“I was delighted and honored to be selected as one of the Senior Members who were named in the first year of the Senior Member Program,” says Dr. Marie desJardins, who was recently granted Senior Member Status by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). Senior Members, of which there are a maximum of only twenty-five chosen per year, are selected according to their contributions in the field of artificial intelligence, active involvement with AAAI, and endorsements from AAAI Fellows. 

“The mission of AAAI is to serve as a professional organization for the advancement of artificial intelligence techniques,” explains desJardins, who has been an AAAI member since 1987, when she was a graduate student at the University of California: Berkeley. Since then, desJardins has served the organization in a variety of roles including as an AAAI Councillor (2001-2004), AAAI Symposium Associate Chair (2002-2006), and the AAAI Workshop Program Co-Chair (1999-2000), among others. Most recently, she has served on the editorial board of AI Magazine, a quarterly publication of AAAI that features articles highlighting new AI-related research.

In addition, Dr. desJardins has served as chair, co-chair, mentor and/or reviewer of the AAAI Doctoral Consortium every year since 2000. She was a founding member and co-organizer of the AAAI Teaching Forum, now known as the Annual Symposium on Educational Advances in Artificial Intelligence (EAAI). EEAI was established to provide a forum for educators and researchers to discuss teaching techniques that better communicate the principles of AI. This year, Dr. desJardins sent three undergraduate students and one Ph.D. student to the symposium in San Francisco to present a poster entitled "Playing to Program: An Intelligent Programming Tutor for RUR-PLE.”