Dr. Richard Watson

Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science
Texas Tech University


Research Interests

Artificial Intelligence, Knowledge Representation, Common-sense Reasoning, Logic Programming, Non-monotonic Logics, Reasoning about Actions, Action Languages, Automated Planning, Intelligent Agents, Multi-Agent systems.

Co-head of the Knowledge Representation Lab (Together with Dr. Michael Gelfond and Dr. Yuanlin Zhang)

 

Education:
    Ph.D. in Computer Science - The University of Texas at El Paso, July 1999
        Dissertation: "Action Languages for Domain Modeling"
        Advisor: Dr. Michael Gelfond
    M.S. in Computer Science - The University of Texas at El Paso, May 1994
    B.S in Computer Science - The University of Texas at El Paso, May 1990

 

Current Service Activities:

á       ABET Coordinator for the Department of Computer Science, 2015 Ð Present

á       Head of Student Affairs for Computer Science, 2009 Ð Present

á       Faculty Advisor for the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), 2010 Ð Present & 2001 Ð 2003

á       Faculty Advisor of the Upsilon Pi Epsilon (UPE) honors society, 2011 Ð Present

á       Faculty Advisor for the Extraordinary Women of Computer Science (EWoCS), 2015 Ð Present

á       Chair of Koh Scholarship Committee, 2015 Ð Present, Committee Member 2000 Ð Present

á       Member of Texas Tech Departmental Excellence in Teaching Award (DETA) committee, 2015 Ð Present

á       Peer evaluator/Mentor for WCOE faculty teaching, 2014 Ð Present.

á       Member of ECE Curriculum Subcommittee on Computer Engineering, 2010 ÐPresent.

á       Member of Program Committee for Answer Set Programming and Other Computing Paradigms (ASPOCP Õ17)

 

Awards:

á       Inducted into Texas Tech Teaching Academy, Fall2014

á       ÒMost Influential ProfessorÓ award, Fall 2013 WCOE HonorÕs Convocation

á       Voted ÒOutstanding ProfessorÓ for 2012-2013 by the Texas Tech Computer Science student as awarded by the student chapter of ACM

á       Voted ÒOutstanding ProfessorÓ for 2010-2011 by the Texas Tech Computer Science student as awarded by the student chapter of ACM

á       Paper ÒModeling Hybrid Systems in Action LanguagesÓ awarded ÒBest Applications PaperÓ at ASP Õ03

 

 

Papers and Publications:

á       Patrick Kahl, Richard Watson, Evgenii Balai, Michael Gelfond, and Yuanlin Zhang, ÒThe Language of Epistemic Specifications (Refined) Including a Prototype SolverÓ, Journal of Logic and Computation, 10.1093/logcom/exv065, 2015.

á       Patrick Kahl, Richard Watson, Michael Gelfond, and Yuanlin Zhang, ÒA Refinement of the Language of Epistemic SpecificationsÓ, in Proceedings of ASPOCP Õ14, 15 pages, 2014.

á       Audra Morse, Richard Watson, and John Rivera, ÒUsing Enrollment Management to Influence Student Quality and RetentionÓ, in Proceeding of the 121st ASEE Annual Conference, 10 pages, 2014.

á       Sandeep Chintabathina and Richard Watson, ÒA New Incarnation of Action Language HÓ, In Esra Erdem, Joohyung Lee, Yuliya Lierler, David Pearce, editors, Correct Reasoning - Essays on Logic-Based AI in Honour of Vladimir Lifschitz. Volume 7265 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pp 560-575. Springer, 2012.

á       Richard Watson and Marina De Vos, ÒASTREA: Answer sets for a trusted reasoning environment for agentÓ, In Marcello Balduccini and Tran Son, editors, Logic Programming, Knowledge Representation, and Nonmonotonic Reasoning, volume 6565 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pp 490-509, Springer 2011

á       Forest Sheng Bao, Sandeep Chintabathina, A. Ricardo Morales, Neslon Rushton, Richard Watson and Yuanlin Zhang, ÒA Temporally Expressive Planner Based on Answer Set Programming with Constraints: Preliminary DesignÓ, In Marcello Balduccini and Tran Son, editors, Logic Programming, Knowledge Representation, and Nonmonotonic Reasoning, volume 6565 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pp 398-414. Springer, 2011.

á       Gregory Gelfond and Richard Watson, "Modeling Cooperative Multi-Agent Systems", in Proceedings of ASP '07 - Answer Set Programming: Advances in Theory and Implementation, pp. 67-81, 2007.

á       Sandeep Chintabathina, Michael Gelfond, and Richard Watson, "Defeasible Laws, Parallel Actions, and Reasoning about Resources", in Proceedings of Commonsense '07 :Logical Formalizations of Commonsense Reasoning, pp. 35-40, AAAI Press, 2007.

á       Marina De Vos, Owen Cliffe, Richard Watson, Tom Crick, Julian Padget, and Johnathan Needham, "T-LAIMA: Answer Set Programming for Modeling Agents with Trust", in Proceedings of the Third European Workshop on Multi-Agent Systems (EUMAS '05), pp. 126-136, 2005.

á       Martin Brain, Richard Watson, and Marina DeVos, "An Interactive Approach to Answer Set Programming", in Proceedings of ASP '05 - Answer Set Programming: Advances in Theory and Implementation, pp 190-202, 2005.

á       Sandeep Chintabathina, Michael Gelfond, and Richard Watson, "Modeling Hybrid Domains Using Process Description Language", in Proceedings of ASP '05 - Answer Set Programming: Advances in Theory and Implementation, pp 303-317, 2005.

á       Richard Watson and Sandeep Chintabathina, "Modeling Hybrid Systems in Action Languages", in Proceedings of ASP '03 - Answer Set Programming: Advances in Theory and Implementation, CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Col 78, http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-78/, 2003.

á       Michael Gelfond and Richard Watson, "On Methodology of Representing Knowledge in Dynamic Domains", Science of Computer Programming, 42(1): 87-99, 2002.

á       Michael Gelfond and Richard Watson, "Diagnosis with Answer Sets - Dealing with Unobservable Fluents", In AAAI Workshop on Cognitive Robotics (CogRob2002), Technical Report WS-02-05, pp 44-51, 2002.

á       Marcello Balduccini, Michael Gelfond, Richard Watson, and Monica Nogeira, "Planning with the USA-Advisor", In 3rd NASA Workshop on Planning and Scheduling for Space, 2002.

á       Marcello Balduccini, Michael Gelfond, Richard Watson, and Monica Nogeira, "The USA-Advisor: A Case Study in Answer Set Planning," In Lecture notes in Artificial Intelligence - Proceedings of Logic Programming and Nonmonotonic Reasoning '01, Vol. 2173, pp. 439-442, 2001.

á       Marcello Balduccini, Matthew Barry, Michael Gelfond, Monica Nogeira, and Richard Watson, "An A-Prolog Decision Support System for the Space Shuttle - I," In Lecture Notes in Computer Science - Proceedings of Practical Aspects of Declarative Languages '01, Vol. 1990, pp169-183, 2001.

á       Marcello Balduccini, Matthew Barry, Michael Gelfond, Monica Nogeira, and Richard Watson, "An A-Prolog Decision Support System for the Space Shuttle - II," In Answer Set Programming: Towards Efficient and Scalable Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, Technical Report SS-01-01, pp.139-145, AAAI Press, 2001.

á       Richard Watson, "A Splitting Set Theorem for Epistemic Specifications," In Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Non-Monotonic Reasoning NMR' 2000, 2000.

á       Richard Watson, "Action Languages for Domain Modeling," Doctoral Dissertation, Department of Computer Science, University of Texas at El Paso, UMI, 1999.

á       Richard Watson, "An Application of Action Theory to the Space Shuttle," In Lecture Notes in Computer Science - Proceedings of Practical Aspects of Declarative Languages '99, Gopal Gupta (Ed.), Vol. 1551, pp. 290-304, 1999.

á       Matthew Barry and Richard Watson, "Reasoning About Actions for Spacecraft Redundancy Management," In Proceedings of 1999 IEEE Aerospace Conference, vol. 5, pp.101-112, 1999.

á       Michael Gelfond and Richard Watson, "On Methodology of Representing Knowledge in Dynamic Domains", In Proceedings of the 1998 ARO/ONR/NSF/DARPA Monterey Workshop on Engineering Automation for Computer Based Systems, pp. 57-66, 1999.

á       Richard Watson, "An Inference Engine for Epistemic Specifications," Masters Thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Texas at El Paso, 1994.

á       Vladik Kreinovich and Richard Watson, "How difficult is it to invent a nontrivial game," In Cybernetics and Systems, Vol. 25(4), pp. 629-640, 1994.

 

                    

Book Chapters / Other Publications

á       Michael Gelfond and Richard Watson, "Nonmonotonic Logic", in The Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, Nature Publishing Group - Macmillan Reference Inc, UK, pp 375-382, 2003.

á       Chitta Baral, Michael Gelfond, and Richard Watson. "Reasoning About Actual and Hypothetical Occurrences of Concurrent and Non-deterministic Actions," in Dynamic Worlds: From the Frame Problem to Knowledge Management, edited by Bertram Fronhofer and Remo Pareschi, Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 73-109, 1999.

 

Courses Teaching/Taught

      Graduate

á       CS 5353 - Compiler Construction

á       CS 5361 - Theory of Computing Languages

á       CS 5368 - Artificial Intelligence

á       CS 5381 - Analysis of Algorithms

á       CS 5383 - Theory of Automata

á       CS 5384 - Logic for Computer Scientists

á       CS 5398 - Theory and Practice of Logic Programming

á       CS 5331 - Planning and Diagnosis in Dynamic Domains

á       CS 5331 - Important Theorems and Proofs in Artificial Intelligence

á       CS 5331 - Problem Solving with Modern Heuristics

á       CS 5331 - Practical Logic Programming

á       CS 5331 - Current Research in Computer Science

á       CS 5331 - Intelligent Agents

Undergraduate

á       CS 1382 - Discrete Computational Structures

á       CS 1411 - Principles of Programming I

á       CS 1462 - Fundamentals of Computer Science I

á       CS 2365 - Object Oriented Programming

á       CS 3361 - Concepts of Programming Languages

á       CS 3364 - Design and Analysis of Algorithms

á       CS 3368 - Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

á       CS 3383 - Automata and Theory of Computation

á       CS 4391 - Theory and Practice of Logic Programming

á       CS 4391 - Planning and Diagnosis in Dynamic Domains

á       IS 1100 - Raider Ready: Freshman Seminar

á       ENGR 1315 - Introduction to Engineering

á       CS 3330 - Problem Oriented Programming Languages - C (at UTEP)

Links of Interest

Texas Action Group (TAG) - A group of researchers (including our local group) interested in the study of formal and automated reasoning about the effects of actions using action languages, logic programming under the answer set semantics, and related ideas.  The group is based in Texas but has members (and groups) in several countries.

 

Contact Information

Department of Computer Science
Texas Tech University
College of Engineering
Box 43104
Lubbock, TX 79409
office: (806) 834-0685
e-mail: richard.watson@ttu.edu
fax: (806) 742-3519