Official Bio

Dr. Steve Chien is Technical Group Supervisor of the Artificial Intelligence Group and Principal Computer Scientist in the Mission Planning and Execution Section at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology where he leads efforts in automated planning and scheduling for space exploration. Dr. Chien is also an Adjunct Associate Professor with the Department of Computer Science of the University of Southern California . He holds a B.S. with Highest Honors in Computer Science, with minors in Mathematics and Economics, M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science, all from the University of Illinois.

He is a founder of the International Workshops on Planning and Scheduling for Space and was the Chair of the 1997 Workshop. He is former chair of the AIPS Executive Council (2000-2002), and is a member of the ICAPS Executive Council (2002-2006), and was President of the ICAPS Executive Council 2002-2004. He is also a Councilor for the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (2003-2006)

Dr. Chien was a recipient of the 1995 Lew Allen Award for Excellence, JPLs highest award recognizing outstanding technical achievements by JPL personnel in the early years of their careers. In 1997, he received the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal for his work in research and development of planning and scheduling systems for NASA. He is the Team Lead for the ASPEN Planning System , which received Honorable Mention in the 1999 Software of the Year Competition and was a contributor to the Remote Agent System which was a co-winner in the same 1999 competition. In 2000, he received the NASA Exceptional Service Medal for service and leadership in research and deployment of planning and scheduling systems for NASA. He is the Principal Investigator for the Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment which is a co-winner of the 2005 NASA Software of the Year Award.

Dr. Chien has presented invited seminars on machine learning, planning, scheduling, and expert systems, has authored numerous publications in these areas, and serves as a consultant to several multinational corporations in these areas. His current research interests lie in the areas of: planning and scheduling, machine learning, operations research, and decision theory.

Group Links

• AI in Planning and Execution at JPL
• Machine Learning at JPL

Affiliated Conferences and Workshops:

• Invited Speaker, "Safe Agents in Space," Meeting on Safety and Security in Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent Systems, Utrecht, The Netherlands, July 2005.
• Invited Speaker, The Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment, International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Automation for Space (i-SAIRAS) , Munich, Germany, September 2005.
• Tutorial Lecturer, Automated Planning and Scheduling for Space Operations, Ground Systems Architecture Workshop (GSAW) , Manhattan Beach, CA, March 2006.
• Co-organizer, Invited Session, Revolutionary Space Exploration Concepts Using Onboard Computing, Spring Meeting of the Joint Assembly of the American Geophysical Union, Baltimore, MD, May 2006.
• Co-chair, Summer School on Planning and Scheduling, International Conference on Planning and Scheduling, Lake District, UK June 2006.

Selected Recent Publications

Davies, A. G., S. Chien, R. Wright, A. Miklius, P. R. Kyle, M. Welsh, J. B. Johnson, D. Tran, S. R. Schaffer and R. Sherwood, Sensor Web Enables Rapid Response to Volcanic Activity, EOS - Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, v. 87, no. 1, p1,5, January 2006. JPL Clearance Number CL #05-3716

Davies, A. G., S. Chien, V. Baker, T. Doggett, J. Dohm, R. Greeley, F. Ip, R. Castano, B. Cichy, R. Lee, G. Rabideau, D. Tran and R. Sherwood (2005) Monitoring Active Volcanism with the Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment (ASE). Remote Sensing of Environment , Volume 101 Issue 4 pp. 427-446. JPL Clearance Number CL #05-1043

Doggett, T., R. Greeley, A. G. Davies, S. Chien, B. Cichy, R. Castano, K. Williams, V. Baker, J. Dohm and F. Ip (2005) Autonomous On-Board Detection of Cryospheric Change. Remote Sensing of Environment , Volume 101 Issue 4 pp. 447-462.

Ip, F., J. M. Dohm, V. R. Baker, T. Doggett, A. G. Davies, R. Castano, S. Chien, B. Cichy, R. Greeley, and R. Sherwood (2005) Development and Testing of the Autonomous Spacecraft Experiment (ASE) floodwater classifiers: Real-time Smart Reconnaissance of Transient Flooding, Remote Sensing of Environment , Volume 101 Issue 4 pp. 463-481.

S. Chien, B. Cichy, A. Davies, D. Tran, G. Rabideau, R. Castano, R. Sherwood, D. Mandl, S. Frye, S. Shulman, J. Jones, S. Grosvenor, "An Autonomous Earth Observing Sensorweb," IEEE Intelligent Systems , May-June 2005, pp. 16-24. JPL Clearance Number CL #05-1291

S. Chien, R. Sherwood, D. Tran, B. Cichy, G. Rabideau, R. Castano, A. Davies, D. Mandl, S. Frye, B. Trout, S. Shulman, D. Boyer, "Using Autonomy Flight Software to Improve Science Return on Earth Observing One, Journal of Aerospace Computing, Information, and Communication , April 2005. JPL Clearance Number CL #05-0079

S. Chien, R. Sherwood, G. Rabideau, R.Castano, A. Davies, M. Burl, R. Knight, T. Stough, J. Roden, P. Zetocha, R. Wainwright, P. Klupar, J. Van Gaasbeck , P. Cappelaere,D. Oswald, "The Techsat-21 Autonomous Science Agent," Proceedings of Agents 2002 , Bologna, Italy, July 2002. (PDF) JPL Clearance # 02-1413

S. Chien, B. Cichy, A. Davies, D. Tran, G. Rabideau, R. Castano, R. Sherwood, R. Greeley, T. Doggett, V. Baker, J. Dohm, F. Ip, D. Mandl, S. Frye, S. Shulman, S. Ungar, T. Brakke, J. Descloitres, J. Jones, S. Grosvenor, R. Wright, L. Flynn, A. Harris, R. Brakenridge, S. Cacquard, S. Nghiem, An Autonomous Earth-Observing Sensorweb, IEEE Conference on Systems Man and Cybernetics (IEEE-SMC 2005). Big Island, HI. October 2005. JPL Clearance CL#05-1889

S. Chien, R. Sherwood, D. Tran, B. Cichy, G. Rabideau, R. Castaqo, A. Davies, S. Frye, B. Trout, J. D'Agostino, S. Shulman , D. Mandl, D. Boyer, S. Hayden, A. Sweet, S. Christa, The Autonomous Sciencecraft Embedded Systems Architecture, IEEE Conference on Systems Man and Cybernetics (IEEE-SMC 2005). Big Island, HI. October 2005. JPL CLearance CL#05-1888

S. Chien et al., Lessons Learned from the Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment, Proceedings of the Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems Conference, Utrecht, The Netherlands, July 2005. JPL Clearance CL#05-1122

S. Chien et al., The Earth Observing One Autonomous Science Agent, Proceedings of the Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems Conference, New York City, NY, July 2004. JPL Clearance CL#04-1321

Other (less recent) publications.

S. Chien, R. Knight, A. Stechert, R. Sherwood, and G. Rabideau, "Using Iterative Repair to Improve the Responsiveness of Planning and Scheduling," Proc. 5th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Planning and Scheduling (AIPS2000) , Breckenridge, CO, April 2000. (PostScript) (PDF) JPL Clearance # 00-0277

S. Chien, A. Stechert, and D. Mutz, "Efficient Heuristic Hypothesis Ranking," Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research 10 (1999), pp. 375-397.(PostScript)  (PDF) JPL Clearance # 99-1038

G. Rabideau, S. Chien, J. Willis, T. Mann, "Interactive, Repair-Based Planning and Scheduling for Shuttle Payload Operations," Artificial Intelligence Journal , 114 (1999) 239-255. (downloadable conference length article on same topic appearing in Proceedings of the 1999 Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI), Orlando, FL, July 1999. (Postscript) (PDF)) JPL Clearance # 98-0160

S. Chien, F. Fisher, E. Lo, H. Mortensen, R. Greeley, "Using Artificial Intelligence Planning to Automate Science Data Analysis for Large Image Databases," Proceedings of the 1997 Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, Newport Beach, CA, August 1997. (PostScript) (PDF) JPL Clearance # 00-1985

S. Chien, D. DeCoste, R. Doyle, and P. Stolorz, "Making an Impact: Artificial Intelligence at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, AI Magazine 18 (1): Spring 1997, pp. 103-122. (available for download to AAAI members at http://www.aaai.org/)

S. A. Chien and H. B. Mortensen, "Automating Image Processing for Scientific Data Analysis of a Large Image Database," IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence 18 (8): pp. 854-859, August 1996. (Extended version Technical Report available). (PostScript) JPL Clearance # 00-1972

J. M. Gratch and S. A. Chien, "Adaptive Problem-solving for Large Scale Scheduling Problems: A Case Study," Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research Vol. 4 (1996), pp. 365-396. (PostScript) (PDF) JPL Clearance # 95-0701

S. A. Chien, J. M. Gratch, and M. C. Burl, "On the Efficient Allocation of Resources for Hypothesis Evaluation: A Statistical Approach," IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 17 (7): pp. 652-665, July 1995. (PostScript) (PDF) JPL Clearance # 94-1356

Selected Past Conference and Workshop Affiliations.

• Co-chair, Second International Workshop on Planning and Scheduling for Space, San Francisco, CA, March 2000.
• Co-chair, Fifth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Planning Systems (AIPS2000), Breckenridge, CO, April 2000.
• Session Chair, Session on Planning, Scheduling, and Control for Aerospace, World Automation Congress, Wailea, HI, June 2000.
• Conference Co-Chair, Thirteenth Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI2001), Seattle, WA, August 2001.
• Panel Chair, "Artificial Intelligence Software Competitions, Boon or Bane?", 2001 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Seattle, WA, August 2001.
• Invited Panelist, "Designing, Understanding, and Operating Complex Human Machine Systems," SIGGRAPH 2001 , Los Angeles, CA, August 2001
• Session Co-chair (with Tara Estlin), Session on Integrating Planning and Execution for Robotics, 2001 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS2001), Wailea, HI, October/November 2001.
• Keynote Speaker CASPER: Continuous Local Search for Embedded Space Autonomy, ESA Meeting on Onboard Autonomy, Noordwijk, The Netherlands, September 2001
• Invited Speaker, "How to be a successful researcher at a government funded laboratory," Americas School on Agents and Multi-agent Systems, Marina Del Rey, CA, January 2002.
• Keynote Speaker, Learning Space Exploration Agents: Opportunities and Challenges, AAAI Spring Symposium on Safe Learning Agents, Stanford University, CA, Marc h 2002.
• Conference Chair, Fourteenth Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAA I2002), Edmonton, Alberta, August 2002.
• Keynote Speaker, Learning Space Exploration Agents: Opportunities and Challenges, Workshop on Machine Learning For Space Autonomy, International Conference on Machine Learning , Washington, DC, August 2003