We were excited to learn that Dr. Jim Boerkoel (’05) was recently awarded a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award by the National Science Foundation, one of the most prestigious awards given to young faculty.

Here’s an excerpt from the abstract of Jim’s grant proposal:

Planning is important for autonomous systems, and planning for the real world typically involves reasoning about uncertainty in perception, action, and how the environment will react to actions of the agents. This work will improve the robustness and reliability or plans in applications such as autonomous driving, automated warehousing, and personal robots by addressing limitations in how current planning systems handle real-world scheduling uncertainty. The research will explore fundamental questions such as: What makes a plan good? How good is it? How can we make it better? And, how should we adjust plans when faced with uncertainty?

After completing his undergraduate degree at Hope College, Jim continued his education at the University of Michigan, earning a Master’s degree in 2008 and his PhD in 2011.  After a year as a Post-Doc at MIT, he and his wife Liz moved to California where he joined the faculty of Harvey Mudd in 2013.

Jim and Liz also recently celebrated the birth of their son Jacob William on September 3, 2016.

You can read more Jim’s work at Harvey Mudd’s press release about the award.

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