PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Giant Otter Technologies, Inc
Founder / CTO, 2013 to present.
Developing conversational AI technoligy for chatbots, simulations, and games.

MIT Media Lab, Cognitive Machines Group
Research Assistant, September 2005 to 2013.
Devloping A.I. characters that learn to communicate and collaborate by observing humans playing online multiplayer games.

Monolith Productions
Senior Software Engineer - Artificial Intelligence, May 2001 to July 2005.
Lead design and implementation of AI systems used for multiple real-time 3D PC and next generation console games. Responsible for agent architecture, navigation, locomotion, animation selection, sensory systems, goal-oriented behavior and planning. AI systems used in No One Lives Forever 2, TRON 2.0, F.E.A.R., and Condemned: Criminal Origins.

Charles River Media
Contributing Author and Section Editor, 2001 to 2006.
Contributed eight articles to AI Game Programming Wisdom 1 & 2. Edited the "Tactics and Planning" and "Genre Specific" sections of AI Game Programming Wisdom 3.

Sierra Entertainment
Lead Software Engineer, January 1999 to February 2001.
Lead team of five engineers developing unreleased 3D RPG. Designed and implemented compiled scripting language, skeletal animation system, and integrated game editing tools.

Software Engineer, November 1996 to December 1998.
Worked on team of five engineers developing 3D adventure/RPG for PC, King's Quest: Mask of Eternity. Responsibilities included AI, I/O, particle systems, animation, and scripting.

American Management Systems
Programmer/Analyst, July 1995 to August 1996
Worked on seven person team developing Windows-based client/server database application for the Department of the Interior.

U.S. Army Cold Regions Research & Engineering Laboratory
Computer Clerk, June to August, 1993 & 1994
Programmed library of graphics file format conversion routines in C and Unix shell on Sun Sparc Stations.

EDUCATION

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
PhD, MIT Media Laboratory, February 2013
Thesis: Collective Artificial Intelligence: Simulated Role-Playing from Crowdsourced Data

Master of Science, MIT Media Laboratory, September 2007
Thesis: Learning Plan Networks in Conversational Video Games

University of Washington
Master of Science in Computer Science, March 2003

Tufts University
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, Studio Art minor, May 1995
Minor in Studio Art through joint program with the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

HONORS & AWARDS

• Automatic Learning and Generation of Social Behavior from Collective Human Gameplay featured in the Game Studies Download 5.0 top 10, GDC 2010.
• Industrial Technology Research Institute of Taiwan (ITRI) Research Fellowship, 2007
• AIGameDev.com #2 Most Influential A.I. Game ranking for F.E.A.R., 2007
• Gamespot.com Best A.I. Award for F.E.A.R., 2005
• Computer Games Magazine Best A.I. Award for No One Lives Forever 2, 2002
• Multimedia World Magazine All-Star Award for the Celebrity Painter applet, 1996

GRANTS

• Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab grant for "Collective AI for Social Role-Playing Agents," 2010–2012

COMPUTER & VIDEO GAME CREDITS

• F.E.A.R. (2005), Monolith Productions / Vivendi Universal.
  -- Best A.I. (Gamespot), #2 Most Influential A.I. Game (AIGameDev), Best Shooter (Gamespot & IGN), Best Action Game (PC Gamer & E3 Game Critics)


• Condemned: Criminal Origins (2005), Monolith Productions / Sega
  -- XBox 360 Best Action Game (IGN)


• TRON 2.0 (2003), Monolith Productions / Buena Vista Interactive
  -- PC Game of the Year (Play Magazine)


• No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.s Way (2002), Monolith Productions / Sierra Entertainment
  -- Best A.I. (Computer Games), Game of the Year (Computer Games), PC Game of the Year (Gamespy)


• Kings Quest: Mask of Eternity (1998), Sierra Entertainment

COMMITTEES

• IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games (IEEE T-CIAIG) -- Associate Editor, 2009 - present.
• MIT Sloan Business in Gaming Conference (BiG) -- Advisor, 2011.
• AI for Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE) -- Program Committee, 2005 - present.
• Foundations of Digital Games (FDG) -- Program Committee, 2011.
• Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA) -- Program Committee, 2011.
• Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI) -- Program Committee, 2010 - present.
• Special Track on Games & Entertainment (FLAIRS) -- Program Committee, 2011.
• Thematic Track on Artificial Intelligence Methodologies for Games (EPIA) -- Program Committee, 2011.
• AISB Symposium: AI & Games (AISB) -- Program Committee, 2009 - present.
• IEEE Consumer Electronics Society's Games Innovations Conference (ICE-GIC) -- Program Committee, 2009 - present.
• ECAI'08 Workshop on Artificial Intelligence in Games (ECAI) -- Program Committee, 2008.
• Workshop on Machine Learning and Games (ICML) -- Program Committee, 2010.
• Workshop on Combining Task and Motion Planning for Real-World Applications (ICAPS) -- Program Committee, 2012.
• Workshop on AI Planning in Games (ICAPS) -- Program Committee, 2006, 2007, 2010.
• International Conference on Digital Interactive Media in Entertainment and Arts (DIMEA) -- Program Committee, 2006, 2007.
• Workshop on Reasoning, Representation, and Learning in Computer Games (IJCAI) -- Program Committee, 2005.
• Workshop on Cognitive Agents for Virtual Environments (AAMAS) -- Program Committee, 2012.
• Workshop on Agents for Education, Games & Simulations (AAMAS) -- Program Committee, 2011.
• Workshop on Agents for Games & Simulations (AAMAS) -- Co-chair, 2010.
• Workshop on Challenges in Game AI (AAAI) -- Co-chair, 2004.
• AI Interface Standards Committee (AIISC) -- Member of Steering Committee and coordinator of Goal-Oriented Action Planning working group since 2002. Associated with the International Game Developers Association (IGDA).

PEER REVIEWED JOURNAL ARTICLES

Cynthia Breazeal, Nick DePalma, Jeff Orkin, Sonia Chernova, Malte Jung. (2013). Crowdsourcing Human-Robot Interaction: New Methods and System Evaluation in a Public Environment. Journal of Human-Robot Interaction, 2(1), 82-111.

Jeff Orkin and Deb Roy. (2007). The Restaurant Game: Learning Social Behavior and Language from Thousands of Players Online, Journal of Game Development, 3(1), 39-60.

PEER REVIEWED CONFERENCE PUBLICATIONS

Jeff Orkin and Deb Roy. (2012). Understanding Speech in Interactive Narratives with Crowdsourced Data. Proceedings of the Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference (AIIDE).

Hilke Reckman, Jeff Orkin and Deb Roy. (2011). Extracting aspects of determiner meaning from dialogue in a virtual world environment. Proceedings of the International Conference on Computational Semantics (IWCS), Oxford, England.

Sonia Chernova, Jeff Orkin and Cynthia Breazeal (2010), Crowdsourcing HRI through Online Multi-Player Games. AAAI Fall Symposium on Dialog with Robots.

Jeff Orkin, Tynan Smith, Hilke Reckman, and Deb Roy (2010), Semi-Automatic Task Recognition for Interactive Narratives with EAT & RUN. Proceedings of the 3rd Intelligent Narrative Technologies Workshop at the 5th International Conference on Foundations of Digital Games (FDG), Monterey, CA.

Hilke Reckman, Jeff Orkin and Deb Roy (2010), Learning meanings of words and constructions, grounded in a virtual game. Proceedings of the 10th Conference on Natural Language Processing (KONVENS), Saarbrücken, Germany.

Jeff Orkin and Deb Roy (2010), Semi-Automated Dialogue Act Classification for Situated Social Agents in Games, Proceedings of the Agents for Games & Simulations Workshop at the 9th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS), Toronto, Canada.

Jeff Orkin and Deb Roy (2009), Automatic Learning and Generation of Social Behavior from Collective Human Gameplay, Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS), Budapest, Hungary.
--Featured in the Game Studies Download 5.0 top 10 at GDC 2010.

Peter Gorniak, Jeff Orkin, and Deb Roy (2006), Speech, Space and Purpose: Situated Language Understanding in Computer Games, Twenty-eighth Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society Workshop on Computer Games.

Jeff Orkin (2005), Agent Architecture Considerations for Real-Time Planning in Games, Proceedings of the Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference (AIIDE).

Jeff Orkin (2004), Symbolic Representation of Game World State: Toward Real-Time Planning in Games, Proceedings of the AAAI Workshop on Challenges in Game AI.

POSTERS, DEMOS, AND EXTENDED ABSTACTS

Jeff Orkin, Tynan Smith, and Deb Roy (2010), Behavior Compilation for AI in Games, Proceedings of the 6th Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference (AIIDE), Palo Alto, CA.

Jeff Orkin and Deb Roy (2010), Capturing and Generating Social Behavior with The Restaurant Game, Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS), Toronto, Canada.

Jeff Orkin and Deb Roy (2010), Toward an Interleaved Model of Actions and Words in Social Simulation, Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS), Toronto, Canada.

BOOK CONTRIBUTIONS

Jeff Orkin (2003), Constraining Autonomous Character Behavior with Human Concepts, AI Game Programming Wisdom 2, Charles River Media.

Jeff Orkin (2003), Simple Techniques for Coordinated Behavior, AI Game Programming Wisdom 2, Charles River Media.

Jeff Orkin (2003), Applying Goal-Oriented Action Planning to Games, AI Game Programming Wisdom 2, Charles River Media.

Jeff Orkin (2003), Adding Error Reporting to Scripting Languages, AI Game Programming Wisdom 2, Charles River Media.

Jeff Orkin (2002), 12 Tips from the Trenches, AI Game Programming Wisdom, Charles River Media.

Jeff Orkin (2002), A General Purpose Trigger System, AI Game Programming Wisdom, Charles River Media.

Jeff Orkin (2002), A Data-Driven Architecture for Animation Selection, AI Game Programming Wisdom, Charles River Media.

Jeff Orkin (2002), Realistic Character Behavior with Prioritized, Categorized Animation, AI Game Programming Wisdom, Charles River Media.

Jeff Orkin (1996), CelebrityPainter applet, Foundations of Java: Programming for the World Wide Web, by Aaron E. Walsh, IDG Books.

Jeff Orkin (1996), LivingLinks applet, Java for Dummies, by Aaron E. Walsh, IDG Books.

REPORTS AND OTHER PUBLICATIONS

Jeff Orkin (2006), Three States and a Plan: The AI of F.E.A.R., Proceedings of the Game Developer's Conference (GDC).

Alex Nareyek, Borje F.F. Karlsson, Ian Wilson, Marcin Chady, Syrus Mesdaghi, Ramon Axelrod, Nick Porcino, Nathan Combs, Abdennour El Rhalibi, Baylor Wetzel, and Jeff Orkin (2004), The 2004 Report of the IGDA's AI Interface Standards Committee.

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS

• GDC AI Summit 2013: "Off the Beaten Path: Data-driven Dialogue and Behavior"
• AIIDE 2012: "Understanding Speech in Interactive Narratives with Crowdsourced Data"
• FDG 2010 Intelligent Narrative Technologies Workshop: Semi-Automatic Task Recognition for Interactive Narratives with EAT & RUN"
• AAMAS 2010 Agents for Games & Simulations Workshop: "Semi-Automated Dialogue Act Classification for Situated Social Agents in Games"
• AAMAS 2009: "Automatic Learning and Generation of Social Behavior from Collective Human Gameplay"
• GDC 2006: "Three States and a Plan: The A.I. of F.E.A.R."
• AIIDE 2005: "Agent Architecture Considerations for Real-Time Planning in Games"
• AAAI 2004 Challenges in Game AI Workshop: "Toward Real-Time Planning in Games"

INVITED TALKS

• "Data-Driven Digital Actors" -- IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games (IEEE CIG 2012), Granada, Spain, September 2012.
• "Using Online Games to Capture, Generate, and Understand Natural Language" -- European Workshop on Natural Language Generation (ENLG 2011), Nancy, France, September 2011.
• "Next Generation A.I. & Gameplay: Big Data, Big Opportunities" -- GAMBIT Summer Summit, MIT, Cambridge, MA, July 2011.
• "Collective Artificial Intelligence for Next Generation Games & Simulations" -- Lockheed Martin, Burlington, MA, May 2011.
• "Collective Artificial Intelligence for Next Generation Gameplay" -- Montreal International Game Summit (MIGS 2010), Montreal, Canada, November 2010.
• "Acquiring and Generating Fun in the Petabyte Age" -- Workshop on AI and Fun (AAAI 2010), Atlanta, GA, July 2010.
• "The Evolution of Planning in Games" -- Workshop on Planning in Games (ICAPS 2010), Toronto, Canada, May 2010.
• "Collective Artificial Intelligence for Games" -- 10th International Convention of Computer Science (CISC), Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterey (ITESM), Guadalajara Campus, Mexico, March 2010.
• "Collective Artificial Intelligence for Games" -- Computer Science Seminar Series, Union College, Schenectady, NY, Feb. 2010.
• "Abstractions in A.I. for Games" -- Symposium on Abstraction, Reformulation and Approximation (SARA 2009), Lake Arrowhead, CA, July 2009.
• "A.I., Games, Guns, and Restaurants" -- MIT GAMBIT Game Lab, MIT, Cambridge, MA, June 2009.
• "Transforming Immersive Education with A.I." -- Immersive Education Initiative London Summit, London School of Economics, London, UK, April 2009.
• "Game A.I.: Looking Back, Looking Forward" -- Interactive Media and Game Development Seminar, WPI, Worcester, MA, April 2009.
• "The Restaurant Game: Learning Social Behavior and Dialogue from Thousands of Players Online" -- National Acadamy of Sciences (NAS) National Research Council (NRC) Committee on Modeling, Simulation, and Gaming (DIA sponsored), Irvine, CA, Jan. 2009.
• "Lame Things I've Been Doing Since F.E.A.R." -- Monolith Productions, Kirkland, WA, Aug. 2008.
• "Learning Models of Social Behavior and Dialogue with The Restaurant Game" -- Interactive Robot Learning Workshop keynote, Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS), Zurich, Switzerland, June 2008.
• "The Restaurant Game: New Forms of AI for Immersive Education" -- Boston Digital Media Summit: Enabling the Age of Immersive Education, Boston College, Boston, MA, Jan. 2008.
• "The A.I. of F.E.A.R. and other old news from 2.5 years ago" -- Gearbox Software, Plano, TX, Dec. 2007.
• "The A.I. of F.E.A.R. and other old news from 2.5 years ago" -- Dallas IGDA, DeVry University, Plano, TX, Dec. 2007.
• "The Restaurant Game: New Forms of AI for Immersive Education" -- Immersive Education Day, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, Dec. 2007.
• "Three States and a Plan: The A.I. of F.E.A.R." -- Mad Doc Software, Andover, MA, Nov. 2006.
• "The Media Grid and the Future of Game A.I." -- Boston Siggraph Summit: The Intersection of Digital Media and Supercomputing, Boston, MA, July 2006.
• "Applying Blackboard Systems to First Person Shooters" -- AI in Games Workshop, Digital Media Collaboratory, UT Austin, Austin, TX, Aug. 2003.

TEACHING

• Game A.I. Workshop, Temasek Polytechnic, Singapore, June 2011.
• Guest Lecture for Nathan Sturtevant's Game A.I. course, University of Denver, Denver, CO, April 2011.
• Guest Lecture for Kevin Dill's Game A.I. course, Boston University, Boston, MA, March 2009.
• Teaching Assistant for Cynthia Breazeal's Human Robot Interaction course, MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, MA, Fall 2008.
• Guest Lecture for Kevin Dill's Game A.I. course, Harvard Extension School, Cambridge, MA, April 2008.
• Guest Lecture for Bruce Blumberg's Game A.I. course, Harvard Extension School, Cambridge, MA, May 2006.
• Guest Lecture for Ian Davis's Game A.I. course, Comparative Media Studies, MIT, Cambridge, MA, Nov. 2005.
• Teaching Assistant for Alva Couch's C++ Data Structures course, Tufts University, Medford, MA, 1993 & 1994.