Jan Zytkow
received his Ph.D. from Warsaw University in Philosophy of
Science in 1972, and his habilitation in 1979. He was a Visiting
Professor at Carnegie-Mellon University, where he worked on machine
discovery, collaborating with Herbert Simon and Pat Langley. In 1984
he joined the Wichita State University where he was a Professor of
Computer Science (and CS Chair from 1996). In addition to his research
on discovery, he worked on autonomous decision making and learning
mechanisms for automated pilot, and on computer vision. He founded a
machine discovery laboratory in which automated computer systems
together with robotic hardware perform experiments and build theories
in chemistry, mechanics and the like. Other research activities in the
laboratory include discovery of hidden structure, discovery in
databases, and discovery in geometry. Since the Fall of 1997 he has
been a computer science faculty at University of North Carolina at
Charlotte, where he moved his discovery laboratory.
His academic career includes visiting professorships at
Carnegie-Mellon University (Fall 1992), George Mason University (from
1988 to 1990), Humboldt University (Berlin), Moscow State University,
University of Salzburg (Austria), London School of Economics, and the
Inter-University Center (Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia). He has authored above
150 research papers, co-authored a book ("Scientific Discovery:
Computational Explorations of the Creative Processes" by MIT Press),
and edited a number of books (including "Handbook of Data Mining and
Knowledge Discovery" by Oxford University Press, and "Machine
Discovery" by Kluwer), proceedings, and journal issues. He has been an
invited speaker at many scientific meetings. He has served or is
currently serving on the program chairs of many International
conferences and workshops, including International Workshop on Machine
Discovery, European Symposium on Principles of Data Mining and
Knowledge Discovery.