Interests

My interests lie in the area of Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering. I seek, and currently hold, a position in which I can pursue teaching interests and develop a research program centered on intelligent agents.

Education

Ph.D. Computer Science and Engineering. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Dissertation Title: Validating Complex Agent Behavior.
Committee Chair: John E. Laird.
August, 2003.

M.S. Computer Science and Engineering. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
December, 2002.

B.S. Mathematics, Physics (dual concentration). University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Honors Thesis Title: The GROCSE-II Telescope Lens Selection and Evaluation.
Thesis Advisor: Carl W. Akerlof.
June, 1996. Awarded with Distinction and High Honors in Physics.

Teaching Experience

Winter, 2003 Graduate Student Instructor, University of Michigan.
Co-taught the course Artificial Intelligence in Computer Games. Responsibilities included lecturing, grading, holding office hours and maintaining the class web-site.

Fall, 2002 Course Designer, University of Michigan.
Co-developed a new senior-level course: Artificial Intelligence in Computer Games. Responsible for designing all new course materials including a syllabus, course pack, and initial versions of assignments as well as supervising course software development.

Winter, 1998 Graduate Student Instructor, University of Michigan.
Led a discussion section for the course Introduction to Artificial Intelligence that met twice a week. Additional responsibilities included holding office hours, designing assignments and course software as well as creating and grading exam questions.

Fall, 1997 Graduate Student Instructor, University of Michigan.
Instructor for Computer Game Design, a senior-level project course. Responsibilities included designing and grading assignments, holding regular office hours and leading occasional lectures.

Research Experience

2001 - 2003 Graduate Student Research Assistant, University of Michigan AI Lab.
Conducted research focusing on methods to analyze and compare streams of behavior for validating complex intelligent systems. Created and examined a novel method for comparing abstract descriptions of two actors' behavior.

1999 - 2001 Graduate Student Research Assistant, University of Michigan AI Lab.
Examined methods for making the Soar architecture more efficient and easier to use in conjunction with other applications. Successfully improved all the performance problems identified in my 1998-1999 research.

1998 - 1999 Graduate Student Research Assistant, University of Michigan AI Lab.
Conducted research focusing on methods to measure the performance and capabilities of intelligent agent architectures. Performed a comparison between Soar and CLIPS which identified some performance shortcomings of the Soar 8.3 architecture.

1994 - 1996 Undergraduate Research Assistant, University of Michigan.
Designed and developed visualization and analysis software for a radio telescope, and an early generation CCD-based optical telescope.

Summer, 1995 Research Assistant, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Conducted a series of tests to select the best lens for use with a ground-based optical telescope. Responsibilities included designing software, collecting and analyzing data, and presenting results at research group meetings. The work conducted during this period served as the basis of my senior Honors Thesis.

Selected Programming and Development Experience

2002 - 2003 Lead Software Developer.
Lead developer of the second major release of Pilot-DB, an open source relational database for the Palm Pilot. This project has a user community of approximately 18,000 people based on peak downloads of a single version.

2001 - 2002 Software Developer.
Co-developed Pilot-DB during the creation and public release of its first fully functional version.

1997 - 1998 Programming Consultant.
Performed application-level and web programming in Java and Visual Basic for local companies.

1996 - 1997 Programmer. Hi-C Computing Group, University of Michigan.
Constructed a Java toolkit for developing software to support scientific inquiry in the high school classroom.

Programming Literacy

Proficient in: C, Java, Perl, Soar, Tcl/Tk, HTML
Familiar with: C++, Lisp, CLIPS, Prolog, CSS, CGI & Unix Shell Scripting Operating Systems: Linux, Windows XP, Palm OS

Publications

Scott A. Wallace and John E. Laird. Behavior Bounding: Toward Effective Comparisons of Agents and Humans. International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-03). pp. 727-732. August 2003.

Scott A. Wallace and John E. Laird. Intelligence and Behavioral Boundaries. NIST Workshop on Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems (PerMIS 2002). Gaithersburg, MD. 2002.

Scott A. Wallace and John E. Laird. Toward Automatic Knowledge Validation. In Proceedings of the Eleventh Conference on Computer Generated Forces and Behavioral Representation. pp. 447-456. May 2002.

Scott A. Wallace, John E. Laird, and Karen Coulter. Assessing the Run-Time Performance of Artificial Intelligence Architectures. NIST Workshop on Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems (PerMIS 2000). Gaithersburg, MD. 2000.

Scott A. Wallace, John E. Laird, and Karen Coulter. Examining the Resource Requirements of Artificial Intelligence Architectures. In Proceedings of the Ninth Conference on Computer Generated Forces and Behavioral Representation. pp. 73-82. May 2000.

Scott A. Wallace and John E. Laird. Toward a Methodology for AI Architecture Evaluation: Comparing Soar and CLIPS. In Intelligent Agents VI--Proceedings of the Sixth International Workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures and Languages (ATAL-99). N. R. Jennings and Y. Lesperance, editors. Springer-Verlag, Berlin. pp. 117-131. 2000.

Proposals Written and Submitted

Scott A. Wallace. A Modular System for Intelligent Behavior Verification and Validation. Submitted to NASA in conjunction with Soar Technologies of Ann Arbor, MI. May 2003.

Presentations

May, 2003 Validating Agent Behavior. 23rd Soar Workshop. Ann Arbor, MI.

June, 2002 Detecting Errors in Human-Level Agents. 22nd Soar Workshop. Ann Arbor, MI.
Feb, 2002 Semi-Automated Error Detection. Artificial Intelligence Seminar Series. Ann Arbor, MI.
May, 2001 Automatic Knowledge Verification. 21st Soar Workshop. Ann Arbor, MI.
May, 2000 AI Architecture Evaluation & Soar-Lite. 20th Soar Workshop. Marina del Ray, CA.
May, 1999 Comparing Soar with CLIPS. 19th Soar Workshop. Ann Arbor, MI.

Honors

1997 Graduate Student Fellowship (1 year of guaranteed funding).
1997 Class Honors Award.
1996 Bachelor of Science Awarded with Distinction.
1996 Senior Honors Thesis Awarded with High Honors.
1995 Class Honors Award.
1994 Class Honors Award.
1993 Class Honors Award.

Research Interests

  • Agent Architectures
  • Agent Development Tools
  • Validation Tools
  • Machine Learning
  • Network Security

Additional Skills

  • Primary author of six published papers
  • Six years of technical writing experience
  • Proven ability to manage long term projects
  • Significant public speaking experience
  • Effective in independent & collaborative environments

Other Teaching Experiences

2001 - 2003 Shop Supervisor, University of Michigan Student Wood Shop.
Responsibilities included teaching woodworking by fielding questions and demonstrating techniques.

Personal Information

Outside of academics I am an avid woodworker having designed and built several pieces of furniture. I also actively pursue photography and orienteering.

References

Please contact me for a list of references.