Nau, Dana
Professor Emeritus
Computer Science
The Institute for Systems Research
Maryland Robotics Center
The Institute for Systems Research
Maryland Robotics Center
4158 Iribe Center
Dana Nau is a Professor at the University of Maryland, in the Department of Computer Science and the Institute for Systems Research. He received a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from Missouri S&T (then University of Missouri-Rolla) in 1974, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Duke University in 1979.
Dr. Nau does research in artificial intelligence, especially in the areas of automated planning and game theory. He has more than 300 refereed technical publications, has chaired ICAPS and several other conferences, and has been on the editorial boards of JAIR, ACM TIST, and several other journals. Some of his accomplishments include:
- The discovery of pathological game trees, in which looking farther ahead produces worse decision-making.
- The AI planning and game-tree search algorithm used by the computer program that won the 1997 world championship of computer bridge. Articles about this appeared in several major media.
- The SHOP, SHOP2, and Pyhop automated-planning systems. These have been downloaded more than 20,000 times and have been used in hundreds (thousands?) of projects worldwide.
- Two graduate-level textbooks, Automated Planning: Theory and Practice and Automated Planning and Acting.
- Game-theoretic studies of the evolution of cultural characteristics such as third-party punishment and ethnocentrism.
Dr. Nau is an AAAI Fellow and an ACM Fellow.
Artificial intelligence; computer integrated design and manufacturing; planning; search
A list of Dr. Nau's publications can be found here.
New Research Suggests Gossip “Not Always a Bad Thing”
A study by UMD and Stanford researchers suggests the behavior may have an adaptive function.Congratulations May 2023 ISR graduates!
Here's a list of May graduates with ISR ties---at all degree levels.Dana Nau elected to AAAS Fellow
Nau is well known for his expertise in artificial intelligence and its subfields of automated planning and game theory.ISR-affiliated graduates, December 2022
ISR congratulates these students, all advised by ISR faculty!Congratulations, May 2021 ISR graduates!
Institute for Systems Research faculty advised PhD, MS, BS and 12 MSSE students who graduated in May 2021.‘Tight’ cultures had fewer cases, deaths from COVID-19, new Gelfand research shows
ISR/CS game theorist Dana Nau part of study published in The Lancet Planetary Health.
Planning and learning algorithms developed for refinement acting engine
New paper continues the long research partnership of Dana Nau (CS/ISR), Malik Ghallab and Paolo Traverso.Nau and colleagues develop APE, an integrated acting-and-planning system
The decisionmaking system maintains consistency between descriptive and operational models, a longstanding problem in AI.Oct. 4 event features Michele Gelfand, research colleague of Dana Nau
Gelfand will talk with Thomas Friedman about her book on tight and loose cultures.Five recipients of ISR Graduate Student Travel Award announced
Eight graduate students have received funding through the award since 2017.Dana Nau to be inducted into Duke alumni society
Nau is being recognized for his distinguished career.Nau, Gelfand, Goldstein part of MURI developing the potential of mean-field game theory
The AFOSR initiative funds researchers from Maryland, UCLA, the University of Houston, and Princeton.William Regli named sixth director of ISR
Regli, an ISR alumnus, will begin his appointment in January 2018.Nau and colleagues publish new AI Planning book
Automated Planning and Acting introduces complex computational techniques for planning and performing actions.Moving matters: Ethnocentric behavior decreases when societal mobility rises
New study suggests that a society’s level of mobility influences whether its members treat outsiders as individualsAlum Amnon Lotem wins EATCS/ACM SIGACT Gödel Prize
Prizewinning paper introduced the “threshold algorithm” used in applications and systems that gather multi-sourced information.ICAPS best paper award for Dana Nau, Vikas Shivashankar and colleagues
"Optimal Planning with Global Numerical State Constraints" won the best student paper award.Crime and punishment: interdisciplinary researchers explain ‘third party’ evolution
Nau, Gelfand, Roos and Carr use powerful mathematical models to explain social behavior.Dana Nau named ACM Fellow
Professor is honored "for contributions to automated search and planning."Dana Nau's impact celebrated with birthday symposium
Nau honored for contributions to automated planning, diagnostic inference, adversarial and game theoretic reasoning, and automated manufacturing.Alum Kiran Hebbar promoted at Valhalla Partners
Earned M.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 1996.Alum Amnon Lotem promoted to Chief Technology Officer at Skybox Security
Lotem earned his Ph.D. in 2000; was advised by Dana Nau.Work of Erol, Nau, Hendler earns honorable mention for ICAPS Influential Paper Award
The 1994 paper was pioneering work in hierarchical task-network (HTN) planning systems.Dana Nau will be keynote speaker at KI-2009
The 33rd Annual Conference on Artificial Intelligence is the annual German conference on AI.Alumnus Qiang Yang named IEEE Fellow
Former student of Dana Nau honored for work in intelligent planning, learning and data mining.'RFF' wins 2008 International Planning Competition
Former ISR visitor Florent Teichteil-Königsbuch was among the developers.Nau invited speaker at ProMas 2008
ISR professor spoke on autonomous agent planning.Dana Nau interviewed about Texas Hold'em computer program
Professor helped develop award-winning program that plays contract bridge.Automated Kriegspiel Chess Player (ISR IP)
This IP is available to license.Nau, Subrahmanian are principal investigators for $3.4 million MURI
"Cognitive Architecture for Reasoning about Adversaries" team also includes ISR's Michael FuDana Nau one of three authors of Automated Planning
June 2004—Book offers a comprehensive, up-to-date resource on both the theory and practice of automated planning.Dana Nau is PI for 'Pushing the Boundaries of AI Planning'
June 2004—Research in the $140,000 NSF will develop planner-generalization techniques.DARPA awards Nau contract for AcT program
Research will develop an easy-to-use planning tool for Special Operations ForcesAssociation for Computing Machinery (ACM)
- Fellow, 2013
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
- Fellow, 2023
American Association for Artificial Intelligence
- Fellow, 1996
- Planning and Acting with Hierarchical Input/Output Automata
- Understanding Norm Change: An Evolutionary Game-Theoretic Approach
- Artificial intelligence planning: Theory and applications
- Physics-aware planning for autonomous unmanned surface vehicles
- Simulation-Based Methods for Control and Optimization
- AI Planning: Theory and Applications