Biographies

Dr. William Swartout
Director of Technology, USC Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT)
Research Professor of Computer Science, USC

Dr. William Swartout is Director of Technology for USC's Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) and a research professor of computer science at USC.  He received his Ph.D. and M.S. in computer science from MIT and his bachelor's degree from Stanford University.  Dr. Swartout has been involved in the research and development of artificial intelligence systems for over 30 years. His particular research interests include virtual humans, explanation and text generation, knowledge acquisition, knowledge representation, intelligent computer based education, and the development of new AI architectures.

As Director of Technology at the ICT, Dr. Swartout provides overall direction for the ICT’s research programs.  He led the Mission Rehearsal Exercise project, which created an immersive virtual reality environment in which trainees interact with computer generated virtual humans. This project received awards for outstanding innovation in modeling and simulation from the NTSA and has received other awards including first place for innovative application of agent technology at the 2001 International Conference on Autonomous Agents.

Dr. Swartout is a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), has served on the Board of Councilors of the AAAI and is past chair of the Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence (SIGART) of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). He has served as a member of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, the Board on Army Science and Technology of the National Academies, and the JFCOM Transformation Advisory Group.