About

K. Brent Venable is a computer scientist specializing in artificial intelligence. Brent is Director of the Intelligent Systems and Robotics doctoral program and Professor of Computer Science at the University of West Florida. She is a Senior Research Scientist at the Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition (IHMC). Her primary areas of research in artificial intelligence include

• Preference reasoning and modeling
• Computational social choice
• Multi-agent systems
• Decision making
• Cognitive models
• Temporal reasoning

Brent’s research provides a solid framework for intelligent systems to effectively reason about preferences. How do people’s preferences affect their choices? Understanding preferences has become increasingly important in computational fields like

• Artificial Intelligence 
• Cognitive models  
• Ethics

Preference models are needed for decision-support systems such as web-based recommenders, in automated problem solvers such as configurators, and in autonomous systems such as Mars rovers. Her work has helped establish a new research area, computational social choice, which bridges the gaps between social choice and computer science.

Brent collaborates on interdisciplinary projects with different institutions including IBM and  NASA. and   She is currently working with cognitive scientists to understand synergies between behavioral models of choice and AI-based preference reasoning. Her focus on AI for social good inspires Brent to collaborate with researchers in fields like sociology, psychology, and environmental science on content personalization to foster resilience of Gulf communities to environmental stressors like oil spills and hurricanes. She investigates how constraints and preference frameworks can be a mean to embed ethical requirements into artificial agents.

Brent is Co-Editor in Chief of AI Magazine and Interactive AI Magazine, official publications of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI).

She has published books and over 100 papers on artificial intelligence.

• A Short Introduction to Preferences: Between Artificial Intelligence and Social Choice (2011) by Francesca Rossi, K. Brent Venable, and Toby Walsh
• An Introduction to Constraint-Based Temporal Reasoning: Synthesis Lectures on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (2014) by Roman Barták, Robert A. Morris, and K. Brent Venable

Brent holds an adjunct professor position at the Department of Computer Science at Tulane University in New Orleans. She was previously a professor there and helped rebuild the computer science department 7 years after it closed down due to Hurricane Katrina. Before that, she was Assistant Professor in the Department of Pure and Applied Mathematics at the University of Padova in Italy. Helping build departments prepared Brent to lead the new PhD in Intelligent Systems and Robotics program, a partnership between the University of West Florida and the Florida Institute of Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC). The program provides the next generation with immersive hands-on research experience.

K. Brent Venable has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Padova. She graduated Laurea Magna cum Laude in Mathematics from the University of Padova.

Contact

Email Brent at Brent.Venable@gmail.com