Brown CS News

Brown CS alum James Hendler has recently been honored with the 2025 Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Feigenbaum Prize for his groundbreaking work in artificial intelligence. The award recognizes Jim’s sustained and seminal contributions to experimental AI, especially related to AI planning systems, knowledge representation, and the Semantic Web, fields that have helped lay the foundation for modern AI applications. Jim completed his PhD at Brown under the late Eugene Charniak, whose mentorship, he says, played a formative role in his career.

Currently the Tetherless World Professor of Computer, Web, and Cognitive Sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Jim’s research focuses on enabling intelligent systems to share, integrate, and reason across complex datasets. He was one of the originators of the Semantic Web concept and has collaborated extensively with figures like Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, and Vint Cerf, one of the co-designers of the TCP/IP protocols. Jim’s recent work explores not just technical advances in machine learning but also explainable AI and the ethical dimensions of artificial intelligence, putting it at the forefront of the field’s most pressing challenges.

In addition to the Feigenbaum Prize, Jim’s many honors include being elected a Fellow of the AAAI, IEEE, AAAS, ACM, and the National Academy of Public Administration. In 2002, he was awarded the US Air Force Exceptional Civilian Service Award; in 2012, he was recognized by the US OSTP for his work in helping to create the US open government data initiative; and in 2014, he became a data-sharing advisor to the New York State government. In 2017, he was recognized by the Association of Moving Image Archivists for his work on developing AI-driven tools that help preserve media archives and also received the AAAI’s Distinguished Service Award for promoting AI research for US government and industry. He also serves as Chair of the Board of the UK’s Web Science Trust and has been appointed to advisory roles in major national and international technology initiatives.

"I’m honored to receive this recognition," Jim says. "I can’t possibly overstate how important the mentorship of my advisor, Eugene Charniak, was in my career. Both his direct advice, and even more importantly the model he set, taught me not just how to do my own research, but even more so how to become a strong academic mentor for the now fifty PhD students I’ve successfully advised in my academic career. I just wish he was still here so I could thank him in person.”

For more information, click the link that follows to contact Brown CS Communications Manager Jesse C. Polhemus.