108 Bryant St. #1, Mountain View CA 94041-1273 650-283-3768(c) 650-265-4265(h), rhodes@bradleyrhodes.com
Areas of expertise
Software Agents and Information Retrieval. Innovated,
designed, implemented and deployed the Remembrance Agent; a proactive
just-in-time information retrieval system that is based on original
research in search engine technology and interface design. This software
watches a user's environment and automatically retrieves pertinent
information without requiring a query. Recent industry examples that follow
from this original research include Autonomy's Kenjin, Flyswat and GuruNet
(now Atomica).
Wearable and Mobile Computing. Four years as one of the primary
researchers in the MIT Media Lab Wearable Computing Project. This team was
at the forefront in defining the international field of wearable
computing. Leading expert in software agent and context aware applications
for wearable computing, an area which applies equally well to other mobile
computing platforms.
Interaction and Interface Design. Designed, implemented and
tested user interfaces for information management, visualization and
retrieval. Designed and directed controlled experiments, user studies and
long-term ethnographic studies to understand user experiences with the
systems.
Ubiquitous Computing and Smart Environments. Research that
pointed the way towards achieving personalization and privacy in a
decentralized distributed system. Applications ranged from smart toys to
smart houses.
Previous Positions
Research Scientist, Ricoh California
Research Center (February 2001 - present) Designed, implemented
and deployed visualization, retrieval and control systems for multimedia
communications. Systems have been deployed lab-wide, and technology is
being transfered to the main Ricoh corporation for more
development. Systems implemented in Java, Java servlets, MySQL, Macromedia
Flash and XML. Several patents pending.
Research Assistant, MIT Media Lab (September 1994 - June 2000)
Member of the Software Agents
Group, working full-time on just-in-time information retrieval,
wearable computing and synthetic characters research. Conceived, designed,
implemented, evaluated and deployed projects in C, Java, Perl, Lisp, and
hardware. Managed teams of up to three undergraduate research aids.
System Software Engineer, Vicorp
(September 1991 - September 1993) Implemented fault-tolerant back-end
systems for telephone calling card billing and advanced features. Systems
were implemented in C for the Tandem fault-tolerant operating system,
Guardian.
Education
Ph.D. June, 2000 from MIT Program in Media Arts and Sciences (Media Lab),
Software Agents Group. Thesis Titled "Just-In-Time Information Retrieval."
Investigated the design of JITIR agents: software that suggests useful
information based on a person's local context.
Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Pattie Maes.
Master of Science, Sept. 1996 from MIT Program in Media Arts and
Sciences (Media Lab), Software Agents Group. Thesis Titled "PHISH-Nets:
Planning Heuristically In Situated Hybrid Networks." Presented a
behavior-selection algorithm for autonomous 3D graphical robots in noisy
environments. Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Pattie Maes.
Bachelor of Science, June 1992 from MIT in Computer Science and
Electrical Engineering. Thesis Titled "Doing the Right Thing Even Better."
Evaluated and enhanced the Agent Network Architecture for behavior
selection in autonomous robots. Thesis Supervisors: Dr. Pattie Maes and
Dr. Marvin Minsky.
The Remembrance Agent: A
continuously running automated information retrieval system, Bradley Rhodes
and Thad Starner, The Proceedings of The First International Conference
on The Practical Application of Intelligent Agents and Multi Agent
Technology (PAAM '96), London, UK, April 1996, pp. 487-495.
PHISH-Nets: Planning Heuristically in
Situated Hybrid Networks, MIT Media Arts and Sciences S.M. Thesis, 1996.
Pronomes in Behavior Nets (abstract
here), by Bradley
Rhodes. Technical Report # 95-01, MIT Media Lab, Learning and Common Sense
Section. [This is an early tech report leading to my MS thesis]
The Storymaster: Automatic Creation of
Acts of God for Dramatic Effect, presented at the AAAI-95 spring symposium
on Plot and Character in Interactive Story systems at Stanford.
USPTO
6,236,768, Method and apparatus for automated, context-dependent
retrieval of information. Bradley Rhodes, Thad Starner, Pattie Maes, Alex
Pentland. Granted May 22, 2001.