consisting of First Order Theories. In Computational Intelligence, 8, 1, (1992), 45-71.

[5]     C. Baral and V. S. Subrahmanian. Duality between Alternative Semantics of Logic Programs and Nonmonotonic Formalisms. In Journal of Automated Reasoning, 10:399-420, 1993.

[6]     C. Ramamoorthy, D. Cooke and C. Baral. Maintaining the Truth of Specifications in Evolutionary Software. In International Journal of Tools for Artificial Intelligence, vol 2, No 1 (1993) 15-31.

[7]     C. Baral. Varying Selection Function to Relate Conditional Logics and Preferential Models. In Fundamenta Informaticae, vol 21, No. 4 (1994), 307-320.

[8]     C. Baral and M. Gelfond. Logic Programming and Knowledge Representation. In Journal of Logic Programming, Journal of Logic Programming, 19,20:73-148, 1994.

[9]     C. Baral, S. Kraus, J. Minker and V. S. Subrahmanian. Combining Default Logic Databases. In International Journal of Intelligent and Co-operative Information Systems, vol. 3, No. 3, 319-348, 1994.

[10]     C. Baral and Michael Gelfond. Reasoning about effects of concurrent actions. In Journal of Logic Programming, Vol 31(1-3), May 97, 85-117.

[11]     C. Baral. Embedding Revision Programs in Logic Programming Situation Calculus. In Journal of Logic Programming, vol 30(1), Jan 97, 83-97.

[12]     C. Baral, M. Gelfond and A. Provetti. Representing Actions: Laws, Observations and Hypothesis. In Journal of Logic Programming, Vol 31(1-3), May 97, 201-243.

[13]     C. Baral, M. Gelfond and O. Kosheleva. Expanding queries to incomplete databases by interpolating general logic programs. In Journal of Logic Programming, vol 35, 1998, 195-230.

[14]     C. Baral. Relating Logic programming theories of actions and partial order planning. To appear in Annals of Math and AI, Vol.21(1997) Nos. 2-4.

[15]     C. Baral, G. Gonzalez and T. Son. Conceptual modeling and querying in multi-media databases. In Multimedia Tools and Applications, 7, 37-66 (1998).

[16]     C. Baral, A. Gabaldon and A. Provetti. Value minimization in Circumscription. To appear in Artificial Intelligence, 102/2, 163-186, Sept 1998.

[17]     C. Baral, A. Gabaldon and A. Provetti. Formalizing narratives using nested circumscription and value minimization. To appear in Artificial Intelligence, 104/1-2, 107-164, Oct 1998.



Journal Submissions Under Review:

[1]     C. Baral and T. Son. Relating theories of actions and reactive control. Submitted for publication. (Linkoping Electronic articles in Computer and Information Science. Vol. 3 (1998): nr 9. http://www.ep.liu.se/ea/cis/1998/009)


[2]     C. Baral, G. Gonzalez and B. Rachamreddy. SQL+D: Display specifications for multimedia answers. Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering on Data and Knowledge Management in multi-media systems.

[3]     C. Baral and T. Son. Formalizing sensing actions -- a transition function based approach. Submitted to Artificial Intelligence.

[4]     C. Baral. Abductive reasoning through filtering. Submitted to Artificial Intelligence.



Book Chapters (Refereed):

[1]     C. Baral, Michael Gelfond and Richard Watson. Reasoning about actual and hypothetical occurances of concurrent and non-deterministic actions. In Theoretical Approaches to Dynamic Worlds, Edited by, Bertram Fronhofer and Remo Pareschi (to appear).



Conference Papers (Refereed):

[36]     C. Baral, G. Gonzalez and T. Son. SQL+D:extended display capabilities for multimedia database queries. In proceedings of 6th ACM Multi-media conference, September 98, 109-114.

[35]     C. Baral, L. Floriano, A. Hardesty, D. Morales, M. Nogueira and T. Son. From theory to practice: The UTEP robot in AAAI 96 and AAAI 97 robot contests. In proceedings of the, second international conference on autonomous agents (Agents 98), 32-38.

[34]     C. Baral, G. Gonzalez and T. Son. Design and Implementation of Display Specification for Multi-media Answers. In proceedings of 1998 International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE 98) , 558-565.

[33]     C. Baral and J. Lobo. Formal Characterizations of Active Databases: Part II. In proceedings of International Conference on Deductive and Object-oriented database systems (DOOD) 1997, pgs 247-264 (LNCS 1341).

[32]    C. Baral and J. Lobo. Formalizing workflows as cooperative agents. In proceedings of ILPS 97 (International logic programming symposium) workshop on (Trans)Actions and Change in Logic Programming and Deductive Databases (DYNAMICS 97).

[31]     C. Baral and T. Son.Approximate reasoning about actions in pre sence of sensing and incomplete information. In proceedings of International Logic Programming Symposium (ILPS)97, pages 387-401.

[30]     C. Baral and J. Lobo. Defeasible Specifications in Action Theo ries. In proceedings of IJCAI 97, 1441-1446.

[29]     C. Baral and T. Son. Regular and special sensing in robot control - relation with action theories. In proceedings of the AAAI 97 Workshop on Robots, Softbots, and immobots - Theories of Action, Planning and Control.

[28]     C. Baral, T. Son, and G. Gonzalez. Issues in querying multi-media databases. In proceedings of 2nd international workshop on multimedia information systems, 1996.

[27]     C. Baral and J. Lobo. Formal Characterization of Active Databa ses. In proceedings of the International Workshop on Logic in Databases, 1996. (LID'96).

[26]     C. Baral, A. Gabaldon and A. Provetti. Value minimization in Circumscription. Presented in 6th International Workshop on Nonmonotonic reasoni ng, 1996. Revised version in KR 96, pages 474-481.

[25]     C. Baral, and T. Son. Relating reasoning about actions and reactive control. In proceedings of the workshop on Reasoning about actions, planning and robot control: bridging the gap,held Aug 2-3 during AAAI 96, Portland, OR, USA.

[24]    C. Baral, L. Floriano, A. Gabaldon, D. Morales, T. Son and R. Watson. A reactive mobile robot based on a formal theory of action. In proceedings of AAAI 96 as a robot competition abstract, page 1350. Our entry was placed third in the competition.

[23]     C. Baral, A. Gabaldon and A. Provetti. Formalizing Narratives using Nested Circumscription. In proceedings of AAAI 96, Aug 4-8, Portland, OR, USA, pages 652-657.

[22]     G. Mendez, J. Lobo, J. Llopis, and C. Baral. Temporal logic and reasoning about actions. Presented in Common-sense 96.

[21]     C. Baral, A. Gabaldon and A. Provetti. Formalizing Narratives using Nested Abnormality Theories. Presented in Common-sense 96.

[20]     C. Baral. A systematic approach to reason about actions, planning and Robot Control. Proceedings of 33rd Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control and Computing, October 4-6, 1995. (Invited non-refereed paper)

[19]     C. Baral and Michael Gelfond. Reasoning about actual and hypo thetical occurrences of concurrent and non-deterministic actions. In proceeding s of IJCAI 1995 Workshop on Nonmonotonic reasoning, action and change, August 1 9-25, Montreal, Canada.

[18]     C. Baral. Reasoning about actions: Non-deterministic effects, Constraints, and Qualification. In proceedings of IJCAI 1995, 2017-2023, August 1995.

[17]     C. Baral, M. Gelfond and A. Provetti. Representing Actions-I: (Laws, Observation and Hypothesis) In Proceedings of AAAI 1995 Spring Symposium , March 27-29.

[16]     C. Baral. Rule based updates on simple knowledge bases. In Proc. of AAAI 94, 136-141, 1994.

[15]     C. Baral, M. Gelfond and O. Kosheleva. Approximating general logic programs. In Proceedings of International Symposium in Logic Programmin g 93, Vancouver, BC, pages 181-198, November 1993.

[14]     C. Baral and Michael Gelfond. Representing Concurrent actions in Extended Logic Programs. In Proceedings of IJCAI 93, pages 866-873, August 1993.

[13]     C. Baral. L3: A logic programming language with multiple defa ult negations. In Proc. of Fifth International Symposium on AI. Cancun, Mexico, December 1992.

[12]     C. Baral. Generalized Negation As Failure and Semantics of No rmal Disjunctive Logic Programs. In the Proceedings of International Confere nce on Logic Programming and Automated Reasoning, St. Petersburg, 1992. In Lecture notes in AI- 624,edited by A. Voronkov, pages 309-319.

[11]     C. Baral. Classification of iterative fixpoint semantics for logic programs. In Second International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics,Fort Lauderdale, Florida, January 1992.

[10]     C. Baral, S. Kraus, J. Minker and V. S. Subrahmanian. Combini ng Knowledge Bases Consisting of First Order Theories. In Proceedings of Sixt h International Symposium on Methodologies for Intelligent Systems, Charlot te, NC, 1991. In Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence.No 542. Z.W. Ras and M. Zemankova, Eds. Springer-Verlag. Charlotte, N.C. Oct (1991). 92-101.

[9]     C. Baral, J. Lobo, and J. Minker. WF3 : A Semantics for Norma l Disjunctive Logic Programs. In the Proceedings of Sixth International Sympo sium on Methodologies for Intelligent Systems, Charlotte, NC, 1991. In Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence.No 542. Z.W. Ras and M. Zemankova, Eds. Springer-Verlag. Charlotte, N.C. Oct (1991). 459-468.

[8]     C. Baral, S. Kraus, J. Minker and V. S. Subrahmanian. Combini ng and Updating Knowledge Bases Consisting of Default Theories. In the proceedi ngs of Bar-Ilan Symposium on the Foundations of Artificial Intelligence, Israel, 1991.

[7]     C. Baral and V. S. Subrahmanian. Duality between Alternative Semantics of Logic Programs and Nonmonotonic Formalisms. In the proceedings of International Workshop on Logic Programming and Nonmonotonic Reasoning, Washington DC, 1991, ed. Nerode, Marek and Subrahmanian, MIT press, pages 69-86.

[6]     C. Baral and V. S. Subrahmanian. Stable and Extension Class T heory for Logic Programs and Default Logics. Presented in the Third Internat ional Workshop on Non-monotonic Reasoning, South Lake Tahoe, California, May 31, 1990.

[5]     C. Baral, J. Lobo and J. Minker. Generalized disjunctive well -founded semantics for logic programs: Declarative semantics. In M. Zemankova, Z . W. ras and M. L. Emrich, editors, Proc. of Fifth International Symposium o n Methodologies for Intelligent Systems, pages 465--473, Knoxville, TN, 1990. North-Holland.

[4]     C. Baral, J. Lobo and J. Minker. Generalized disjunctive well -founded semantics for logic programs: Procedural semantics. In M. Zemankova, Z . W. ras and M. L. Emrich, editors, Proc. of Fifth International Symposium o n Methodologies for Intelligent Systems, pages 456-464, Knoxville, TN, 1990. North-Holland.

[3]     C. Baral, J. Lobo and J. Minker. Generalized Well-Founded Sem antics for Logic Programs. In M. E. Stickel, editor, Proc. of Tenth Internat ional Conference on Automated Deduction, pages 102--116, Kaiserslautern, FRG, July, 1990. Springer - Verlag.

[2]     C. Baral, S. Kraus and J. Minker. Communicating between Multi ple Knowledge Based Systems. Presented in the International Working Conferen ce on Cooperating Knowledge Based Systems, University of Keele, England, October 1990.

[1]     A. Roy, V. Haldar and C. Baral. Identification of Geometric F eatures from Hierarchical Coding of Images. Presented in the Second Internat ional Conference on Advances in Pattern Recognition and Digital Techniques, Calcutta, India, Jan 6-9, 1986.



Courses Taught

Taught undergrad courses on :-
    * Artificial Intelligence (Fall 91),
    * Automata and Languages (Fall 91 and Fall 92),
    * Computer Architecture (Fall 92, Fall 93, Fall 94, Fall 95, Fall 96),
    * Operating Systems (Spring 92, Spring 93, Spring 94, Spring 95),
    * Database Systems (Fall 97, also teaching currently), and
    * Building and Programming Mobile Robots (Spring 96, Spring 97, Sp ring 98).

Taught graduate courses on:-
    * Database Theory (Spring 92, Spring 93, Spring 94, Spring 95, Spr ing 96, Spring 97, Spring 98),
    * Object Oriented and Distributed Databases (Fall 93, Fall 94),
    * Cognitive Robotics (Fall 95),
    * Knowledge Representation (Summer 92),
    * Autonomous Agents (Fall 97),and
    * Web authoring and multi-media databases (Fall 96), and currently teaching a course on Multimedia Systems.



HONORS
    *     Team advisor of the robot team entry from UTEP that won the first place in the `Home vacuuming' part of the AAAI 97 robot contest.

    *     Team advisor of the robot team entry from UTEP that won the third place in `Office Navigation' part of the AAAI 96 robot contest.

    *     Invited Speaker at the 33rd Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control and Computing, October 4-6, 1995.

    *     Received the NSF RIA (1992) and CAREER (1995) awards.

    *     Received a Graduate Research Fellowship (1990) award from the graduate school of University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742.

    *     Awarded the J. N. Tata scholarship (1987) for higher studies.

    *     Awarded the R. D. Sethna scholarship (1987) for higher studies.

    *     Received the ``Best B. Tech thesis'' award in Computer Science and Engineering in 1987 at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India, for the thesis titled : ``Natural Language Interface for a Relational Database'' (co-author A. Patel).

    *     Won the joint first prize in undergraduate IEEE student paper writing contest (1985) for the papers.

              * C. Baral and A. G. Ray. An E fficient Recursive Algorithm for Constructing Quadtrees.
              * C. Baral. Alternative effici ent structures for linear quadtrees and Octtrees.



GRANTS and CONTRACTS
    *     PI, Research in Knowledge Representation and Common Sense Reasoning.
NSF RIA (Research Initiation Award) grant IRI-9211662 of $89,956 for the period 7/92 to 12/95.

    *     PI, A Systematic Approach to Reasoning about Actions and Change.
NSF CAREER award (IRI-9501577) of $135,000 for the period 9/95 to 9/99.

    *     PI, The University of Texas at El Paso Network Resources and Training Site.
NASA, $2,499,822 for 9/1/1995 - 8/31/2000.

    *     PI, Implementation of spatial data management at Ft. Bliss -- support for student S. Sahu. US Army Constr Engg Research, Ltd $4,273 for 6/01/96- 8/31/96.

    *     PI, An undergraduate laboratory for building and programming intelligent mobile robots.
NSF ILI award of $40,000 for the period of 7/1/97 - 6/30/99.
As required by the NSF ILI program UTEP matches the award by another $40,000.

    *     Co-PI, AI technologies for space applications.
United Space Alliance, Houston, $57,660 for the period 6/1/97 to 8/31/98.



Student Mentoring and Advising
Doctoral Students

Tran Son working on using action theories for agents and robots is within a year of finishing.
Graciela Gonzalez working on multi-media databases is also within a year of fini shing.
Raul Trejo just started.

Masters Students

Advised thesis/project of 15 students who have finished and am currently advisin g 4 students.
Two of the students that finished are currently pursung their Ph.D -- Alfredo Ga baldon at University of Toronto, and Graciela Gonzalez with me.


Undergraduate Students

Alfredo Gabaldon and Patrick Kahl started working with me when they were undergr aduates and went on to do their M.S.
Currently 4 undergraduate students and one high school student are working with me in my mobile robots lab.



Professional Activities
    * Program Committee of AAAI 97 and AAAI 98; AAAI 98 Fall Symposium on Cognitive robotics; LPNMR 99.

    * Overseas Secretary and founder member, Orissa Information Technology Society (http://www.oits.org).

    * Co-Editor, Special issues of Annals of Math and AI, Vol. 21 (1997) Nos. 2-4.

    * Co-Chair, AAAI 97 Workshop on ``ROBOTS, SOFTBOTS, IMMOBOTS: Theo ries of Action, Planning and Control''.

    * Chair, AAAI 96 Workshop on ``Reasoning about actions, planning a lgorithms and control architectures : Bridging the gap.''

    * Member of program committee and main organizer of Workshop on Logic Programming with Incomplete Information, held together with 1993 Int ernational Symposium on Logic Programming, Vancouver, BC, Canada.

    * Member, Program Committee of the ICLP'95 Workshop on Abducti on in Deductive Databases and Knowledge-based SystemsKanagawa, Japan.

    * Panelist, 1995 Spring Symposium on Extending theories of actions .

    * Refereed articles for AI Journal, Journal of AI Research, Journa l of Automated Reasoning, Journal of Logic Programming, Journal of Logic and Com putation, Annals of Math and AI, Journal of Expermintal and Theoretical AI, Jour nal of Intelligent Information Systems, ACM transactions on Database Systems, IE EE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, and various conferences on D atabases, Artificial Intelligence, Logic Programming and Knowledge Representation.



Invited Lectures
    * ``Semantics of Nonmonotonic Formalisms'', Department of Computer Science, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, USA (Dec 1991).

    * ``A language for reasoning about actions and change'', Department of Law and Philosophy, University of Bologna, Italy (Jan 1994).

    * ``Abductive Logic Programming'', Department of Computer Science, University of Modena, Italy (Jan 1994).

    * ``Logical Basis of Disjunctive Databases'', Department of Comput er Science, University of Milan, Italy (Jan 1994).

    * ``Knowledge Representation in Artificial Intelligence'', Xaviers School of Business Management, Bhubaneswar, India (Jan 1994).

    * ``Rule Based Updates in Simple Knowledge Bases'', Department of Computer Science, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, USA (April 1994).

    * ``Reasoning about Situations'', Department of Computer Science, University of Texas at Austin,USA (August 1994).

    * ``Reasoning about Actions and Change'', Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA (October 20, 1994).

    * ``A systematic approach to reason about actions, planning and Ro bot Control''. Invited Speaker at the 33rd Annual Allerton Conference on Communi cation, Control and Computing, October 4-6, 1995.

    * ``Reasoning about actions and its relation to robot control and database updates'', Department of Computer Science, University of Corona, La Cornua, Spain (June 1996).

    * ``Reasoning about actions and its relation to robot control and database updates'', Department of Computer Science, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia (Jan 17, 1997).

    * ``From action theories to agents -- a formal approach to agents' ', Seminar at IRST, Trento, Italy, Aug 18, 1997.

    * ``From action theories to agents -- a formal approach to agents' ', Invited Lecture at the Symposium on logical approaches to agent modeling and design, held as part of the ESSLLI'97 (Ninth European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information), Aix-en-Provence, France, August 20, 1997.

    * ``From action theories to agents -- a formal approach to agents' ', TRAIL seminar at Imperial College, London, Aug 26, 1997.

    * ``From action theories to agents'', University of Toronto, Feb 6, 1998.

    * ``Representing actions: Laws, Observations and Hypothesis'', York University, Toronto, Feb 7, 1998.

    * ``From action theories to agents'', Linkoping University, Sweden, Sept 18, 1998.


Tutorials and Short courses
    * ``From Actions Theories to Updates, Transactions, Triggers and A gents'', A joint tutorial at DOOD 97 (Montreux, Switzerland) with J. Lobo, Dec 10, 1997.

    * "From action theories to agents -- planning control strategie s for reactive agents'', A joint tutorial at AAAI 98 with F. Kabanza. (65 registered participants)

    * ``A logical approach to building agents, active databases and workflows: representing and reasoning about actions'', A two week course to be given at ESSLLI 99 (11th summer school in logic, language and information) with Jorge Lobo and Richard Scherl. (accepted)



Other activities at El Paso and UTEP -- highlights
    * Graduate Advisor and in charge of the graduate program in Computer Science since 1992 .

    * Instrumental in having a Ph.D program for Computer science students at UTEP.

    * Developed -- through students -- the first Web pages for the uni versity and the local area (the city of El Paso and Juarez), in 1993 and wrote o p-ed articles in the local newpaper to increase local awareness about the WWW.

    * Held several robot building workshops and robot demonstrations f or local school teachers and students.

    * Featured (together with my students) many times in the local new spapers, TV stations, and the university alumni magazine.




END



P.S: Electronic copies of most of the papers are available through http://cs.utep.edu/chitta/chitta.html.