The Computer Science Department welcomes Prof. Geffner in Aachen
The Computer Science Department welcomes Prof. Geffner in Aachen
Hector Geffner is a new Alexander von Humboldt Professor in the Computer Science Department, RWTH Aachen where will lead the chair in Machine learning and reasoning. Hector is interested in computational models of reasoning, action, learning, and planning, and is coming from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona where he was an ICREA Professor. Since 2019 he is also a Guest Wallernberg Professor at Linkoping where he co-leads a group on representation, learning, and planning. Years ago Hector's obtained the ACM Dissertation award for work that combined logic, causality, and probabilities, although he is best known in AI for his work in planning. In recent years, Hector has become interested in problems that combine learning, reasoning, and planning; in particular, the problems of learning general action models, policies, and subgoal structures that are not tied to particular state and action spaces. Hector leads a project on representation learning for acting and planning (RLeap) that is funded by an Advanced ERC grant. At RWTH Aachen, Hector expects to build a new research group on these themes, to establish fruitful collaborations with colleagues, and to contribute to the department, the AI center, and the RWTH community by means of his teaching and research.