The IJCAI-2020 awards were presented during the opening ceremony of IJCAI-PRICAI today. The awards included the 2020 IJCAI-JAIR Best Paper Prize and the AIJ Classic Paper and Prominent Paper Awards. Find out the winners of all the awards here.

2020 IJCAI-JAIR Best Paper Prize

From skills to symbols: learning symbolic representations for abstract high-level planning (2018)
by George Konidaris, Leslie Pack Kaelbling and Tomas Lozano-Perez

This paper elegantly shows how to automatically construct abstract representations suitable for evaluating plans composed of sequences of high-level actions in a continuous, low-level environment.

Read the paper in full here.

2020 IJCAI-JAIR Honourable Mention

Coactive learning (2015)
by Pannaga Shivaswamy and Thorsten Joachims

This paper introduces a novel learning paradigm that lies between traditional online learning, where the utilities of each action are visible to the algorithm, and bandit settings, where the utilities of only the optimal action are observed.

Read the paper in full here.

AIJ 2020 Classic Paper Award

Temporal constraint networks
by Rina Dechter, Itay Meir, Judea Pearl

This paper extends network-based methods of constraint satisfaction to include continuous variables, thus providing a framework for processing temporal constraints.

AIJ 2020 Prominent Paper Award

Conflict-based search for optimal multi-agent pathfinding
by Guni Sharon, Roni Stern, Ariel Felner, Nathan Sturtevant

This paper presents Conflict Based Search (CBS) a new optimal multi-agent pathfinding algorithm.

IJCAI-20 Award for Research Excellence

The Research Excellence award is given to a scientist who has carried out a program of research of consistently high quality throughout an entire career yielding several substantial results.

The winner of the 2020 Award for Research Excellence is Eugene Freuder (University College Cork). Eugene is recognized for his pioneering research in constraint-based reasoning and problem solving.

IJCAI-20 Computers and Thought Award

This award is presented to outstanding young scientists in artificial intelligence. The winner of the 2020 IJCAI Computers and Thought Award is Piotr Skowron (University of Warsaw). Piotr is recognized for his contributions to computational social choice, and to the theory of committee elections.

IJCAI-20 John McCarthy Award

This award is intended to recognize established mid-career researchers, typically between fifteen to twenty-five years after obtaining their PhD, that have built up a major track record of research excellence in artificial intelligence.

The winner of the 2020 John McCarthy Award is Daniela Rus (MIT). Daniela is recognized for her contributions to the science and engineering of autonomy, and development of multi-agent algorithms.

Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award

This award was established in 1979 by the IJCAI Trustees to honour senior scientists in AI for contributions and service to the field during their careers.

The winner of the Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award is Toby Walsh (UNSW). Toby is recognized for his substantial contributions, as well as his extensive service to the field of Artificial Intelligence throughout his career.

IJCAI-2021 award nominations

Nominations are now open for the IJCAI-2021 awards. The deadline is 10 February 2021. Find out more information here.