Jim Boerkoel

Welcome!

Prof. Jim Boerkoel

John V. Sell Professor of Computer Science
Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA
Director: Human Experience & Agent Teamwork (HEAT) Lab
Curriculum Vitae

Contact Information

boerkoel@hmc.edu
McGregor Computer Science Center, Room 311
Office: (909) 607-4522

Biography

Jim Boerkoel is the John V. Sell Professor of Computer Science at Harvey Mudd College where he leads the Human Experience & Agent Teamwork (HEAT) Lab. The goal of the HEATLab is to develop techniques that augment humans' own cognitive and physical abilities to create integrated human-robot teams that are more capable than their individual counterparts. Prior to joining HMC, Jim worked as a Postdoctoral Associate with Julie Shah of the Interactive Robotics Group at MIT. Jim completed his doctoral thesis on developing distributed approaches for constraint-based, multi-agent scheduling under the supervision of Ed Durfee at the University of Michigan.

Jim received his B.S. (Summa Cum Laude) in Mathematics and Computer Science from Hope College (2005), and his M.S. (2008) and Ph.D. (2012) in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan. In 2017, Boerkoel was recognized with an NSF CAREER award for his project "Robust and Reliable Multiagent Scheduling under Uncertainty." His research interests include automated planning and scheduling, multi-robot coordination, human-robot interaction, and AI education.

Education & Experience

Professor, Computer Science, Harvey Mudd College (2013 – Present)
Chair, Department of Computer Science, Harvey Mudd College (2021 – 2026)
Postdoctoral Associate, Interactive Robotics Group, CSAIL, MIT (2012 – 2013)
Ph.D., Computer Science & Engineering, University of Michigan (2012)
M.S., Computer Science & Engineering, University of Michigan (2008)
B.S., Mathematics & Computer Science, Hope College (2005, Summa Cum Laude)

Research Interests

AI Education
Human-Robot Teamwork
Multiagent Coordination
Temporal Planning
Scheduling
Climate Applications

Selected Publications

2023

James Boerkoel and Mehmet Ergezer. 2023. An Undergraduate Consortium for Addressing the Leaky Pipeline to Computing Research. In Proceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1 (SIGCSE 2023), Association for Computing Machinery, Toronto ON, Canada, 687–693. PDF
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3545945.3569841

Rosy Chen, Yiran Ma, Siqi Wu, and James C. Boerkoel Jr. 2023. Sensitivity Analysis for Dynamic Control of PSTNs with Skewed Distributions. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling, 95–99. PDF
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1609/icaps.v33i1.27183

Emily Weiss, Zeneve Jacotin, Ryan Blake Jackson, Amy Yuan, and James C Boerkoel. 2023. Analyzing the Fluency of Human-Robot Interactions. In Proceedings of the AAAI 2023 Spring Symposium Series on HRI in Academia and Industry: Bridging the Gap. PDF

2022

Malia Morgan, Julianna Schalkwyk, Huaxiaoyue Wang, Hannah Davalos, Ryan Martinez, Vibha Rohilla, and James Boerkoel. 2022. Simple Temporal Networks for Improvisational Teamwork. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling, 261–269. PDF
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1609/icaps.v32i1.19809

2021

James Boerkoel, James Mason, Daniel Wang, Steve Chien, and Adrien Maillard. 2021. An Efficient Approach for Scheduling Imaging Tasks Across a Fleet of Satellites. In Proceedings of 2021 International Workshop on Planning & Scheduling for Space (IWPSS 21). PDF

2020

Maya Abo Dominguez, La William, and Jim Boerkoel. 2020. Modeling Human Temporal Uncertainty in Human-Agent Teams. In Proc. of Artificial Intelligence in Human Robot Interaction AAAI Fall Symposium Series (AI-HRI 2020). PDF
DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2010.04849

Shyan Akmal, Savana Ammons, Hemeng Li, Michael Gao, Lindsay Popowski, and James C. Boerkoel. 2020. Quantifying controllability in temporal networks with uncertainty. Artificial Intelligence 289, (2020), 103384. PDF
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.artint.2020.103384

Steve Ankuo Chien, James Boerkoel, James Mason, D. Wang, Ashley Gerard Davies, Joel Mueting, Vivek Vittaldev, Vishwa Shah, and Ignacio Zuleta. 2020. Space Ground Sensorwebs for Volcano Monitoring. In The International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space. PDF

2019

J. R. Abrahams, D. A. Chu, G. Diehl, M. Knittel, J. Lin, W. Lloyd, J. C. Boerkoel, and J. Frank. 2019. Dream: An algorithm for mitigating the overhead of robust rescheduling. In Proc. of the 29th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS-19), 3–12. PDF
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1609/icaps.v29i1.3454

Shyan Akmal, Savana Ammons, Hemeng Li, and James C. Boerkoel. 2019. Quantifying degrees of controllability in temporal networks with uncertainty. In Proc. of the 29th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS-19), 22–30. PDF
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1609/icaps.v29i1.3456

J. Y. Lee, V. Ojha, and J. C. Boerkoel. 2019. Measuring and optimizing durability against scheduling disturbances. In Proc. of the 29th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS-19), 264–268. PDF
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1609/icaps.v29i1.3486

2018

A. Huang, L. Lloyd, M. Omar, and James Boerkoel. 2018. New perspectives on flexibility in simple temporal planning. In Proc. of the 28th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS-18), 123–131. PDF
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1609/icaps.v28i1.13907

V. V. Unhelkar, S. Dörr, A. Bubeck, P. A. Lasota, J. Perez, H. C. Siu, J. C. Boerkoel, Q. Tyroller, J. Bix, S. Bartscher, and J. A. Shah. 2018. Mobile robots for moving-floor assembly lines: Design, evaluation, and deployment. IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine 25, 2 (2018), 72–81.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/MRA.2018.2815639

2017

D. Fisher, C. Isbell, M. L. Littman, M. Wollowski, T. W. Neller, and James Boerkoel. 2017. Ask me anything about moocs. AI Magazine 38, 2 (2017), 7–12.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1609/aimag.v38i2.2729

K. Lund, S. Dietrich, S. Chow, and James Boerkoel. 2017. Robust execution of probabilistic temporal plans. In Proc. of the 31st National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-17), 3597–3604. PDF
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v31i1.11019

M. Wollowski, T. Neller, and James Boerkoel. 2017. Artificial intelligence education: Editorial introduction. AI Magazine 38, 2 (2017), 5–6.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1609/aimag.v38i2.2728

2016

Jane Wu, Erin Paeng, Rhearia Linder, Piercarlo Valdesolo, and James C. Boerkoel. 2016. Trust and Cooperation in Human-Robot Decision Making. In Proceedings of the AAAI 2016 Fall Symposium Series on Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI 2016). PDF
DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1611.02636

2015

J. Brooks, E. Reed, A. Gruver, and J. C. Boerkoel. 2015. Robustness in probabilistic temporal planning. In Proceedings of the Twenty-Ninth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-15), 3239–3246. PDF
https://doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v29i1.9663

P. L. Donti, H. Rosenbloom, A. Gruver, and J. C. Boerkoel. 2015. Predicting the quality of user experiences to improve productivity and wellness. In Proceedings of the Twenty-Ninth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 4154–4155. PDF
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v29i1.9740

2014

E. H. Durfee, J. C. Boerkoel, and J. Sleight. 2014. Using hybrid scheduling for the semi-autonomous formation of expert teams. Future Generation Computer Systems 31, (2014), 200–212.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2013.04.008

V. V. Unhelkar, J. Perez, J. C. Boerkoel, J. Bix, S. Bartscher, J. Shah, et al. 2014. Towards control and sensing for an autonomous mobile robotic assistant navigating assembly lines. In Proceedings of the 2014 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), IEEE, 4161–4167.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICRA.2014.6907464

2013

J. C. Boerkoel and E. H. Durfee. 2013. Decoupling the multiagent disjunctive temporal problem. In Twenty-Seventh AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 123–129. PDF
https://doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v27i1.8583

J. C. Boerkoel and E. H. Durfee. 2013. Distributed reasoning for multiagent simple temporal problems. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research 47, (2013), 95–156. PDF
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1613/jair.3840

J. C. Boerkoel, L. Planken, R. Wilcox, and J. A. Shah. 2013. Distributed algorithms for incrementally maintaining multiagent simple temporal networks. In Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS), 11–19. PDF
hhttps://doi.org/10.1609/icaps.v23i1.13551

2012

J. C. Boerkoel and E. H. Durfee. 2012. A distributed approach to summarizing spaces of multiagent schedules. In Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 1742–1748. PDF
https://doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v26i1.8368

2011

J. C. Boerkoel and E. H. Durfee. 2011. Distributed algorithms for solving the multiagent temporal decoupling problem. In The 10th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems - Volume 1 (AAMAS ’11), International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, Taipei, Taiwan, 141–148. PDF
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.5555/2030470.2030491

2010

J. C. Boerkoel and E. H. Durfee. 2010. A comparison of algorithms for solving the multiagent simple temporal problem. In Proceedings of the Twentieth International Conference on International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS’10), AAAI Press, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 26–33. PDF
https://doi.org/10.1609/icaps.v20i1.13420

J. C. Boerkoel, E. H. Durfee, and K. Purrington. 2010. Generalized solution techniques for preference-based constrained optimization with cp-nets. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems: volume 1-Volume 1, 291–298. PDF
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.5555/1838206.1838247

2009

J. C. Boerkoel and E. H. Durfee. 2009. Evaluating hybrid constraint tightening for scheduling agents. In Proceedings of The 8th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems-Volume 1, 673–680. PDF
https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.5555/1558013.1558106