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Lynne Parker

Parker Named Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence

Tickle College of Engineering alum and former interim dean Lynne Parker has added another accolade to her resume, as she was named an Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Fellow for 2022.

“Artificial intelligence is already playing a role across many areas of society, and will only continue to grow in use and importance,” said Parker, who held the inaugural meeting of the National AI Advisory Committee on Thursday. “It is a deep honor to be selected to join the ranks of luminaries from around the world who have founded and made significant contributions to the field of AI.”

Parker is the first person from the University of Tennessee so honored, and was chosen for “pioneering research in distributed robotics and exceptional leadership in AI policy.”

She has a wealth of knowledge on AI topics, and currently serves as the director of the National AI Initiative Office for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, having previously served as National Science Foundation Division Director of Information and Intelligent Systems.

Parker joined the faculty in what is now the Min H. Kao Department of Electrical Engineering in Computer Science in 2002, when she founded the Distributed Intelligence Laboratory. Through it, she has broadened research and knowledge into multi-robot systems, sensor networks, machine learning, and human-robot interaction.

She is also a Fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and is a Distinguished Member of the Association for Computing Machinery.

In addition to contributing to several conferences over the years, Parker chaired the 2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation and served as editor-in-chief of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Conference Editorial Board, and as editor of IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

AAAI started the fellows program in 1990 as a way to acknowledge those who have made a sustained, notable impact to artificial intelligence.

This year’s class consisted of 10 inductees representing six countries, including only four from US universities.