Patrick Henry Winston
Curriculum vitae

Positions

Patrick H. Winston is Ford Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Professor Winston joined the faculty of the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 1970.

Professor Winston is a member of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). He served as Director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, a predecessor of CSAIL, from 1972 to 1997.

Professor Winston has served on many MIT faculty committees throughout his career, including personnel committees, search committees, committees on student life, and MIT's Faculty Policy Committee, the primary committee responsible for formulating policy recommendations for MIT's president. He co-chaired the task force on Fraternities, Sororities, and Independent Living Groups: Status and Future Development (2002–2004).

Research

Professor Winston's Genesis Group studies how vision, language, and motor faculties account for intelligence, integrating work from several allied fields, including not only Artificial Intelligence, but also Computer Science, Systems Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, and Linguistics.

Professor Winston's EWall Group focuses on new ways to visualize information, making that information easier to comprehend, analyze, and communicate to others for learning and decision making. One EWall product is the NewsView presentation of the news of the day.

Professor Winston is also active in promoting a new field, Computational Politics, which aims to bring computer scientists and social scientists together to help develop a better understanding of thinking grounded in other cultures.

Publications

Professor Winston's publications include 17 books, comprised of major textbooks on Artificial Intelligence and several programming languages, an edited collection of papers about Artificial Intelligence applications, and several edited collections of key MIT research papers.

Commercial activities

Professor Winston has founded, served as board member of, and advised many companies.

Professor Winston is chairman and co-founder of Ascent Technology, Inc., a company that develops products that solve complex resource-planning, resource-scheduling, resource-allocation, and situation-assessment problems.

Public service

Professor Winston has served three terms as a member of the Naval Research Advisory Committee (NRAC) (1985 to 1990, 1994 to 2000, and 2005—present); he served as Chairman from 1997 to 2000. During his service on NRAC, he chaired several studies, including a study of how the Navy can best exploit the next generation of computer resources and a study of technology for reduced manning. In recognition of his services on NRAC, Professor Winston received the Meritorious Public Service Award.

Professor Winston is a member of the Massport Security Advisory Committee. He served as a member of Defense Intelligence Agency Advisory Board, and he is a past president of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence.

Education

Professor Winston received the B.S. in Electrical Engineering (1965), the M.S. in Electrical Engineering (1967), and the Ph.D. in Computer Science (1970), all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His doctoral dissertation introduced ideas on the subject of computer learning from examples and near misses.