Professor Edwina Rissland retired in December after a thirty-three year career as faculty at UMass Amherst Computer Science. Her research interests include case-based reasoning (CBR), artificial intelligence (AI), legal reasoning, CBR and information retrieval, mixed paradigm reasoning, and cyberlaw.
"Edwina is well known as one of the founders and leading researchers in the area of case-based reasoning," says CS Chair Lori Clarke. "Her work on AI and the law has had and will continue to have a tremendous influence in how computing is used to support the judicial system."
Rissland received an Sc.B. in Applied Mathematics with Honors magna cum laude from Brown University in 1969, an M.A. in Mathematics from Brandeis University in 1970, and a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977.
She joined UMass Amherst Computer Science in 1979. For the 1982-83 academic year, she was a Fellow of Law and Computer Science at the Harvard Law School. From 1985 through 1996, she held an appointment as lecturer on law at the Harvard Law School, where she taught a seminar on artificial intelligence and legal reasoning.
From 2003 - 2007, Rissland served as a National Science Foundation (NSF) Program Director for the Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science (AICS) Program in the Division of Information and Intelligence Systems (IIS) within the Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE); and later became the Program Director, Robust Intelligence within IIS, CISE. She returned to the NSF for a two-year term (2010-2012) as a Program Director in the Robust Intelligence cluster in the IIS Division within CISE. She was also on the management team for the CISE Computing Research Infrastructure program.
"Edwina provided exceptional service to the computer science community during her tenure at the National Science Foundation," adds Clarke.
Rissland was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) in 1991. She has served as president of the International Association for Artificial Intelligence and Law and was on the board of councilors of the AAAI. She co-authored Cognitive Science: An Integrated Approach (MIT Press), one of the first textbooks in the field, and was a founding member of the editorial board of the journal Artificial Intelligence and Law.