Biography
Dr. Andreas Theodorou is a forksare (research fellow) at Umeå University where he is affiliated with the the Responsible AI Research Group led by Prof. Virginia Dignum. He is looking into the techniques and tools needed for the responsible design, implementation, and deployment of intelligent systems. Dr. Theodorou is also an affiliated WASP faculty, where he is the co-lead of the area cluster on Ethical, Legal and Societal Aspects of AI.
Outside academic research, Dr. Theodorou is the CEO of the research spin-off VeRAI AB. Andreas is also an active member of various AI Governance initiatives (e.g. IEEE SA’ P7001 series, ISO JTC1/42, BSI ART/1).
Prior to his current post, Dr. Theodorou undertook his doctoral studies at the University of Bath Intelligent Systems research group under the supervision of Dr. Joanna J. Bryson. He has held various research and teaching-related positions the University of Bath (2015-18), the Georgia Institute of Technology (2016), and the University of Surrey (2015).
Curriculum vitae
You can access an online version of his short CV here.
Academic Family Tree
Using information found on Bryson's and Morgenstern's pages and a bit of digging using Wikipedia, I managed to compiled the following tree (in brackets is the last reported affiliation):
Seymour Papert (MIT, USA) and Marvin Minsky (MIT) begat at MIT*:
| Gerald Sussman (MIT), who begat at MIT:
|. Drew McDermott (Yale University, USA), who begat at Yale University:
|..Ernest Davis (New York University, USA), who begat at New York University:
|... Leora Morgenstern (IBM, USA), who begat at Brown University (USA):
|.... Lynn Andrea Stein (Olin College, USA), who begat at MIT:
|..... Joanna Bryson (Hertie, Germany), who begat at the University of Bath (UK):
|...... me right before Bryson's move to Hertie. At Umeå University (Sweden), I am working towards begetting:
|....... Leila Methnani (Umeå University).
From the above Minsky (2016), Papert (2016), and McDermott (2022) are no longer with us. To my knowledge, the rest of the people on that tree as still active researchers as of 2022. Using the mathematical genealogy project, I managed to trace Papert's lineage, through Godfrey Harold Hardy, to Isaac Newton and Minsky's heritage to both Friedrich Leibniz and his son Gottfried Leibniz. While expected as all STEM scientists have one or another connection to Newton and Leibniz, it was fun to see the connection of ideologies —but, maybe, my judgement is clouded after reading Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver novel which takes place during the Leibniz–Newton feud.
Going through the tree, it was interesting to see a trend that mimics symbolic AI's history: moving from scruffy approaches to neat and then back to behaviour-based AI. Now, after having done a postdoc with Virginia Dignum, who comes from a line of Dutch mathematicians, I have been exposed to both schools and I am actively trying to combine those two.
If you are one of the person's listed above and want me to amend something, e.g. your affiliation, please let me know!
*Minsky’s personal website lists Sussman as one of his students. Morgenstern's tree suggests that only Minsky was a supervisor. Sussman lists Papert as his supervisor on the dissertation but acknowledges both. I believe, this is one of the cases where a student had 2 supervisors/advisors but due to institutional policies only one could be formally acknowledged.
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