Marcello Balduccini
Associate Professor
Department of Decision & System Sciences
Erivan K. Haub School of Business
Saint Joseph's University
marcello.balduccini@gmail.com


Research Goal
To study reasoning as it occurs in everyday life, and
to create mathematically-precise characterizations of it
with the ultimate goal of understanding how it can be automated.


ASKLab Website (courtesy of Jeannine Shantz)
Click here.

Education
Ph.D. in Computer Science, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX
Laurea in Computer Science, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy

Work-Related Experience
2023 - present  Associate Professor
Department of Decision & System Sciences, Saint Joseph's University's Erivan K. Haub School of Business
2017 - 2023  Assistant Professor
Department of Decision & System Sciences, Saint Joseph's University's Erivan K. Haub School of Business
2016 - 2017  Program Director, Bachelor of Science in Computing and Security Technology
IS Department, College of Computing and Informatics, Drexel University
2016 - 2017  Program Director, MS in National Security Management
IS Department, College of Computing and Informatics, Drexel University
2015 - 2017  Assistant Research Professor
CS Department, College of Computing and Informatics, Drexel University
2013 - 2015  Assistant Research Professor & Senior Research Scientist
Applied Informatics Group, College of Computing and Informatics, Drexel University
2008 - 2013  Principal Research Scientist
Kodak Research Labs, Eastman Kodak Company
2007 - 2008Research Scientist
Kodak Research Labs, Eastman Kodak Company
2006 - 2007Post-Doc Research Associate and Instructor
Texas Tech University, Computer Science Department

Research Areas
 Declarative Programming: Answer Set Programming/A-Prolog, Constraint Programming, Hybrid Discrete/Continuous Modeling Languages
 Knowledge Representation, Non-monotonic Reasoning, Commonsense, Ontology Development
 Cybersecurity, Cyber-Physical Systems, Malware Detection and Mitigation
 Intelligent Agents, Cognitive Robotics
 Natural Language Processing, Information Retrieval, Question Answering

Publications
Click here for a list of my publications

Invited Talks
 Graduate Education and the Use of AI, JBENET Network, October 2023.
 People, Ideas, and the Path Ahead, The 24th International Symposium on Practical Aspects of Declarative Languages (PADL), January 2022.
 Advanced KR&R and Hybrid Languages, Elemental Cognition LLC, June 2019.
 Executable Models of IoT, NIST workshop on Reasoning About IoT Trustworthiness, September 2018.
 Reasoning about the NIST CPS Framework, Cyber:Secured Forum, June 2018.
 Artificial Intelligence and Analytics: Trends and Opportunities, Qlik Technologies Inc., May 2018.
 Advances in Reasoning about Cyber-Physical Systems, University of Nebraska Omaha, April 2018.
 Reasoning over the Trustworthiness of CPS, Toward a Calculus for Logical Optimization of Trustworthy CPS (Workshop), December 2017.
 Trustworthiness Modeling, NIST CPS Framework Open Source Workshop, September 2017.
 Advanced Modeling and Reasoning Techniques: from Theory to Practice, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, June 2017.
 Securing the Internet of Things: Where Cybersecurity Meets AI, IEEE Drexel Research Symposium, March 2017.
 Industrial Problem Solving with Constraint Satisfaction, Saint Joseph's University, February 2017.
 Cybersecurity, AI, and the Internet of Things, IEEE Philadelphia Section Night Dinner, January 2017.
 The Enemy Within: Life and the Internet of Things, IEEE Philadelphia Section's Annual Student Night Dinner, November 2016.
 What Tweety-the-Penguin and Faulty Suitcases Tell Us about Productivity, Cybersecurity and Data Sciences, 2016 ICLP Workshop on Applications of Logic Programming (AppLP 2016), October 2016.
 Cybersecurity as Reasoning about Actions and Change, Villanova University, September 2016.
 From Tweety-the-Penguin to Cybersecurity:Knowledge Representation and its Practical Uses, GE Global Research, September 2015.
 Declarative Programming and Knowledge Representation: Overview and Practical Aspects, Cigna, September 2015.
 Theoretical and Practical Aspects of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, IBM's Cognitive Systems Institute Group (CSIG), August 2015.
 Knowledge Representation for Situation-Aware Operations Support, U.S. Army Communications-Electronics RD&E Center (CERDEC), August 2014.
 Challenges in Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, Agent Technology Center, Czech Technical University, July 2014.
 Some Recent Advances in Answer Set Programming (from the Perspective of NLP), 1st Workshop on Natural Language Processing and Automated Reasoning (NLPAR 2013).
 Intelligent Systems, Rational Behavior, and Rapid Development, Drexel University, Apr 2013.
 Model-Based Development of Intelligent Systems: the Answer Set Programming Approach, Eastman Kodak Company, Jun, 2007.
 Model-Based Development of Intelligent Systems, Loyola College, Mar, 2007.
 Answer Set Based Design of Autonomous, Rational Agents, New Mexico State University, Nov 18, 2005.
 Progress Report on Logic Form Translator, University of Texas at Dallas, Feb 4, 2005.

Student Advising
Students in my research group conduct research in:
 Knowledge representation, logic programming, constraint programming
 Planning, diagnosis, agent architectures, cognitive robotics
 Natural language processing, information retrieval, question answering
 Malware detection and mitigation, cyber-physical systems

Latest Research Activities
 Design of answer set based autonomous, rational agents
 Extensions of A-Prolog: CR-Prolog
 Integration of ASP, CP, and other computing paradigms
 Non-Herbrand ASP
 Planning, scheduling, diagnostics, learning
 Unmanned vehicle collaboration in communication-constrained scenarios
 Representation of and reasoning about cyber and cyber-physical systems
 Data semantics discovery
 Cybersecurity and automated threat mitigation
 Modeling of and reasoning about brain functions

Select Past Research Activities
 Representation of and reasoning about complex flight systems, e.g. the Reaction Control System of the Space Shuttle
 Deep reasoning for natural language processing systems
 Parallelization of the smodels algorithm using traditional parallel processing techniques
 Computation of the answer sets of logic programs using neural networks
 Extensions of A-Prolog: Epistemic Specification
 Investigation of techniques for the integration of learning, planning, and action execution
 Construction of a deliberative agent employing propositional learning and planning to interact with an initially unknown environment
 Development of a module for SWI-Prolog supporting parallel processing

Membership and Service
 Member of the Knowledge Representation Lab
 Member of the Texas Action Group
 Member of AAAI
 Member of the GULP board of experts for best Ph.D. dissertation award (2009 and 2012)
 Area editor for KR and Non-Monotonic Reasoning, ALP Newsletter.
 Chair/co-chair: Architectures for Intelligent Theory-based Agents (2008 AAAI Spring Symposium Series), ICLP08 Publicity Chair, ICLP09 Doctoral Consortium, ICLP10 Doctoral Consortium, Answer Set Programming and Other Computing Paradigms workshop 2010 (ASPOCP10) and 2011 (ASPOCP11), LPNMR13 Workshop Chair, 2nd Workshop on Natural Language Processing and Automated Reasoning (NLPAR2015), ICLP16 Workshop Chair, 14th International Conference on Logic Programming and Nonmonotonic Reasoning 2017 (LPNMR17), 16th International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR2018) Sponsorship and Publicity Chair, 15th International Conference on Logic Programming and Nonmonotonic Reasoning 2019 (LPNMR19, general chair and local organizer), Philadelphia Logic Week 2019 (PLW 2019, local organizer), 20th International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR2023) Funding and Sponsorship Chair
 Member of the Program Committee of: LPNMR'05 Systems and Application Session, PREFS 2006, ASP07, DPPS@NMR08, SEA'09, LOG-IC09, DP@NMR10, CILC2010, KR-10 DC, LPNMR-11, Commonsense-11, IJCAI'11 (Senior PC), ICLP11, Log-IC 2011, SEA'11, INAP11, PADL'12, KR-2012, NMR 2012, PPDP 2012, ICLP12, ASPOCP12, RR2013, NLPAR2013, LNMR2013, ASPOCP13, KR&Robotics13, GTTV13, KR 2014, AAAI14, ICLP14, RR 2014, NMR14, ECAI14, ASPOCP14, AAAI15, LPNMR15, IJCAI15, RR2015, GTTV2015, PADL15, ASPOCP15, ALPP15, RCRA15, AAAI16, AAAI16 (student-program), IJCAI16, KnowProS@IJCAI 2016, ICLP16, GCCR16, ECAI16, ASPOCP16, PADL17, AAAI17, AAAI17 (student-program), KnowProS 2017, IJCAI17, KRPRAS 2017, ASPOCP17, ICLP17, PAoASP17, PADL18, AAAI18, ASPOCP18, ICLP18, RCRA18, KR2018, AAAI19, PADL19, IJCAI19, ASPOCP19, RCRA19, AAAI20, ICLP20, KR2020, ASPOCP2020, KR2021, ICLP21, ASPOCP21, ICLP22, IJCAI-ECAI-22, KR2022, LPNMR2022, ASPOCP22, HYDRA2022, ICLP23, ASPOCP23, PADL24, ICLP24, LPNMR24, ASPOCP24, PADL25
 Reviewer for TPLP, AIJ, ACM TIST, ACM TOCL, ACM TOPLAS, JAAMAS, JLC, Fundamenta Informaticae, Science of Computer Programming, JANCL, JETAI, Springer Nature journals
 Reviewer for various conferences and workshops, including: AAAI, ICLP, JELIA, KR, LPNMR, PADL
 Webmaster of the KRLab site
 Administrator of the KRLab Forum

Software Development
 NDE Virtual Laboratory of Highway Structures for FHWA and Drexel University's Civil, Architectural & Environmental Envineering Intelligent Infrastructure Alliance
 clingof, an inference engine that efficiently computes the answer sets of ASP programs with non-Herbrand functions
 EZCSP, an inference engine that integrates ASP and constraint programming
 RSig, extension of lparse allowing the specification of modules and signatures
 APLAgent Manager, Java-based interface for A-Prolog intelligent agents
 crmodels2, an inference engine for CR-Prolog
 Java interface for the A-Circuit system (by M.Balduccini, M.Gelfond, M.Nogueira)
 RCS/USA-Advisor, Java interface for the USA-Advisor reasoning system (by M.Nogueira, M.Balduccini, M.Gelfond, R.Watson, M.Barry)
 JInstall, Java-based abstract class for software installers -- used in the installers for the USA-Advisor and A-Circuit
 crmodels3, prototype of an inference engine for CR-Prolog - OBSOLETE: use crmodels instead
 Romeo, parallel implementation of the smodels algorithm
 NNEngine, engine for the computation of the answer sets of logic programs based neural networks
 MKAtoms, postprocessor for smodels
 BibPHP, web site for the management of BibTeX bibliographies using PHP and MySQL
 sismodels, frontend to smodels for Strong Introspection

Spare-Time Activities and Interests
 System administration of NetBSD and Linux boxes on both sides of the Atlantic
 Network security
 Embedded systems programming (e.g. PIC, MIPS, HRI)
 Mechanical & electrical work on my 92 Ford Ranger, 93 Chevrolet Corsica, and 85 Yamaha Virago XV700