Edwina Rissland

Edwina Rissland received her Sc.B. in Applied Mathematics with Honors in Mathematics from Brown University and her Ph.D. in Mathematics from MIT. She also earned a conservatory graduate degree in voice from the Longy School of Music (now part of Bard College) in Cambridge.

She is an actively exhibiting fine arts photographer (http://www.rissarts.com) who exhibits primarily in the Cambridge area and on Martha’s Vineyard and is known for her color-intense painterly compositions.

Following a two-year postdoctoral appointment at MIT, she joined the faculty of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst in 1979, where she became a full professor in 1991 and is is now Professor Emerita. She is recognized as a founder and world leader in the areas of Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) and AI & Law. She was elected as founding Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) in 1991.

She was a Fellow of Law and Computer Science at the Harvard Law School in 1982-1983. Subsequently for over ten years, she simultaneously held an appointment as Lecturer on Law at Harvard where she created and taught an upper level seminar and practicum Artificial Intelligence and Legal Reasoning. She was a Visiting Scholar at Stanford Law School in 1986.

She served two rotations (2003-2007 and 2010-2012) as a Program Director in the Division of Information & Intelligent Systems (IIS) in the CISE Directorate of the National Science Foundation. At NSF she served as the founding Cluster Leader for Robust Intelligence (RI) that encompasses AI and allied specialties like computer vision and robotics.

She was one of the founders and served as a President (1996-1998) of the International Association for AI and Law. She has served on various committees of the AAAI and on its Board of Councilors. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Artificial Intelligence and Law. She was a co-founder and editor of the MIT Press series “Artificial Intelligence and Legal Reasoning” (1986-1992). She has served on numerous national and international review and program committees.

She was a co-author of Cognitive Science: An Integrated Approach (MIT Press, 1987), one of the very first textbooks on this topic. In 2017, she published Morning Shore: A Turn of the Year on Chappaquiddick (East Poucha Press), a book of her photographs coupled with text and lyrics that captures the landscapes and moods of Chappaquiddick over the course of an entire year.

Educational & Professional Background

Sc.B. in Applied Mathematics with Honors magna cum laude, Brown University, Providence, RI
M.A. in Mathematics, Brandeis University
Ph.D. in Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.
Fellow of Law & Computer Science, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA
Graduate Performance Diploma in Vocal Performance, Longy School of Music, Cambridge, MA

Professor of Computer Science (now Emerita), University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School
Program Director/Cluster Leader (Robust Intelligence), National Science Foundation

---

View full schedule

Related Sessions

View full schedule