IS Department’s Spring Distinguished Lecturer Series to Feature Dr. Gary J. Kohler on April 23, 2009

Date Posted: - 3/25/2009

The Department of Information System’s Spring 2009 Distinguished Lecturer Series will feature Dr. Gary J. Kohler, John B. Higdon Eminent Scholar of Management Information Systems at the University of Florida, on Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 10 a.m. in room ITE 456.

Dr. Kohler’s discussion will focus on the research that he and colleagues Fidan Boylu and Haldun Aytug have conducted, studying the problem where a decision maker needs to discover a classification rule to classify intelligent, self-interested agents. Dr. Kohler’s abstract goes on to further describe that “Agents may engage in strategic behavior to alter their characteristics for a favorable classification. We show how the decision maker can induce a classification rule that anticipates such behavior while still satisfying an important risk minimization principle.”

Dr. Kohler received his Ph. D. from Purdue University in 1974. He has held academic positions at Northwestern University and Purdue University. Between 1979 and1987, he was a cofounder and CEO of a high-tech company which grew to over 260 employees during that period. His research interests are in areas formed by the intersection of the Operations Research, Artificial Intelligence and Information Systems areas and include such areas as genetic algorithm theory, machine learning, e-commerce, quantum computing, and decision support systems.

Dr. Kohler has published in journals including Management Science, Operations Research, Informs Journal on Computing, Evolutionary Computation, Decision Sciences, Decision Support Systems, the European Journal on Operational Research, the Journal of Management Information Systems, Information Systems and e-Business Management, SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization, Discrete Applied Mathematics, Journal of Finance, and others. He is an area editor for Decision Support System and is on several other editorial boards. He has served as an expert witness for many large firms (including AT&T), has been an External Examiner for several Universities and has worked under grants from IBM and the National Science Foundation.

A reception for Dr. Kohler will be held following his presentation at 3 p.m. in ITE 456; all are invited to attend. For more information about Dr. Gary J. Kohler’s presentation, please contact Barbara Morris at bmorris@umbc.edu.