Maria Gini Wins IJCAI Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award

Department of Computer Science & Engineering Professor Maria Gini has earned the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization (IJCAI) Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award. She was recognized for her substantial contributions, as well as her extensive service to the field of artificial intelligence (AI) throughout her career.

Gini has been involved with IJCAI for over 15 years and established a number of initiatives that are still in practice today. In 2011, she started the doctoral consortium, which is a one or two-day meeting for PhD students where they can get career mentorship and discuss their research at the IJCAI conference. She also has developed a number of women-focused initiatives, including workshops, mentoring events, and luncheons. Gini served as an IJCAI trustee from 2018-23 and was the general chair for IJCAI 2021, which was held virtually. 

“The AI community has grown so much and IJCAI still remains as the only major International AI conference,” said Gini. “There are other conferences, but they are always in North America. I think IJCAI is more international, which gives it a nice distinction from other conferences. Since they’ve gotten so huge, IJCAI’s executive director told me many times how much the community has appreciated the women’s lunch and the Doctoral Consortium. Those events are still around and going strong. It shows they were useful and needed.”

The IJCAI Distinguished Service Award was established in 1979 by the IJCAI Trustees to honor senior scientists in AI for contributions and service to the field during their careers. Previous recipients have been: Bernard Meltzer (1979), Arthur Samuel (1983), Donald Walker (1989), Woodrow Bledsoe (1991), Daniel G. Bobrow (1993), Wolfgang Bibel (1999), Barbara Grosz (2001), Alan Bundy (2003), Raj Reddy (2005), Ronald J. Brachman (2007), Luigia Carlucci Aiello 

(2009), Raymond C. Perrault (2011), Wolfgang Wahlster (2013), Anthony G. Cohn (2015), Erik Sandewall (2016), Ramon Lopez de Mantaras (2017), Craig Knoblock (2018), Francesca Rossi (2019), Toby Walsh (2020), Steven Minton (2021), Bernhard Nebel (2022) and Qiang Yang (2023).

Learn more about the IJCAI awards on their website.