MIT Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

Patrick Winston named Ford Professor of Engineering

June 18, 1997

To: EECS Faculty and Staff

From: Paul Penfield, Jr.

Date: June 18, 1997

Subject: Patrick Winston named Ford Professor of Engineering

I am happy to tell you that Dean of Engineering Robert A. Brown has appointed Patrick Winston to be Ford Professor of Engineering, starting July 1, 1997. Other department faculty who are currently Ford Professors are Art Baggeroer, Barbara Liskov, and Al Oppenheim.

Patrick has served as Director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory since 1975. Over the years he has kept his eye on the long-range ultimate goal of understanding cognition, while also supporting many high-profile application projects within the Laboratory. He recently announced his intention to step down from his position as Director.

One of the international leaders in the field of AI, Patrick is a Fellow and past president of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. He has written the most widely used textbook about AI, and has been a co-author or editor of numerous other volumes.

He and his students have been particularly involved in the study of learning, precedent-based reasoning, common-sense problem solving, and applications of AI to several areas including databases, scheduling, and resource allocation.

Patrick has served the department teaching effort well through his leadership of 6.034 Artificial Intelligence. This subject is a well taught, popular header in our undergraduate curriculum. He started it shortly after joining the department faculty in 1970, and has guided its development ever since.

The Ford chairs were established in 1959 by a gift from the Ford Foundation, to recognize outstanding senior faculty for intellectual accomplishment, innovation, and leadership. Past Ford Professors from our department include Bob Fano, Dave White, Bill Siebert, Kent Bowen, Al Drake, and Fernando Corbató.