James Hendler

Education

Hendler completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree at Brown University in 1986 with a thesis on automated planning and scheduling. He also has an MS (1981) in Cognitive Psychology from Southern Methodist University, a MSc (1983) from Brown University, and a BS (1978) from Yale University.

Research

Hendler's research interests are in the semantic web and artificial intelligence. Hendler held a longstanding position as professor at the University of Maryland where he was the Director of the Joint Institute for Knowledge Discovery and held joint appointments in the Department of Computer Science, the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies and the Institute for Systems Research. Hendler was the Director for Semantic Web and Agent Technology at the Maryland Information and Network Dynamics Laboratory. He is a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, the British Computer Society, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the AAAS and the Association for Computing Machinery.

On June 14, 2006, James A. Hendler was appointed senior constellation professor of the Tetherless World Constellation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and he became a professor at that institute starting on January 1, 2007. Hendler has appointments in Computer and Cognitive Sciences, and served as the Assistant Dean for Information Technology and Web Science from 2009 to 2012. In 2012 he became the Head of the Computer Science Department at RPI and in 2013 he became the Director of the RPI Institute for Data Exploration and Applications.

Hendler helps lead the Tetherless World Constellation on increasing access to information at any time and place without the need for a “tether” to a specific computer or device. Researchers envision an increasingly web-accessible world in which personal digital assistants (PDAs), cameras, music-listening devices, cell phones, laptops, and other technologies converge to offer the user interactive information and communication. Hendler is the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Web Science Trust and has been a visiting professor at Hebrew University, DeMontfort University, Bath Spa University, University of Edinburgh and an honorary professor at Wuhan University.

He is also the Editor in Chief Emeritus of IEEE Intelligent Systems and is the first computer scientist to serve on the Board of Reviewing Editors for Science.

He is a former member of the US Air Force Science Advisory Board and a former Chief Scientist of the Information Systems Office at the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). During his tenure there, he was responsible for projects such as the Control of Agent Based Systems (CoABS) program which led to the creation of other Agent-based projects: Taskable Agent Software Kit (TASK) and DARPA's Agent Markup Language (DAML) - the latter of which was involved in funding the emerging Semantic Web area.

Hendler served as an "Internet Web Expert" for the U.S. government, providing guidance to the Data.gov project, and in September 2013 he was appointed as the Open Data Advisor for NY State. In 2015, he was appointed a member of the US Homeland Security Science and Technology Advisory Committee (HSSTAC) and in 2016 appointed to the National Academies Board on Research Data and Information.

Hendler was co-author, with Tim Berners-Lee and Ora Lassila, of the article "The Semantic Web" which appeared in Scientific American in 2001.

Books

Honors

Boards and advisory boards