Professor Alan Bundy

Division of Informatics, University of Edinburgh
Email: a.bundy@ed.ac.uk
Web: click here

Alan Bundy was educated as a Mathematician, obtaining a 1st class honours degree in Mathematics in 1968 from Leicester University and a PhD in Mathematical Logic in 1971, also from Leicester, under the supervision of Prof. R.L. Goodstein. Since 1971 he has been at the University of Edinburgh: initially in the Metamathematics Unit, which in 1972 became the Department of Computational Logic, in 1974 was absorbed into the new Department of Artificial Intelligence and in 1998 was absorbed into the new Division of Informatics. From 1971-73, he was a research fellow on Prof. B. Meltzer's SERC grant `Theorem Proving by Computer'; in 1973 he became a university lecturer; in 1984 he was promoted to reader; in 1987 he was promoted to professorial fellow; and in 1990 he was promoted to professor. From 1987-92 he held an SERC Senior Fellowship. From 1998-2001 he was Head of the newly formed of Division Informatics at Edinburgh.

Prof. Bundy's research has entailed the building of a number of problem solving programs for different branches of mathematics, namely number theory, algebra, mechanics, ecological modelling and logic/functional programming. He is the author of a book on the automation of mathematical reasoning, the editor of three books on artificial intelligence and joint author of one book on ecological modelling and one on the social impact of knowledge-based systems. He has been sole or joint holder of 39 EPSRC, SERC, Alvey, ESPRIT or ESRC grants and is the sole or joint author of over 140 published papers and books.

He has held the offices of newsletter editor and treasurer of the AISB, the UK Artificial Intelligence Society. He was programme chairman for IJCAI-83, conference chair of IJCAI-87 and has been a member of the IJCAI Inc. Trustees (The biennial IJCAIs are the major conferences in AI). He was general chair of CADE-12 (The biennial CADEs are the major conferences in automated theorem proving) and has been President of the CADE Inc. Board of Trustees. In 1986 he received the SPL Insight Award for his contribution to artificial intelligence research. He was elected a founding Fellow of AAAI in 1990, a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1996, a founding fellow of AISB in 1997 and a founding fellow of ECCAI in 1999. From 1985-88 he was a member of the SERC Computing Science Sub-Committee. During this time he co-authored the proposal and took part in the setting up of the SERC Logic for IT Initiative. He has delivered many invited talks and keynote addresses at major national and international conferences. He is on the editorial board of a number of journals and book series. In 1982-3 he was a member and group leader of the pre-Alvey IKBS Architecture Study and in 1983-4 he was the academic coordinator of the Alvey Intelligent Front Ends research theme. In 1989-91 he was a member of the Research Board of Hewlett Packard Laboratories. In 1994-96 he was a member of the IT, Communications and Electronics Technology Foresight Panel. In 1999-01 he was a member of the Research Assessment Exercise Panel in Computer Science. In 2000 he was a founder and convener of the UK Computing Research Committee, which plays an advocacy role for computing research in the UK.