CURRICULUM VITAE
Dr Brandon Bennett (BSc, MA, PhD)
Division of Artificial Intelligence
School of Computing
University of Leeds
LS2 9JT
tel.: (+44) 113 2335878
home: (+44) 113 2746920
fax.: (+44) 113 2335468
e-mail: brandon@scs.leeds.ac.uk
www: http://www.scs.leeds.ac.uk/brandon
Synopsis
I was born on June 14th 1965. My first degree was a combined honours BSc in
Computer Science and Physics. Following this I took a masters degree in
Philosophy. I also have a PhD from the University of Leeds: I studied within the
Division of AI of the School of Computer Studies and my thesis was on the topic
of logical representations for efficient automated reasoning about spatial
relations. Since then I have remained at Leeds as Research Fellow working on two
EPSRC funded projects: the first of these was on reasoning about physical
systems and the current project is on managing vagueness, uncertainty and
granularity in spatial information. In both cases I played a major part in
writing the research proposal as well as carrying out the project. The latter
project involves collaboration with the Ordnance Survey (UK's national mapping
agency) and Laser-Scan a leading industrial GIS vendor.
Education
1991-1997. Ph.D. at the School of Computer Studies at Leeds University. My
thesis was entitled Logical Representations for Automated Reasoning about
Spatial Relationships. (Abstract and PostScript available on the WWW at
http://www.scs.ac.uk/brandon/thesis.html). The thesis was nominated for the
ECCAI award for best European dissertation in the area of Artificial
Intelligence.
1987-1989. Masters' Degree by research at the philosophy department of the
University of Leeds. My thesis was entitled Philosophical Problems Arising in
Representing Meaning on Computers.
1983-1986. Joint Honours degree in Physics and Computer
University of Leeds. I was awarded B.Sc. hons. grade 2(ii).
Science
at
the
1976-1983. Smithills Grammar School (Bolton, Lancashire, UK).
Work Experience
January 1999+. Research Fellow at the University of Leeds School of Computer
Studies, working on the EPSERC grant GR/M56807, Managing Vagueness, Uncertainty
and Granularity in Spatial Information Systems. This research involves
collaboration with the Keele University GIS group as well as with the Ordnance
Survey and the GIS vendor Laser-Scan. During the project I shall be supervising
a PhD student.
August 1995 - December 1998. Research Officer at the University of Leeds School
of Computer Studies, working on the EPSERC grant GR/K65041, Logical Theories and
Decision Procedures for Reasoning about Physical Systems. During a 13 month
period of the project I was responsible for supervising the work of an
additional Research Fellow on software development.
May 1994 - August 1994. Software Consultant on the CEC Basic Research Action
MEDLAR 2 (BRA 6471). This work involved a feasibility study of possibilities for
exploiting logic-based reasoning techniques in robotics.
December 1993 - April 1994. Technical Assistant for the Programme Committee of
ECAI-94 (European Conference on Artificial Intelligence). Implemented and
managed a database containing information on 50 committee members and over 400
paper authors. The database software (written in Prolog) included procedures for
flexible data extraction/analysis, integrity checking, automatic document
production and e-mailing.
October 1992 - March 1993. Research Assistant on SERC grant GR/H 78995. Worked
on software for automating spatial reasoning. The main result of this work (a
composition table for 23 spatial relations) was published in (Cohn, Randell, Cui
and Bennett 1993).
1992-1993. Teaching Assistant in Leeds University Department of Philosophy. I
gave six tutorials per week on Logic, Theoretical Philosophy and Ethics and
gained considerable experience of teaching, marking and dealing with students'
problems.
July 1991-January 1992. Worked as a Prolog Programmer on ESPRIT project P2474,
Multi-Modal Interfaces for Man-Machine Interaction (MMI2), I implemented a
`user-friendly' customisable command language and wrote deliverable D29,
Documentation of the Implementation of the Command Language Interpreter.
October 1989 - November 1990. Worked on development of a PC software package
(Logic Maker), a flexible tool for designing, investigating and teaching about
logical languages.
October 1988 - June 1989. Teaching Assistant in Leeds University Dept of
Philosophy. Supervised students' use of computerised proof systems, which formed
the practical component of a logic course.
Principal Research Interests
My
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main research interests can be summarised by the headings:
Spatial reasoning
Automated theorem proving and decision procedures
Formal semantics
Modal and temporal logics
Reasoning about actions, change and physical processes
Ontology of material objects
Geographical information systems (GIS)
Logical languages for high-level control of robots or virtual agents
Reasoning with vague and uncertain information
Details of my study and contributions in these areas and my plans for future
research are given in the two following sections.
Research Record
As an undergraduate I was particularly interested in Artificial Intelligence,
Natural Language Processing and the philosophy of language. In order to pursue
this further I went on to do a Masters' degree in Philosophy. This consisted of
a year of taught courses followed by research work, culminating in a thesis on
Philosophical Problems Arising in Representing Meaning on Computers. In this
thesis I analysed the semantic structures of natural language propositions and
considered how these could be represented and manipulated as computer datastructures. I examined a number of approaches taken by AI researchers and
identified certain deficiencies in the formalisms thsy they had proposed. In the
course of this work I gained a broad knowledge of philosophical logic and both
classical and non-classical formal systems.
After completing the Masters' I began a part-time PhD in the area of Automated
Reasoning. (During my studies I also undertook a series of temporary research
and teaching jobs at Leeds University.) I was now interested in reasoning within
precise formal languages rather than dealing with the idiosyncrasies of natural
languages. Initially I investigated general (domain-independent) methods for
transforming logical problem descriptions to give equivalent problems that were
more amenable to automated solution. While conducting this research I became
increasingly involved with the Qualitative Spatial Reasoning (QSR) group, headed
by my supervisor (Prof. A.G. Cohn).
About a year after starting the PhD I was employed for six months as a research
assistant on a SERC grant (GR/H 78995) on spatial reasoning. I had the specific
task of finding a way to compute a composition table1 for a set of 23 relations
describing topological and convexity-related properties of the relationship
between two spatial regions. Drawing on my knowledge of non-classical logics, I
was able to solve this problem in a novel way. I showed how topological
relations could be encoded into intuitionistic propositional logic to yield a
decision procedure for a large class of spatial inferences, encompassing all
those required to determine the composition table. The resulting table was
published in (Cohn et al. 1993) and the general encoding and reasoning method
was later presented in (Bennett 1994b). Because of this work I was nominated and
named as one of two runners up for a prize for best idea of the year (1994)
awarded jointly by the Interest Group on Pure and Applied logic (IGPL) and the
European Association for Logic Language and Information (FoLLI). I was also
invited to publish a further paper on this topic (Bennett 1996c). Several other
researchers have subsequently built on the results of these papers (Nebel 1995,
Renz and Nebel 1997, Jonsson and Drakengren 1997).
In view of the success of this work I decided to refocus my PhD research on the
domain of spatial reasoning. The resulting thesis (submitted in October 1997)
contained a thorough analysis of the theoretical foundations justifying the use
of non-classical propositional logics for reasoning about configurations of
spatial regions. It also contained an extensive survey and criticism of
previously proposed 1st-order theories of spatial regions as well as an
examination of the conditions under which reasoning using composition tables is
complete. A paper based on some of the results of the thesis was published in
the journal Constraints (Bennett 1998a).
At the beginning of 1995 I wrote and submitted (with the help of Prof. A.G.
Cohn) a proposal to the EPSRC for a project on Logical Theories and Decision
Procedures for Reasoning about Physical Systems. The proposal was highly rated
by the reviewers and fully funded ($188,000, grant no. GR/K65041). The aim of
1
For a set of relations R that forms a partition of possible binary relations over some domain of objects, given any two
relational facts of the forms S(a, b) and T (b, c), where S and T are relations in R and a, b, and c are arbitrary objects of
the domain, the Composition Table for R specifies the minimal subset of R, such that U(a,c) must hold for some
relation U in that subset.
the project was to identify decidable languages for describing physical
situations and processes and to explore how they can be exploited in prototype
application software. The spatial representations developed in my PhD work
played a key role in this project but non-spatial information was also be
considered. The project also had a practical side. A considerable amount of
software was developed including: a prototype Geographical Information System,
within which qualitative and quantitative information can be combined (various
aspects of this are described in (Bennett 1996a, Bennett, Cohn and Isli 1997,
Bennett, Isli and Cohn 1998)); a simulation of a simple `billiard ball' universe
obeying the laws of Newtonian mechanics; and a program modelling the behaviour
of semi-intelligent agents by combining finite-state automata with simple
spatial reasoning capabilities.
While working with the Leeds QSR group I have made substantial contributions to
several survey papers about spatial reasoning (Cohn, Gotts, Randell, Cui,
Bennett and Gooday 1998, Cohn, Gooday and Bennett 1994, Cohn, Gooday, Bennett
and Gotts 1995, Cohn, Bennett, Gooday and Gotts 1997b, Cohn, Bennett, Gooday and
Gotts 1997a). Another strand of my work over the past few years has been my
involvement with the European network SPACENET. The main objective of this
network is the production of a book presenting the `state of the art' of
Qualitative Spatial Reasoning, co-authored by a large number of experts from
throughout Europe. I am coordinating work on two chapters of this book: one on
qualitative approaches to topology; and another on approaches to reasoning with
qualitative spatial information.
Since 1998 I have shifted some of my effort to a new direction of theoretical
research: the representation of conceptual vagueness and its management within
AI knowledge-bases. This work resulted in the paper (Bennett 1998b). I have
subsequently been able to combine this area of research with my long-term
interest in spatial information. Together with Prof. A.G. Cohn (Leeds
University) and Prof. M. Worboys and Dr J. Stell (Keele University) I authored a
successful proposal for an EPSRC research project (GR/M56807) to study Vagueness
Uncertainty and Granularity in Spatial Information Systems. (The value of this
grant is $237,700 at Leeds and a similar amount at Keele.) I have been employed
as a Research Fellow on this grant since January 1999. The research involves
collaboration with the Ordnance Survey (UK national mapping agency) and the GIS
vendor Laser-Scan in order to develop a theoretical understanding of imperfect
spatial data and to apply logical techniques to its management.
In September 1998 I submitted a proposal for an EPSRC Advanced Fellowship grant,
which provides funding for a five year term of pure research, and was shortlisted for this award. My proposal was to develop a detailed and ontologically
sound semantic framework, comprehensive enough to represent a wide range of
information concerning spatial situations, physical processes and events.
Although not yet part of an official project, this work is ongoing and I plan to
seek funding for a PhD student to help develop the framework.
Future Research
Over the long term I hope to make a substantial contribution to the field of
Knowledge Representation and Spatial Information Processing for AI systems. I
have already stimulated international interest in a number of representational
formalisms and reasoning algorithms; but these techniques are only one part of a
more general view, that I would like to promote, of the role of logic in
computer systems. This is the view that decidable domain-specific logical
languages can be exploited to manipulate high-level information (such as spatial
information) within computer software both for the purpose of interacting with
the user and for internal program control. I think that in order to achieve
coherent development of this research area, it will be necessary to develop
software tools which can facilitate the exploitation of theoretical innovations
and also provide a common framework for researchers working on diverse knowledge
domains. These tools would in turn stimulate theoretical development as theory
is brought up against the problems of concrete applications.
This is a major enterprise and would require considerable programming effort as
well as theoretical expertise. I have already developed a considerable amount of
logic-based software during my last EPSRC project, which would provide a
starting point; however, construction of a truly useful software package would
require sustained collaboration between a number of workers. I would very much
like, in the not too distant future, to have the opportunity of supervising a
PhD student working in this area.
Experience and Achievements
Teaching
While employed by the University of Leeds I have gained a wide range of teaching
experience. During my two years of employment by the Philosophy Department I
gave some 200 seminars on the subjects of elementary logic, theoretical
philosophy, and ethics and marked hundreds or coursework essays on various
subjects and exam scripts on logic. As a Research Fellow in computer studies I
have also contributed to undergraduate teaching in the areas of computational
logic and knowledge representation. As well as giving lectures I have prepared
course notes and exam questions. I have considerable experience of running
practical computer sessions. I have assisted with the supervision of Masters
student projects and have attended an intensive day course covering all aspects
of PhD supervision.
Computer Systems and Software
I have considerable experience of developing software systems and have used a
wide variety of programming languages including: Prolog, LISP, Pascal, C, POP11
and Perl. I am proficient with both Unix and DOS operating systems. I am
familiar with a wide variety of applications software. I have particularly good
knowledge of the LaTeX document formatting system. I have been responsible for
the creation and maintenance of a large number of HTML pages on the World Wide
Web (see e.g. http://www.scs.leeds.ac.uk/ctcs/raps.html).
Conference Participation
I have attended many international conferences and workshops on Artificial
Intelligence and Spatial Reasoning. These include AISB-93, KR-94, ECAI-94,
JELIA-94, AISB-94, IJCAI-95, COSIT-95, TAI-97, ECAI-98, KR-98, AISB-99, M4M.
I was a regular participant in workshops on the development of practical logical
reasoning technology held by the CEC Basic Research Action Medlar 2 (Project
6471).
I have been a regular attendant of workshops held by the European Spacenet
project.
Conference Organisation
Technical Assistant for the Programme Committee of ECAI-94 Organised a workshop
on Spatial Reasoning at the University of Leeds, School of Computer Studies, 1314.7.99. (See http://www.scs.ac.uk/LSRW99)
Reviewing
I have reviewed papers for the following conferences: ILPS-93 (International
Logic Symposium), JELIA-94 (Journees Europeenes sur la Logique en Intelligence
Artificielle),
IJCAI-95
(International
Joint
Conference
on
Artificial
Intelligence), CADE-13 (Conference on Automated Deduction); and the following
journals: the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, the Journal of
Artificial Intelligence, Constraints.
Prizes
I was named as a runner up for the prize awarded jointly by the Interest Group
on Pure and Applied Logic (IGPL) and the European Association for Logic,
Language and Information for best idea of the year 1994. This was for my work on
spatial logics reported in the paper (Bennett 1994b).
My thesis was nominated for the ECCAI prize for best European PhD thesis in AI.
I have been told that it was the runner up for this award.
Miscellaneous:
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Organised a demonstration of the `Turing Test' at the Leeds University open
day (1988).
Editor of the Leeds University Postgraduate Newsletter from October 1992 to
May 1994.
Shortlisted for an EPSRC Advanced Research Fellowship (1999).
Gave an advanced tutorial course on Logics for Spatial Reasoning at the
Twelfth European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI2000).
In the Pipeline
With Prof. Matteo Cristani of the University of Verona, I am co-chair of a
proposed Symposium on Spatial Vagueness Uncertainty and Granularity", which will
be held in Verona in July 2000.
Publications
Journal Papers
Bennett, B.: 1996c, Modal logics for qualitative spatial reasoning, Bulletin of
the Interest Group in Pure and Applied Logic (IGPL) 4(1), 23-45. WWW address
ftp://ftp.mpi-sb.mpg.de/pub/igpl/Journal/V4-1/index.html.
Bennett, B.: 1998a, Determining consistency of topological relations,
Constraints 3(2&3), 213-225.
Bennett, B., Cohn, A.G., Wolter, F. and Zacharyaschev, M.: 2000, Multidimensional modal logic as a framework for spatio-temporal reasoning. To Appear.
Cohn, A. G., Bennett, B., Gooday, J. and Gotts, N.: 1997a, RCC: a calculus for
region-based qualitative spatial reasoning, GeoInformatica 1, 275-316.
Cohn, A. G, Gooday, J., Bennett, B. and Gotts, N.: 1995, A logical approach to
representing and reasoning about space, AI Review 9, 255-259.
Book Chapters
Cohn, A. G., Bennett, B., Gooday, J. and Gotts, N.: 1997b, Representing and
reasoning with qualitative spatial relations about regions, in O. Stock (ed.),
Temporal and spatial reasoning, Kluwer.
Cohn, A. G., Randell, D. A., Cui, Z. and Bennett, B.: 1993, Qualitative spatial
reasoning and representation, in N. P. Carrete and M. G. Singh (eds),
Qualitative Reasoning and Decision Technologies, CIMNE, Barcelona, pp. 513-522.
Cohn, A. G., Gotts, N. M., Randell, D. A., Cui, Z., Bennett, B. and Gooday, J.
M.: 1997,
Exploiting temporal continuity in temporal calculi, in R. G. Golledge and M. J.
Egenhofer (eds), Spatial and Temporal Reasoning in Geographical Information
Systems, Elsevier.
Conference Papers
Bennett, B.: 1994b, Spatial reasoning with propositional logics, in J. Doyle, E.
Sandewall and P. Torasso (eds), Principles of Knowledge Representation and
Reasoning: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference (KR94), Morgan
Kaufmann, San Francisco, CA.
Bennett, B.: 1996a, The application of qualitative spatial reasoning to GIS, in
R. Abrahart (ed.), Proc First Int. Conf. on GeoComputation, Vol. I, Leeds, pp.
44-47.
Bennett, B.: 1996b, Carving up space: steps towards construction of an
absolutely complete theory of spatial regions, in L. P. J.J. Alfres and E.
Orlowska (eds), Proceedings of JELIA'96, pp. 337-353.
Bennett, B.: 1998b, Modal semantics for knowledge bases dealing with vague
concepts, in A.G. Cohn and L. Schubert (eds), Principles of Knowledge
Representation and Reasoning: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference
(KR98), Morgan Kaufman.
Bennett, B., Cohn, A.G. and Isli, A.: 1997, Combining multiple representations
in a spatial reasoning system, Proceedings of the 9th IEEE International
Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence (TAI-97), Newport Beach, CA,
pp. 314-322.
Bennett, B., Isli, A. and Cohn, A.G.: 1998, A system handling RCC-8 queries on
2D regions representable in the closure algebra of half-planes, Proceedings of
the 11th International Conference on Industrial and Engineering Applications of
Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems (IEAAIE), LNCS, Springer-Verlag.
Bennett, B., Cohn, A.G., Torrini, P. and Hazarika, S.M.: 2000a, Describing
rigid body motions in a qualitative theory of spatial regions, in H.A.
Kautz and B.~Porter (eds), Proceedings of AAAI-2000.
Bennett, B., Cohn, A.G., Torrini, P. and Hazarika, S.M.: 2000b, A foundation
for region-based qualitative geometry, in} W. Horn (ed.), Proceedings of ECAI2000}.
Cohn, A.G., Gooday, J.M. and Bennett, B.: 1994, A comparison of structures in
spatial and temporal logics, in R. Casati, B. Smith and G. White (eds),
Philosophy and the Cognitive Sciences: Proceedings of the 16th International
Wittgenstein Symposium, Holder-Pichler-Tempsky, Vienna.
Workshop Papers
Bennett, B.: 1994a, Some observations and puzzles about composing spatial and
temporal relations, in R. Rodriguez (ed.), Proceedings ECAI-94 Workshop on
Spatial and Temporal Reasoning.
Bennett, B.: 1995a, Carving up space: existential axioms for logical theories of
spatial regions, Proceedings of IJCAI95 workshop on Spatial and Temporal
Reasoning.
Bennett, B.: 1995b, Towards a decision procedure for the RCC theory of spatial
regions, Proceedings of AISB95 workshop -- Automated Reasoning: bridging the gap
between theory and practice.
Bennett, B., Isli, A. and Cohn, A. G.: 1997, When does a composition table
provide a complete and tractable proof procedure for a relational constraint
language? Proceedings of the IJCAI-97 workshop on Spatial and Temporal
Reasoning, Nagoya, Japan.
Bennett, B. and Cohn, A. G.: 1999a, Consistency of topological relations in the
presence of convexity constraints, Proceedings of the `Hot Topics in SpatioTemporal Reasoning' workshop, IJCAI-99, Stockholm.
Bennett, B. and Cohn, A. G.: 1999b, Multi-dimensional multi-modal logics as a
framework for spatio-temporal reasoning, Proceedings of the `Hot Topics in
Spatio-Temporal Reasoning' workshop, IJCAI-99, Stockholm.
Other papers based on my work
Jonsson, P. and Drakengren, T.: 1997, A complete classification of tractability
in
RCC-5,
Journal
of
Artificial
Intelligence
Research
6,
211-221.
http://www.cs.washington.edu/research/ jair/volume6/jonsson97a.ps.
Nebel, B.: 1995, Computational properties of qualitative spatial reasoning:
First results, Proceedings of the 19th German AI Conference.
Renz, J. and Nebel, B.: 1999, On the complexity of qualitative spatial
reasoning: a maximal tractable fragment of the Region Connection Calculus,
Artificial Intelligence 108(1-2), 69-123.
Invited Talks
In addition to many presentations of conference and workshop papers (as as
listed later among my publications) I have given the following invited talks:
Leeds University Philosophy Society (15.3.88): The Concept of Life.
Manchester University Philosophy Society (18.11.88): Truth and Relativity.
Leeds Philosophy Society, Lake District conference (8.6.89): Theories of Emotion
in Relation to Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Psychology.
Medlar 2 project meeting, Toulouse (24.1.94): Efficient Spatial Reasoning with
Intuitionistic Logic.
Leeds University CTCS (31.5.94): Spatial Reasoning with Propositional Logics.
Hamburg University Dept of Informatik (30.5.94): Spatial Reasoning with
Propositional Logics.
Ulm University Informatik Department (28.6.95): Expressing Connectedness and
Dimension in a `0-adic' Spatial Logic.
York University, AI Interest Group (14.11.96): Completeness and Categoricity in
Region-Based Theories of Space.
Leeds University CTCS (5.3.98): Modal Semantics for Databases Dealing with Vague
Concepts.
Keel University Department of Computer Science (11.3.98): Combining Qualitative
and Quantitative Spatial Information.
British Colloquium on Theoretical Computer Science, Keele (15.4.99): The
Application of Supervaluation Semantics to Spatial Vagueness.
Meeting of Algorithms, Problems and Empirical Studies group (APES), Ilkley
(4.5.99): Reducing Topological Relations and the Convexity Predicate to
Constraints.
Referees
For references please contact the following:
Prof. Anthony G. Cohn
School of Computing University of Leeds
Leeds LS2 9JT
tel.: +44 (0)113 233-5482
fax: +44 (0)113 233-5468
e-mail: agc@scs.leeds.ac.uk
Dr. Antony Galton
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Exeter
Prince of Wales Road
Exeter EX4 4PT
tel.: +44 (0)1392 264058
fax: +44 (0)1392 264067
e-mail: antony@dcs.exeter.ac.uk
Prof. Bernhard Nebel
Institut fur Informatik
Albert-Ludwigs-Universitat
Am Flughafen 17
D-79110 Freiburg
Germany
tel.: +49 761 203-8221
fax: +49 761 203-8222
e-mail: nebel@informatik.uni-freiburg.de