In Memory Of Dr. Pragnesh Jay Modi

Dr. Pragnesh Jay ModiAssistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, College of Engineering,Drexel University

Dr. Pragnesh Jay Modi was an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at College of Engineering,
Drexel University
. He received his Ph.D.from Computer Science,University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA. His work involves research in Artificial Intelligence and Multiagent Systems . One major contribution of his dissertation is the ADOPT algorithm for the Distributed Constraint Optimization Problem (DCOP). ADOPT is the first algorithm for DCOP in which distributed agents can obtain theoretically guaranteed high quality solutions while operating asynchronously and in a decentralized fashion.

Career

Pragnesh Jay Modi joined the Computer Science Department at Drexel University as an Assistant Professor in 2005. Jay was a rising star in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) community. He was selected as one of the top ten young AI researchers by the IEEE Intelligent Systems Advisory Board (2006) and received the prestigious NSF-CAREER award. His dissertation, "Distributed Constraint Optimization for Multiagent Systems" made several fundamental contributions to the field and is widely cited in the multiagent community. In recognition of his impact, the The International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems has named its "best student paper" award after him.

Publications

2007

  • On Modeling Multiagent Task Scheduling as a Distributed Constraint Optimization Problem [PDF]
    Evan Sultanik, Pragnesh Jay Modi, William Regli.
    Proceedings of the Twentieth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence , (IJCAI) 2007. [16%]

2006

  • Constraint Propagation for Domain Bounding in Distributed Task Scheduling [PDF] [PS]
    Evan Sultanik, Pragnesh Jay Modi, William Regli.
    Proceedings of Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (Poster), (CP) 2006
  • Towards a Reference Model for Agent-Based Systems [PDF] [PS]
    Pragnesh Jay Modi, Spiros Mancoridis, William M. Mongan, William Regli, Israel Mayk.
    Proceedings of Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, Industry Track, (AAMAS) 2006
  • Hierarchical Variable Ordering for Multiagent Agreement Problems [PDF] [PS]
    John Davin, Pragnesh Jay Modi
    Proceedings of Seventh Workshop on Distributed Constraint Reasoning, DCR 2006.
    Proceedings of Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (Poster), (AAMAS) 2006
  • Reasoning About and Dynamically Posting n-ary Constraints in ADOPT [PDF] [PS]
    Federico Pecora, Pragnesh Jay Modi, and Paul Scerri
    Proceedings of Seventh Workshop on Distributed Constraint Reasoning, DCR 2006.
  • Quorum Sensing on Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks [PDF] [PS]
    Maxim Peysakhov, Christopher Dugan, Pragnesh Jay Modi, William Regli
    Proceedings of Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (Poster), (AAMAS) 2006

2005

  • Do Humans Adapt Their Emails So That Agents Can Understand? [PDF] [PS]
    Pragnesh Jay Modi, Kerry Hannan, Manuela Veloso
    Proceedings of AAAI Symposium on Mixed Initiative Problem Solving Assistants, November 2005.
  • Algorithmic and Domain Centralization in Distributed Constraint Optimization Problems [PDF] [PS]
    John P. Davin, Master's Thesis
    Advisors: Pragnesh Jay Modi, Manuela Veloso
    CMU-CS-05-154, CMU Tech Report, 2005.
  • Classification of Examples by Multiple Agents with Private Features [PDF] [PS]
    Pragnesh Jay Modi, Peter Woo Tae Kim
    Proceedings of Intelligent Agent Technologies, (IAT) 2005. [18%]
  • Impact of Problem Centralization in Distributed Constraint Optimization Algorithms [PDF] [PS]
    John Davin, Pragnesh Jay Modi
    Proceedings of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, (AAMAS) 2005. [24%]
  • Bumping Strategies for the Multiagent Agreement Problem [PDF] [PS]
    Pragnesh Jay Modi, Manuela Veloso
    Proceedings of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, (AAMAS) 2005. [24%]
  • ADOPT: Asynchronous Distributed Constraint Optimization with Quality Guarantees [PDF] [PS]
    Pragnesh Jay Modi, Wei-Min Shen, Milind Tambe, Makoto Yokoo
    Artificial Intelligence Journal, (AIJ) 2005.
  • Conflicts in Teamwork: Hybrids to the Rescue [Available from TEAMCORE website]
    M. Tambe, E. Bowring, H. Jung, G. Kaminka, R. Maheswaran, J. Marecki, P. J. Modi, R. Nair, S. Okamoto, J. Pearce, P. Paruchuri, D. Pynadath, P. Scerri, N. Schurr, P. Varakantham.
    Proceedings of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, (AAMAS) 2005. (Invited Paper)

2004

  • Multiagent Meeting Scheduling with Rescheduling [PDF] [PS]
    Pragnesh Jay Modi, Manuela Veloso
    Proceedings of the Fifth Workshop on Distributed Constraint Reasoning, DCR 2004.
  • CMRADAR: A Personal Assistant Agent for Calendar Management [PDF] [PS]
    Pragnesh Jay Modi, Manuela Veloso, Stephen F. Smith, Jean Oh
    Agent Oriented Information Systems, (AOIS) 2004.

2003

  • Distributed Constraint Optimization for Multiagent Systems [PDF] [PS] (PhD Thesis)
    Pragnesh Jay Modi
    Department of Computer Science
    University of Southern California, 2003.
  • An Asynchronous Complete Method for Distributed Constraint Optimization [PDF] [PS] (Nominated for Best Student Paper)
    Pragnesh Jay Modi, Wei-Min Shen, Milind Tambe, Makoto Yokoo
    Proceedings of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, (AAMAS) 2003. [25%]
  • Distributed Constraint Reasoning Under Unreliable Communication [PDF] [PS]
    Pragnesh Jay Modi, Syed Muhammad Ali
    Proceedings of the Fourth Workshop on Distributed Constraint Reasoning, DCR 2003
    To appear in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications, IOS Press
  • Distributed Resource Allocation: A Distributed Constraint Reasoning Approach (Book Chapter)
    Pragnesh Jay Modi, Paul Scerri, Wei-Min Shen, Milind Tambe
    Distributed Sensor Networks: A Multiagent Perspective
    Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003.
  • Are Multiagent Algorithms Relevant for Real Hardware? A Case Study of Distributed Constraint Algorithms [PDF] [PS]
    Paul Scerri, Pragnesh Jay Modi, Wei-Min Shen, Milind Tambe
    ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, (SAC) 2003.

2001

  • A Dynamic Distributed Constraint Satisfaction Approach to Resource Allocation [PDF] [PS] (Extended Version [PDF] [PS])
    Pragnesh Jay Modi, Hyuckchul Jung, Milind Tambe, Wei-Min Shen, Shriniwas Kulkarni
    Proceedings of Seventh International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming, (CP) 2001.
  • Collaborative Multi-Agent Learning for Classification Tasks [PS] [PDF]
    Pragnesh Jay Modi, Wei-Min Shen
    Autonomous Agents Workshop on Learning Agents, Agents 2001

2000

  • Purposeful Behavior in Robot Soccer Team Play
    Wei-Min Shen, Rogelio Adobbati, Pragnesh Jay Modi, Behnam Salemi.
    RoboCup 1999: Robot Soccer World Cup III. Lecture Notes in Computer Science.
    (Ed.) M. Veloso, E. Pagello, H. Kitano. Springer 2000.
  • Teamwork in Cyberspace: Using TEAMCORE to Make Agents Team-ready [PS]
    Tambe, M., Shen, W., Mataric, M., Goldberg, D., Modi, J, Qiu, Z., and Salemi, B.
    Proceedings of AAAI Spring Symposium on Agents in Cyberspace, pp 136-141, 1999.
  • Modeling Web Sources for Information Integration
    Craig Knoblock, Steven Minton, Jose Luis Ambite, Naveen Ashish, Pragnesh Jay Modi, Ion Muslea, Andrew G. Philpot, Sheila Tejada
    Proceedings of the Fifteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, (AAAI) 1998. [30%]