Eric Horvitz



Distinguished Scientist
Microsoft Research

Microsoft Research, One Microsoft Way, Redmond WA 98052-6399, USA
Contact information

Research overview

I'm interested in principles of sensing, learning, and decision making under uncertainty. My interests include human decision making and computational models of reflection and action. Beyond theoretical models, I pursue applications in several realms, including time-critical decision making, scientific exploration, information retrieval, and healthcare--with goals of understanding how computational models perform amidst real-world complexities, and of deploying valuable systems. Related interests include information triage and alerting that takes human attention into consideration, spanning work on notification systems, surprise modeling, multitasking, and psychological studies of interruption and recovery. Other interests include principles of mixed-initiative interaction that can support fluid, efficient collaborations between people and computing systems, methods for guiding computer actions in accordance with the preferences of people, search and information retrieval, and collaboration. I've also been long interested in offline and real-time optimization of the expected value of computational systems under limited and varying resources. Areas of concentration in this realm include flexible or anytime computation, ideal metareasoning for guiding computation, compilation for reducing real-time deliberation, ongoing, continual computation, and the construction of bounded-optimal reasoning systems--systems that maximize the expected utility of the people they serve, given the expected costs of reasoning, the problems encountered over time, and assertions about a system's constitution. Research in this arena includes tackling hard reasoning problems with learning and decision making methods. My organization within Microsoft Research includes groups focused on machine learning and decision making, search and retrieval, human-computer interaction, social computing, ecommerce, probability theory, and algorithms.

Currently serving as the Immediate Past President of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), on the Advisory Committee of the National Science Foundation's Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering, and on the council of the Computing Community Consortium. Fellow of the AAAI, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.


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Activities and service

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