Saul Amarel

Saul Amarel, D.Sc.,Alan M. Turing Professor of Computer Science at Rutgers University, passed away in Princeton, NJ on Wednesday, December 18, 2002 just as the celebration of his retirement from Rutgers after 33 years of leadership in Computer Science nationally and internationally, was in preparation for December 20.

Dr Amarel founded the Department of Computer Science at Livingston College, Rutgers University in New Brunswick NJ in 1969 and was its Chairman until 1984. Earlier, he had led the Computer Theory Group at RCA Sarnoff Labs in Princeton from 1958 to 1969, where he developed network synthesis and computer simulation methods.

He is best known as a pioneer in artificial intelligence, having written the seminal paper on how to represent knowledge about ProblemReformulation? (see also CannibalsAndMissionaries).

At Rutgers University, Amarel led the first NIH ­funded Special Research Resource on Computers in Biomedicine at Rutgers from 1971, laying the foundation for widespread research in expert systems applied to such diverse fields as medicine, biochemistry, psychology, engineering design, and ecology. In 1977, he founded the Laboratory for Computer Science Research at Rutgers, which pioneered the introduction of time-shared computing for scientific communication at Rutgers and was an early node in the ARPA net,­ the predecessor of the Internet. In 1983, Dr Amarel was named General Chair of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence,­ the triennial international meeting for the field, held in Karlruhe, Germany. He was subsequently Director of the Information Sciences and Technology Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) from 1985 to 1988. On returning to Rutgers, he was named Alan M. Turing Professor of Computer Science, and in 1989 led a major project on Hypercomputing and Design under the largest federal grant received by Rutgers ($12.4 million from the Department of Defense) to that time. The project investigated how to apply advanced artificial intelligence techniques to the design of VLSI circuits, voice recognition systems, high speed aircraft and missile inlets, naval vessels, and supersonic transports.

This reflected Dr Amarel's unique abilities as a leader in organizing networks of collaborating scientists and engineers to develop advanced computer science methods for biomedical research and engineering design. His accomplishments were recognized by the premier Computer Science organization, the Association for Computing Machinery,­ from which he received the Allen Newell Award. He was also elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and received the Rutgers Research Excellence Award in 1994. From 1995, he chaired the Information Sciences and Technology Council at Rutgers University.

CategoryScientist