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Professional Activities

 

 

2020-2023

Chair of the department of Software and Information Systems Engineering

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3017-2020

Vice chair of the department of Software and Information Systems Engineering

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2013-2017

Chair of the Israeli Association for Artificial Intelligences (IAAI).

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2010-Now

Council Member of the Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SOCS)

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2004-2013

Board member of the Israeli Association for Artificial Intelligences (IAAI).

Representative of Ben-Gurion University.

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Editorial boards

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•2013-Now: Editorial board member of the Artificial Intelligence Journal (AIJ)

•2014-Now: Associate Editor: Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems. (JAAMAS).

•2016-Now: Associate Editor: Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR)

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Journal reviewing

•2004-Now: Artificial Intelligence Journal (AIJ)

•2005-Now: Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR)

•2006-Now: Journal f Autonomous Agents and Multi Agent Systems (JMMAS)

•2007-Now: Journal of Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence (AMAI)

•2007-Now: Journal of the International Computer Games Association (ICGA)

•2008-Now: Journal of Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines (GPEM)

•2008-Now: Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics

•2008-Now: The Computer Journal.

•2009-Now: Transactions on Computers.

•2012-Now: Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games.

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Program Chair and/or Organizer in conferences/workshops

•Workshop chair/organizer of the Third International Workshop on Multi-agent path finding. Macau, August 12, 2019, Co-located with IJCAI-2019.

 •Chair of the sister conference best-paper track at IJCAI-2018

•Tutorial Chair at AAAI-2018

•Tutorial Chair at AAAI-2017

• Chair of the Workshop track in ICAPS-2016.

•Organizing chair of the seventh International Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SOCS-15). Ein Gedy, Israel. June 2015.

•Chair of the Senior-Member Presentation track at AAAI-2015.

• Chair of the Late-Breaking Paper track at AAAI-2013

• Workshop chair/organizer of the First International Workshop on Multi-agent path finding. Toronto, July 10, 2012, Co-located with AAAI- 2012.

• Conference Co-Chair (with 7 other members of the steering committee) of the Forth International Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SOCS-12). Toronto, Co-located with AAAI- 2012.

•Program Chair of the 11th Bar-Ilan Symposium on the Foundations of Artificial Intelligence (BISFAI-2011), June 2011. Bar-Ilan, Israel.

•Conference Chair (with Nathan Sturtevant): The Second International Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SOCS-10). Was held on July 9-10, in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Co-located with AAAI-2010.

• Organizer /chair of the “Artificial Intelligence day” of the “Israeli Association for Artificial Intelligence (IAAI)” June 19, 2008 Ben-Gurion University.

• Program chair of the “Artificial Intelligence day” of the Israeli Association for Artificial Intelligences (IAAI), June 28, 2006 Herzeliya.

•Organizer of the “Workshop on heuristic search, memory based heuristics and their applications”, took place at AAAI-06 on July 17, 2006, Boston, Mass. USA.

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Area Chair in refereed conferences

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•* Area chair (responsible for 50 submissions) in the Twenty-sixth International Conference on artificial intelligence (AAAI-2012). Supervised papers in the “search” area.

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Senior Program Committee member in refereed conferences

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• The 26th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IJCAI-2017

• The Thirty first International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI-2017 Responsible for the review process of up to 25 papers.

• The Twenty-Fouth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence IJCAI-2016 Responsible for the review process of up to 25 papers.

• The Thirty International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI-2016 Responsible for the review process of up to 25 papers.

• The Twenty-Third International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IJCAI-2015. Responsible for the review process of up to 15 papers.

•The Twenty-Eighth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI-2014. Responsible for the review process of up to 25 papers.

•The Twenty-Seventh International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI-2013. Responsible for the review process of up to 16 papers.

•The Twenty-Second International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IJCAI-2013. Responsible for the review process of up to 15 papers.

•The Twenty-First International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IJCAI-2011. Responsible for the review process of up to 15 papers.

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Program Committee member (reviewer of 6-8 submissions) in refereed conferences

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•The Tenth International Symposium on Combinatorial Search, SOCS-17

•International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling ICAPS-2017

•The Ninth International Symposium on Combinatorial Search, SOCS-16

•The Second International Worskhop on Multi-agent path finding. IJCAI-16

•International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling ICAPS-2016

•The Seventh International Symposium on Combinatorial Search, SOCS-15

•International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling ICAPS-2015

•The Twenty-Third Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI-15

•The Sixth International Symposium on Combinatorial Search, SOCS-14

• International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling ICAPS-2014

•The Fifth International Symposium on Combinatorial Search, SOCS-13

•The Forth International Symposium on Combinatorial Search, SOCS-12

•14th International IEEE Annual Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (2011)

•The 2011 IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems IROS 2011

•The Third International Symposium on Combinatorial Search, SOCS-11

•The Ninth International Symposium on Abstraction, Reformulation and Approximation, SARA-2011

•The 2010 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems IROS 2010.

•The Twenty-Forth Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI-10

•The Twentieth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IJCAI-09

•The Eighth International Symposium on Abstraction, Reformulation and Approximation, SARA-09

•The first International Symposium on Combinatorial Search, SOCS-09

•The first International Symposium on Search Techniques in AI and Robotics. STAIR-08

•The Twenty-Third Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI-08

•The Seventh International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, AAMAS-08

•The Seventh International Symposium on Abstraction, Reformulation and Approximation, SARA-07

•The Twenty-Second National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI-07

•The Twenty-First National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI-06

•The Twentieth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI-05

•The Nineteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI-04

•Fourth International Conference on Computers and Games, ICGA-04

•The Eighteenth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence IJCAI-03

•The Eighteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI-02

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Awards, Citations, Honors

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1991:  Hebrew-University: scholarship for students with high acceptance scores.

 

2003: Technion Faculty of Science scholarship for PostDocs. 14,400$ for 12 months.

 

2004:  “Alberta Ingenuity” scholarship for a Postdoc position at the University of Alberta,

             Edmonton, Canada. 48,000$ per year for two years. I did not take that

            position because I was offered a  “Lecturer” position at Ben-Gurion University.

 

2018: The award of "Senior Member of AAAI": in recognition of achievements and long-standing efforts in the field of artificial intelligence and long-term participation in AAAI

 

2018: The award of "Fellow of the EurAI":  for significant, sustained contributions to the field of artificial intelligence (AI) in Europe. 

 

 

Distinguished paper and other awards:

 

[1]     Robert Holte, Jack Newton, Ariel Felner, Ram Meshulam and David Furcy,  “Multiple Pattern Databases” ICAPS-04, pp:122-131: 
        Runner up for best paper award of the conference. (out of 103 submissions)

 

[2]    Ariel Felner, Richard E. Korf and Sarit Hanan, “Additive Pattern Database Heuristics”,   Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research

        (JAIR), 22:279-318, November 2004.

        The IJCAII-JAIR-2007 best paper prize: “honorable mention as an elegant contribution to the area of heuristic search that enhances

        the rich body of work on pattern database heuristics”

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[3]    Guni Sharon, Roni Stern, Ariel Felner and Nathan Sturtevant, “Meta-agent Conflict-

        Based Search For Optimal Multi-Agent Path Finding”, (SoCS-2012), July 2012.

        Best paper award of the SOCS-2012 conference (out of 60 submissions)

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[4]    Award of “Outstanding Senior Program Committee Member” from AAAI-2013. Seattle, Washington, July 2013. (Out of 105 Senior PCs)

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[5]    Roni Stern, Mat Hatem, Rami Puzis, Ariel Felner and Wheeler Ruml, “Max is More than Min: Solving Maximization Problems with

        Heuristic Search", (SoCS-2014), August 2014. Best paper award of the SOCS-2014 conference (out of 57 submissions)

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[6]    Robert Holte, Ariel Felner, Guni Sharon and Nathan Sturtevant: Bidirectional Search That Is Guaranteed to Meet in the Middle. AAAI-

        2016.  pp: 3411-3417, Outstanding paper award of the AAAI-2016 conference (out of 2200 submissions)

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[7]    Daniel Gilon, Ariel Felner, and Roni Stern, Dynamic Potential Search - a New Bounded Suboptimal Search Algorithm, SoCS-2016.

        July 2016, New-York. Best paper award of the SOCS-2016 conference (out of 61 submissions)

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[8]    Eshed Shaham, Ariel Felner,  Nathan Sturtevant and Jeffrey S. Rosenschein," Minimizing Node Expansions in Bidirectional Search

        with Consistent Heuristics", SoCS-2018, July 2018. This paper won the best student paper award of the SOCS-2018 conference (out

        of 61 submissions).

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[9]  Ariel Felner,  BGU Excellence in Teaching prize for the year 2018. Top 2% from each faculty.

 

[10] Shahaf S. Shperberg, Ariel Felner, Solomon Eyal Shimony, Nathan R. Sturtevant, Avi Hayoun: Improving Bidirectional Heuristic Search

       by Bounds Propagation. SOCS 2019: 106-114. Best paper and best student paper award.

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[11], Ariel Felner,  Outstanding Program Committee Member. ICAPS2019.

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[12]  Guni Sharon, Roni Stern, Ariel Felner and Nathan Sturtevant, “Conflict-Based Search for Optimal Multi-Agent Pathfinding" received the

        2020 AIJ Prominent Paper Award.

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[13] Gal Dahan, Itay Tabib, Eyal Solomon Shimony, Ariel Felner: “Generalized Longest Path Problems”, SoCS-2022. This paper won the “best paper award: honorable mention” at SoCS-2022.

 

[14]  Eli Boyarski, Shao-Hung Chan, Dor Atzmon, Ariel Felner, Sven Koenig, “On Merging Agents in Multi-Agent Pathfinding Algorithms” SoCS-2022. This paper won the “best student paper” at SoCS-2022.

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Other paper recognitions:

 

[1]    Uzi Zahavi, Ariel Felner, Jonathan Schaeffer and Nathan Sturtevant, “Inconsistent Heuristics”: AAAI-07 pp:1211-1216. Selected for the

       poster presentation which included 47 papers of the highest quality out of 921 submissions. (top 5%)

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[2]    Nir Pochter, Aviv Zohar, Jerr Rosenchein and Ariel Felner "Search Space Reduction Using Swamp Hierarchies", Proceedings of the

        Twenty-fourth Conference on Artificial Intelligence, (AAAI-10), July  2010,  Selected for the poster presentation which included 49

        papers 982 of the highest quality. (top 5%)