Troy, N.Y. — Selmer Bringsjord, director of the Rensselaer Artificial Intelligence and Reasoning (RAIR) Lab and professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has been named chair of the Department of Cognitive Sciences.

Bringsjord, a Rensselaer faculty member in the same department for 14 years, specializes in the logico-mathematical and philosophical foundations of artificial intelligence.

Bringsjord's RAIR Lab performs research in cognitive robotics, gaming, and artificial intelligence. He is a consultant to gaming, multimedia, and e-learning companies. He earned his bachelor's degree in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Brown University.

Bringsjord has applied his expertise in logic to become proficient in computer science, which has led him to build artificial intelligence systems that are literally creative. His most notable literary creation is Brutus.1, a computer that can write short stories of up to 500 words. The machine can generate stories based on the notions of betrayal, deception, and evil.

As chair, Bringsjord says the immediate priority for the department is to establish first-rate R&D in conjunction with establishing a new Ph.D. in Cognitive Science.

Among Bringsjord's books are What Robots Can and Can't Be (Kluwer, 1992) and Artificial Intelligence and Literary Creativity: Inside the mind of Brutus, a Storytelling Machine (Lawrence Erlbaum, 2000). In the latter, co-authored with IBM's David Ferruci, Bringsjord dissects the anatomy of Brutus.1, including the algorithms that constitute its mind.

Contact: Jodi Ackerman
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