Prof. Milind Tambe

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Milind Tambe

Professor Milind Tambe

Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Center for Research in Computation and Society (CRCS) at Harvard University.

Director, AI for Social Good at Google Research India.

Science and Engineering Complex 150 Western Avenue, Room 2.107 Allston, MA 02134

milind_tambe@harvard.edu

Prof. Tambe's CV

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Follow Professor Tambe on twitter

chrisgolden05 (1/12) 📢📢As part of @bluefoodfutures, I worked with an incredible team to understand the role of #bluefood 🌊🐟🦐in protecting people against #malnutrition. Today, it was published in @nature and can be found here: t.co/7ScWuKuc6J t.co/GZCM93kFZZ
18 hours 2 min ago.
erhart_erin New postdoc drop from the @HCRCS! Check it out if you are interested in working on computing for social good! #postdocjobs #AI #STEM #DataScience #publichealth #conservation #WomenInSTEM #womenintech #blackinstem t.co/J7U3bHb4RK
18 hours 32 min ago.
MilindTambe_AI @angela_rigden @uciess @UCIrvine Congrats @angela_rigden !
1 day 9 hours ago.

Research and Bio

Milind Tambe is Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science and Director of Center for Research in Computation and Society at Harvard University; concurrently, he is also Director "AI for Social Good" at Google Research India. Prof. Tambe's work focuses on advancing AI and multiagent systems for public health, conservation & public safety, with a track record of building pioneering AI systems for social impact.

He is recipient of Milind Tambe photo 2 the IJCAI (International Joint Conference on AI) John McCarthy Award, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Autonomous Agents Research Award, AAAI (Association for Advancement of Artificial Intelligence) Robert S. Engelmore Memorial Lecture Award, and he is a fellow of AAAI and ACM. He is also a recipient of the Columbus Fellowship Foundation Homeland security award, INFORMS Wagner prize for excellence in Operations Research practice, Rist Prize of the Military Operations Research Society, IBM Faculty Award and several others. Prof. Tambe has contributed several foundational papers in AI, in particular in multiagent systems, for which he has received or been nominated for best paper awards over 25 times at conferences such as AAAI, AAMAS, IJCAI, and others.

Prof. Tambe's research for the past 15 years has AI and multiagent systems algorithms for large-scale societally impactful applications. In so doing, this research has often provided the first very uses of key multiagent systems models and algorithms in the real world. Some major examples include the following:

Prof. Tambe and team provided the first ever applications of computational game theory for operational security. The first of these deployments was the ARMOR system of game theoretic algorithms for security (e.g., counter terrorism) which started operating at the Los Angeles LAX airport in 2007. This is one of the largest and busiest airports in the United States that serves 80 Million passengers, where ARMOR's security games provided day-to-day randomized schedules for checkpoints and canine patrols. This research was followed by pioneering deployments of security games used by major security agencies for the allocation of limited resources, including the US Coast Guard to generate patrols in ports such as New York and Boston, the US Federal Air Marshals for scheduling air marshals on US air carriers international flights since 2009 and others. This research is credited with more than $100M in savings to US agencies. The LAX airport police, the Federal Air Marshals Service, and the US Coast Guard, have testified in United States Congress committee hearings on three separate occasions, about the utility of security games-based software for improving public safety & security (2008, 2012, 2013). This research has also led Prof. Tambe and his students to receive commendations and certificates of appreciation from the US Coast Guard, the Federal Air Marshals Service and the city of Los Angeles. See also Teamcore group home page.

Prof. Tambe and team were the first to apply AI models, specifically machine learning and game theory, for global scale anti-poaching efforts, as part of the PAWS project for wildlife conservation. PAWS has provided extremely effective in predicting poaching activities and recommending patrols against them. Prof. Tambe and team's decade-long collaboration on PAWS with NGOs has resulted in removing tens of thousands of snares set to trap endangered animals, in Uganda and Cambodia. For example, this work led to a 5-fold increase in snare removals in Cambodia. The SMART partnership – a collaboration of major conservation agencies -- has begun deploying PAWS in 800 wildlife parks internationally, bringing AI to the fight to save the lives of endangered animals all around the globe.PAWS was listed as "Top Tech" of 2018 by IEEE spectrum.

Prof. Tambe and his team also provided the first large scale applications of social network algorithms for public health. Conducted In collaboration with social work researchers, their pioneering large-scale field study focused on spreading HIV prevention information among youth experiencing homelessness (YEH). Empirical results with 750 YEH in in Los Angeles demonstrated that their AI-guided interventions led to statistically and practically significant reductions in HIV risk behaviors compared to traditional methods.

Another major example includes work in collaboration with NGO ARMMAN (at Google Research India) to improve maternal health outcomes, which works with over 18 million women in India. A key challenge is women drop out of ARMMAN's healthcare programs despite preventable reasons. Prof. Tambe and team are the first to use restless bandits in these large scale public health settings to show a more than 50% reduction in drop out rate.

Prof. Tambe's research has also focused on fueling and energizing the "AI for social good" ecosystem around the globe. To that end, he and his team at Google Research have started dozens of "AI for social good" projects by matchmaking AI researchers with non-profits; this includes recent kick-off of 30 new projects a cross 17 countries. These new projects build on earlier successes at Google Research discussed in th is blog post. His earlier pioneering efforts include establishing the Center for AI in Society (CAIS) at the University of Southern California, one of the first centers that focused on an interdisciplinary partnership of AI and social work, and his current leadership of CRCS Center at Harvard.

Prior to this focused work on "AI for social good", Prof Tambe's early research provided foundational models of multiagent teamwork. His JAIR 1997 "Towards flexible teamwork" won the AAMAS influential paper award (an award given out 10 years after publication of a paper). Tambe and collaborators also the foundational paper Distributed Constraint Optimization (DCOP) that started that subfield by providing the first comprehensive algorithm with quality guarantees (“ADOPT:Asynchronous distributed constraint optimization with quality gurantees” Artificial Intelligence Journal. 2005). Finally, their earlier paper introducing a novel Distributed POMDP model for teamwork won the AAMAS’02 Best paper. During this period, Prof. Tamb Milind Tambe Photo e and team also built pioneering systems such as "Electric Elves" team of office assistants, reported in CNN, USA Today and others; built in early 2000s the office agents brought forth a number of challenges of privacy and agent autonomy, while assisting in day to day office activities.

Prof. Tambe completed his PhD from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Prior to that, he completed his undergraduate education at BITS, Pilani, India, which awarded him their Distinguished Alumnus Award.

Teaching and Service

o far, 32 PhD students have completed their theses under his supervision; he has also mentored 13 Postdoctoral researchers. Currently Prof. Tambe supervises a team of 15 PhD students and postdocs.

Prof. Tambe's service includes National Academy of Sciences panels, blue ribbon panel to review security at LAX airport and DARPA ISAT Panels. He has also served as general co-chair for AAMAS (2004), and as a member of the board of directors of IFAAMAS, the IJCAI executive committee, the board of trustees of RoboCup Robot Soccer World Cup Federation and the steering board of the Conference on Decision and Game Theory for Security (GameSec); he also served as associate editor, advisory board member and editorial board member of journals including the Journal of AI Research (JAIR), IEEE Intelligent Systems and the Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (JAAMAS), and as co-editor for JAIR special track on AI and Society.

In 2013, based on their research, Prof. Tambe co-founded Avata Intelligence, which was acquired by Procore Technologies. In 2016, Prof. Tambe co-founded CAIS, Center for AI in Society at the University of Southern California.