Academics

Frank Ritter earns Life Time Achievement Award at SBP-BRiMS conference

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Frank Ritter, professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology, was presented with the Life Time Achievement Award at the 2018 International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling, & Prediction and Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation (SBP-BRiMS), held July 10-13 in Washington, D.C.

Each year, the SBP-BRiMS Life Time Achievement Award is presented to a recipient who has spent his or her career in the area of computational social science and developed significant products and numerous significant papers. Award winners are also leaders in the SBP-BRiMS community, fostering scientific achievements by others in the community.

“I’m pleased [to receive this honor],” said Ritter. “I hope to have another lifetime of work in me yet.”

Ritter has made important contributions to these areas. He has served as program co-chair three times, and also delivered the keynote address on the topic of futures for cognitive modeling and architectures at this year’s SBP-BRiMS conference.

“Dr. Ritter has been a key member of the SBP-BRiMS community ever since he helped start the original conference,” said Kathleen Carley, professor at Carnegie Mellon University and co-chair of BRiMS. “His research is wide reaching, and has both scientific and operational merit. In addition, Dr. Ritter’s influence on generations of researchers in computational social science can be seen in the intellectual rigor and creativity with which his students, and his students’ students, address challenges in this space.”

Ritter’s research focuses on using cognitive models to test theories of learning, behavior moderators and networks, and to improve human-computer interaction. He has created software, tutorials and methodology for cognitive modeling, and has published numerous books, two textbooks on human-computer interaction and cognitive sciences, and refereed articles and conference papers in cognitive modeling, human-computer interaction, artificial intelligence and psychology.

In 2015, the SBP-BRiMS conference evolved out of two related meetings, SBP and BRiMS, which were co-located in previous years. Ritter has been involved with BRiMS since 2002 and served as co-chair from 2009 through 2011.

Last Updated September 27, 2018