Tempe beach..

Subbarao Kambhampati
( సుబ్బారావు కంభంపాటి )

Professor
Dept. of Computer Science & Engg.,(Office: BY560)
Fulton School of Engineering
Arizona State University, Tempe Arizona 85287-5406
Phone: (480) 965-0113, Fax: (480) 965-2751, Email: rao who lives at asu.edu


Last Lecture!

Follow the ASU Intro to AI course (Spring 2012) with online videos

Follow the ASU IR/IM/II course (Fall 2011) with online videos

Back to the Future of Planning

Research:   Students | Publications | Surveys | Yochan | Yochan-I3 | Model-lite | Planning List | CV
Teaching:   Intro to AI | Info. Integ | Grad AI | Planning | ASU101 | Outreach.. | Student Comments| YouTube Channel
Personal:     Bio | Travel | Usenet Postings | Doctors in the family | Photos
Other:         Blog! | Bibfinder | QUIC/QPIAD | ET-I3 | ICAPS Festivus
Tutorials:   Preferences and Partial Satisfaction in Planning (AAAI-10) | Information Integration (AAAI-07) | Planning Graph Heuristics (IJCAI-07) | Learning for Planning (MLSS-06) | Advances in Planning (AAAI-00) | more..

Visitor number since yesterday.

Subbarao Kambhampati (Rao) was born a long long time ago in Peddapuram in Andhra Pradesh, India. After formative education at "the school next to Cinema Hall" (where he liked the teacher of the 1st grade so much that he stayed in that class for 2nd and 3rd grades too), the "School behind Anjaneyaswamy Temple" (which has since been demolished to make way for a sweet stall), Sri Veeraraju High School (S.V. Highschool), and Sri Raja Vatsavaayi Buchchi Seetayamma Jagapati Bahaddur Maharanee College (S.R.V.B.S.J.B.M.R. College, no less!), he survived JEE and did his Bachelors in Electrical Engineering (Electronics!--although he still couldn't repair the tape recorder to his father's satisfaction) at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. Continuing along his degree grabbing spree, he landed a Masters and a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, College Park.

After a brief post-doctoral stint at Stanford, Rao has been having a blast crawling up the faculty hierarchy in the Computer Science department at ASU since 1991. He started as a quarter professor, became a half Professor in 1996 and a FULL (!) Professor in 2000. Continuing this geometric rise, his current goal is to become two professors very soon (he is waiting for the furlough season to pass first though, lest he be hit with two furloughs).

Rao directs the Yochan research group which is associated with the AI Lab at ASU. In the good old days, he used to be mostly interested in automated planning and related areas in AI. To support his mid-life crisis, to improve chances of schizophrenia, as well as to enter a world of continual conference deadlines, he decided to also diversify into data and information integration on the Web.

He is the recipient of a 1992 NSF Research Initiation Award, a 1994 NSF young investigator award, a 2001-2002 College of Engineering teaching excellence award, and a 2004 IBM Faculty Award . In 2004, he was named a Fellow of AAAI (American Association for Aritificial Intelligence, which is now Association for Advancement of Artificial Intelligence). In 2011, he was selected by ASU students to give a Last Lecture. In 2012, he was voted by his department students to be the Teacher of the Year.

He was an invited speaker at AAAI 1996 and ICAPS 2003. He also gave a couple of well received tutorials on planning and databases, including one on automated planning (AAAI-2000), one on information integration on the web (AAAI-2002 and AAAI-2007), and one on planning graph heuristics (ICAPS 2006, IJCAI 2007).

Click here for further biographical information. Here is a detailed CV in pdf.

Professional service:

Rao is currently serving as the program co-chair for ICAPS 2013 and is an area chair for IJCAI 2013. He is on the editorial board of ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology and IEEE Intelligent Systems, and serves on the advisory board of JAIR. He is also serving as the conference committee chair for AAAI.

In the past, Rao served as the program co-chair for the 2005 National Conference on Artificial Intelligence AAAI-05, which in the impartial opinion of many people such as him was the best AAAI ever (at least in 2005 ;-). More, recently he co-chaired the 2010 AAAI special track on AI & Web, and served as a councilor for AAAI for a three year term 2009-2012. He is currently serving as the conference committee chair for AAAI.

He also co-chaired the 2000 AI Planning and Scheduling (AIPS) Conference, sat on the exalted ICAPS executive committee (2002-2008).

His professional service and his late-night TV viewing intersected for once recently when he agreed to run the first-ever Festivus at an academic conference!

He was an associate editor for the Journal of AI Research, and had also served on the editorial board for the AI Magazine.

He had been on the progam committees of most AAAIs since 1992; all AIPS, (most) ECP and all ICAPS conferences, as well as a smattering of database conferences. He served on the senior program committees of AAAI 2006,2008,2011,2012 and IJCAI 2007 (area chair) and 2009.

Publications:

Here are online versions of Rao's (okay, mostly his students') publications. There is mounting evidence that at least some of these are actually read by others. One of them even received a runner-up award for 10 year influential paper at ICAPS 2010. You can also find Rao's tutorials/survey talks and such here

Talks & Tutorials:

Here are some of the recent overview talks and tutorials:

Teaching:

Rao thinks it is way cool to get paid for filling space with the sound of his own voice. Some students seem to agree with him, going as far as to get him assorted teaching awards, or aggressively stuffing ballots to get him a Teacher of the Year nod. Others are more inscrutable, trying their best to make him give the last lecture.

Here, at any rate, are student comments and beauty numbers from the teaching evaluations. Finally, here is an ornate statement of his teaching philosophy that Rao was asked to write for a teaching award nomination. Here is a bit of media coverage of Rao's teaching methods (and here he is trying to improve his publication count through letters to editor)..

Most of his courses are available these days on his very own Youtube Channel:

Current Group Members:

Alumni:

Doctors in the Family: