Jim Boerkoel is the John V. Sell Professor of Computer Science at Harvey Mudd College where he leads the Human Experience & Agent Teamwork Lab (HEATlab). 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.
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. Jim completed his doctoral thesis on developing distributed approaches for constraint-based, multi-agent scheduling under the supervision of Ed Durfee. Prior to joining HMC, Jim worked as a Postdoctoral Associate with Julie Shah of the Interactive Robotics Group at MIT. In 2017, Jim was recognized with an NSF CAREER award for his project "Robust and Reliable Multiagent Scheduling under Uncertainty."
Latest News
Co-organizing the 2026 AAAI Fall Symposium on Planning for a Better Planet (Nov 5–7, Arlington, VA), bringing together AI planning researchers and climate domain experts.
Consulting with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (2026–2027) on FAME‑HEAT28: planning new observations to support extreme-heat decisions for the LA 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Jim leads the Human Experience & Agent Teamwork Lab (HEATlab) @ HMC. The mission of the HEATlab is to develop robust techniques for human-robot teamwork that exploit the relative strengths of humans and agents. We focus on using ideas from AI to automate the scheduling and coordination of human-robot and robot-robot teams. More recently, Jim has become interested in pivoting toward climate applications, in support of HMC's new joint major in Computer Science and Climate.
Read more about our work in this PCMag feature interview.
HEATlab Alumni
47 undergraduate researchers since 2014, from Harvey Mudd, Pomona, Scripps, Claremont McKenna, and Olin. 39 have co-authored publications with the lab.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 AAAI 2022 Spring Symposium Series on ‘Can We Talk?’ How to Design Multi-Agent Systems in the Absence of Reliable Communications.
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).
Maya Abo Dominguez, William La, 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).
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.
Steve Ankuo Chien, James Boerkoel, James Mason, Daniel 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.
Michael Gao, Lindsay Popowski, and James Boerkoel. 2020. Dynamic Control of Probabilistic Simple Temporal Networks. In Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 9851–9858.
Steve Chien, James Boerkoel, James Mason, Daniel Wang, Ashley Davies, Joel Mueting, Vivek Vittaldev, Vishwa Shah, and Ignacio Zuleta. 2020. Leveraging Space and Ground Assets in a Sensorweb for Scientific Monitoring: Early Results and Opportunities for the Future. In IGARSS 2020 - 2020 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, IEEE, Waikoloa, HI, USA, 3833–3836.
Jordan R. Abrahams, David A. Chu, Grace Diehl, Marina Knittel, Judy Lin, William Lloyd, James C. Boerkoel, and Jeremy 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.
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. Awarded Best Student Paper (Runner up).
Joon Young Lee, Vivaswat Ojha, and James 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.
Seth Isaacson, Gretchen Rice, and James C. Boerkoel. 2019. MAD-TN: A Tool for Measuring Fluency in Human-Robot Collaboration. In Proceedings of Artificial Intelligence in Human-Robot Interaction AAAI Fall Symposium Series (AI-HRI 2019).
Amy Huang, Liam Lloyd, Mohamed 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.
Vaibhav V. Unhelkar, Stefan Dörr, Alexander Bubeck, Przemyslaw A. Lasota, Jorge Perez, Ho Chit Siu, James C. Boerkoel, Quirin Tyroller, Johannes Bix, Stefan Bartscher, and Julie A. Shah. 2018. Mobile robots for moving-floor assembly lines: Design, evaluation, and deployment. IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine 25, 2 (2018), 72–81.
David Chu Lasso, Grace Diehl, Marina Knittel, Judy Lin, William Lloyd, James C. Boerkoel, and Jeremy Frank. 2018. Trade-offs between communication, rescheduling, and success rate in uncertain multi-agent schedules. In Proceedings of the ICAPS 2018 Workshop on Integrated Planning, Acting and Execution (IntEx 2018).
Doug Fisher, Charles Isbell, Michael L. Littman, Michael Wollowski, Todd W. Neller, and James Boerkoel. 2017. Ask me anything about moocs. AI Magazine 38, 2 (2017), 7–12.
Kyle Lund, Sam Dietrich, Scott 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.
Brenda Castro, Montana Roberts, Karla Mena, and Jim Boerkoel. 2017. Who takes the lead? Automated scheduling for human-robot teams. In Proceedings of the Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction AAAI Fall Symposium Series (AI-HRI 2017).
Jane Wu, Erin Paeng, Kari 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) (Technical Report FS-16-01), AAAI Press, 110–117.
Kyle Lund, Sam Dietrich, and James C. Boerkoel. 2016. Robust multi-robot scheduling. In Proceedings of the RSS 2016 Workshop on On-line Decision-Making in Multi-Robot Coordination (DEMUR-16).
Jane Wu, Erin Paeng, and James C. Boerkoel. 2016. Exploring human-robot trust and cooperation. In Proceedings of the RSS 2016 Workshop on Social Trust in Autonomous Robots.
2015
Jeb Brooks, Emilia Reed, Alexander Gruver, and James C. Boerkoel. 2015. Robustness in probabilistic temporal planning. In Proceedings of the Twenty-Ninth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-15), 3239–3246.
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.
Edmund H. Durfee, James C. Boerkoel, and Jason Sleight. 2014. Using hybrid scheduling for the semi-autonomous formation of expert teams. Future Generation Computer Systems 31, (2014), 200–212. Special Section: Advances in Computer Supported Collaboration: Systems and Technologies.
Vaibhav V. Unhelkar, J. Perez, James C. Boerkoel, Johannes Bix, Stefan Bartscher, Julie 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.
Priya L. Donti and James C. Boerkoel. 2014. Exploring active and passive team-based coordination. In Proceedings of the 2014 AAAI Fall Symposium Series, 62–64.
James C. Boerkoel and Edmund H. Durfee. 2013. Decoupling the multiagent disjunctive temporal problem. In Twenty-Seventh AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 123–129.
James C. Boerkoel and Edmund H. Durfee. 2013. Distributed reasoning for multiagent simple temporal problems. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research 47, (2013), 95–156.
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.
James C. Boerkoel and Edmund 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.
James C. Boerkoel and Léon Planken. 2012. Distributed algorithms for incrementally maintaining multiagent simple temporal networks. In Proceedings of the AAMAS 2012 Workshop on Autonomous Robots and Multirobot Systems (ARMS).
2011
James C. Boerkoel and Edmund 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.
James C. Boerkoel and Edmund H. Durfee. 2011. Challenges in maintaining minimal, decomposable disjunctive temporal problems. In Proceedings of the IJCAI 2011 Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Logistics (AILog-2011).
Edmund H. Durfee, James C. Boerkoel, and Jason Sleight. 2011. Comparing techniques for the semi-autonomous formation of expert teams. In 2011 International Conference on Collaboration Technologies and Systems (CTS) Workshop on Multi-Agent Systems and Collaborative Technologies (I-MASC11), IEEE, 351–358.
James C. Boerkoel and Edmund H. Durfee. 2010. A comparison of algorithms for solving the multiagent simple temporal problem. In Proceedings of the Twentieth International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS ’10), AAAI Press, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 26–33.
James C. Boerkoel, Edmund H. Durfee, and Keith 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, 291–298.
James C. Boerkoel and Edmund 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.
James C. Boerkoel and Edmund H. Durfee. 2008. Hybrid constraint tightening for solving hybrid scheduling problems. In Proceedings of the 23rd National Conference on Artificial Intelligence - Volume 3 (AAAI ’08), AAAI Press, Chicago, Illinois, 1446–1449.
James C. Boerkoel, Mehmet Ergezer, Christine Alvarado, and Valerie Taylor. 2022. Expanding computing research pathways (panel). In The Conference on Research in Equity and Sustained Participation in Engineering, Computing, and Technology (RESPECT).
Steven H. Adachi, Tessa J. Adair, James C. Boerkoel, Taylor W. Brent, Douglas S. Campbell, Theresa W. Lynn, and Joel R. Ornstein. 2019. Heuristic graph embedding methods for adiabatic quantum computation optimization. US Patent 10,282,674.
Kyle Lund, Sam Dietrich, and James C. Boerkoel. 2016. Robust execution strategies for probabilistic temporal planning (student abstract). In Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
E. Paeng, J. Wu, and J. C. Boerkoel. 2016. Human-Robot Trust and Cooperation Through a Game Theoretic Framework (student abstract). In Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
James C. Boerkoel and Edmund H. Durfee. 2013. Decoupling the multiagent disjunctive temporal problem (extended abstract). In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2013), 1145–1146.
James C. Boerkoel and Julie A. Shah. 2013. Planning for flexible human-robot co-navigation in dynamic manufacturing environments. In Proceedings of the Pioneers Workshop at the International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI).
James C. Boerkoel. 2011. Solving the multiagent selection and scheduling problem. In International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Doctoral Consortium.
James C. Boerkoel and Edmund H. Durfee. 2010. Partitioning the multiagent simple temporal problem for concurrency and privacy. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, 1421–1422.
