People
Steve A. Chien
Official Bio
Dr. Steve Chien is JPL Fellow, Senior Research Scientist, and Technical Group Supervisor of the Artificial Intelligence Group and 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 was previously Adjunct Faculty with the Department of Computer Science of the University of Southern California, and a Research Scientist at the Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science & Engineering and a Visiting Scholar with the Department of Computer Science of the University of California at Los Angeles. 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 Workshop on Planning and Scheduling for Space held every other year from 1997 onward and was the Chair or Co-chair of numerous workshops. He is former chair of the AIPS Executive Council (2000-2002), was a founding member of the ICAPS Executive Council (2002-2006), and was founding President of the ICAPS Executive Council 2002-2004. He was 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. In 2007, he received the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal for outstanding technical accomplishments in the development of the Autonomous Sciencecraft deployed on the Earth Observing One Mission and the development of the Earth Observing Sensorweb. In 2011 He was awarded the innaugural AIAA Intelligent Systems Award, for his contributions to Spacecraft Autonomy. In 2011, he was the team co-lead for the Sensorweb Toolbox team, which was awarded Honorable mention in the 2011 NASA Software of the Year Competition. In 2015 He was awarded a JPL Magellan Award as well as the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal for his contributions to automated science scheduling for ESA's Rosetta mission.
Dr. Chien has supported the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, Defense Science Board, and Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. In 2018, Dr. Chien was appointed to the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence.
Dr. Chien has presented invited seminars on planning, scheduling, and resource allocation as well as on spacecraft autonomy and autonomous systems. He has authored numerous publications. in these areas, and has served 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.
Recent Professional Activities:
- Co-chair, International Workshop on Planning and Scheduling for Space, 27th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling, (ICAPS), Pittsburgh, PA, USA, June 2017.
- Witness, The Dawn of Artificial Intelligence, Hearing, Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness, United States Senate, Washington, D.C., USA, November 2016.
- Invited Plenary Speaker, 24th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), Buenos Aires, Argentina, 25-31 July, 2015.
- Invited Speaker, Defense Science Board, Summer Study on Autonomy, Washington, D.C., April 2015.
- Co-chair, Workshop on AI in Space, 24th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), Buenos Aires, Argentina, 25-31 July, 2015.
- Co-chair, International Workshop on Planning and Scheduling for Space, 24th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), Buenos Aires, Argentina, 25-31 July, 2015.
- Invited Plenary Speaker, Workshop on Planning and Robotics, 25th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling, (ICAPS), Jerusalem, 7-11 June 2015.
- Invited Plenary Speaker, 2nd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) School on Artificial Intelligence Buenos Aires, Argentina,1-5 September, 2014.
- Program Co-chair, 24th International Conference on Planning and Scheduling, Portsmouth, NH, USA, 21-26 June, 2014.