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Former PhD students and Postdocs | Former MS Students | Other Masters Students | BS Student Alumni

In Memory Of Dr. Pragnesh Jay Modi

Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, College of Engineering,Drexel University

Prof. Pragnesh "Jay" Modi

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

2006

  • Constraint Propagation for Domain Bounding in Distributed Task Scheduling
  • Towards a Reference Model for Agent-Based Systems
  • Hierarchical Variable Ordering for Multiagent Agreement Problems
  • Reasoning About and Dynamically Posting n-ary Constraints in ADOPT
  • Quorum Sensing on Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

2005

  • Do Humans Adapt Their Emails So That Agents Can Understand?
  • Algorithmic and Domain Centralization in Distributed Constraint Optimization Problems 
  • Classification of Examples by Multiple Agents with Private Features 
  • Impact of Problem Centralization in Distributed Constraint Optimization Algorithms 
  • Bumping Strategies for the Multiagent Agreement Problem 
  • ADOPT: Asynchronous Distributed Constraint Optimization with Quality Guarantees 
  • Conflicts in Teamwork: Hybrids to the Rescue
    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 
  • CMRADAR: A Personal Assistant Agent for Calendar Management 

2003

  • Distributed Constraint Optimization for Multiagent Systems
  • An Asynchronous Complete Method for Distributed Constraint Optimization 
  • Distributed Constraint Reasoning Under Unreliable Communication 
  • 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 

2001

  • A Dynamic Distributed Constraint Satisfaction Approach to Resource Allocation
  • Collaborative Multi-Agent Learning for Classification Tasks

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 
  • 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%]