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 at its intersection with areas of public health, conservation and public safety.

 

He is recipient of the IJCAI (International Joint Conferenceon AI) John McCarthy Award (2018), ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Autonomous Agents Research Award (2005), AAAI (Association for Advancement of Artificial Intelligence)  Robert S. Engelmore Memorial Lecture Award (2019), and he is a fellow of AAAI (2007) and ACM (2013). He is also a recipient of the Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation Homeland security award(2010), the INFORMS Wagner prize for excellence in Operations Research practice (2012), the Rist Prize of the Military Operations Research Society (2011), IBM Faculty Award(2012), Okawa foundation faculty research award (2004), the RoboCup scientific challenge award(1999) and several others.

Prof. Tambe has contributed several foundational papers in Artificial Intelligence in areas of agents and multiagent systems and computational game theory, for which he has received influential paper and best paper awards at a number of premier Artificial Intelligence Conferences and workshops, such as IJCAI, AAMAS and others. This research has led to significant practical impact, such as use of the green security games framework to assist wildlife conservation around the world, use of social networks and machine learning to assist in improving public health outcomes such as HIV prevention, and the use of pioneering security games research for security optimization by agencies such as the US Coast Guard and the Federal Air Marshals Service. 

 

A key example is the PAWS AI system developed by him and his team  that has been deployed in collaboration with wildlife conservation agencies to assist rangers around the world. PAWS led to removals of 1000s of traps used to kill and maim endangered wildlife in national parks in countries such Cambodia and Uganda. Furthermore,  PAWS is integrated with the SMART software, making PAWS available for use at 100s of national parks around the globe. Other examples include research in collaboration with NGOs for improving maternal health care outcomes, for HIV prevention,  TB prevention and others. For example, in a recently completed study with 700 youth experiencing homelessness, Prof. Tambe & team's algorithms led to a significant reduction in HIV risk behaviors compared to traditional approaches. 

Previously, his "security games" research was also used on a daily basis (and continues to be used) by agencies such as the US Federal Air Marshals, US Coast Guard and LA Airport, for optimally allocating officers, boats, or other security for improving public safety. This research has led him and his students to receive the US Coast Guard Meritorious Team Commendation (2013), Certificate of Appreciation from the US Federal Air Marshals Service (2011) and special commendation given by the LAX airport from the city of Los Angeles(2009).  Finally, his PAWS system was listed as "Top Tech" of 2018 by IEEE spectrum, and work with algorithms for HIV prevention were listed by Mashable.com in their "26 incredible innovations that improved the world in 2015".

Prof. Tambe's work at Google Research India, as director for AI for Social Good is seen in this blog post. These projects have successfully transitioned to actual deployment, with a potential to assist NGOs in making a difference in lives of millions of beneficiaries.

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 (2020).