Team at the Center For Future Health

George Ferguson

Discipline: Computer Science
Focus: Conversational Systems
Email: ferguson@cs.rochester.edu
Website: George Ferguson
CV: Full CV for George Ferguson

The future of human-computer interaction is to make it more like communication between humans. If we can exploit built-in human mechanisms for conversation and collaboration, we can develop computer systems that are less like tools and more like assistants. These systems will require no training to use, will adapt to individual users needs and preferences, and will provide knowledge-based support for a wide range of practical tasks. Accomplishing this goal requires fundamental progress on both understanding spoken human language (speech recognition, language understanding, intention recognition, etc.) and on reasoning and performance to support human problem solving (information gathering, planning, evaluation, comparison, etc.).

Biography

George Ferguson is a Research Scientist in the Computer Science Department at the University of Rochester in Rochester, NY. He received his B.Sc. in Computer Science from McGill University and his M.Sc. in Computing Science from the University of Alberta prior to completing his Ph.D. at Rochester in 1995 under the supervision of James Allen. His thesis work was on the use of temporally-explicit representations for reasoning about action and plans, and the use of those representations to support mixed-initiative human-computer planning. Since then, his research has continued to focus on the need to connect human users with automated systems. In particular, as a Principal Investigator in the TRIPS project, he is developing formalisms, architectures, and systems that support the specification and deployment of intelligent assistants that can collaborate naturally with people to help them solve problems. The approach is based on natural language interaction combined with a deep model of the problem-solving process to support reasoning about the person,s intentions in order to better use system resources to meet their needs. Recent application domains include crisis response planning, design tasks such as kitchen design, and providing medical advice to people living at home.