My main research focus is on developing theoretical understanding and practical techniques for constructing intelligent systems that are inherently spatially or logically distributed.

Towards this end, my work involves research in Artificial Intelligence and Multiagent Systems . I am particularly interested in applying and developing Distributed Constraint Reasoning as a key paradigm for Multiagent Systems. Other topics of interest include Distributed Optimization, Multiagent Learning, Automated Planning, Scheduling and Resource Allocation.

My CV is available here: [PDF]

More about my research:

• Abstract and bio from my faculty candidate talk.
• A pictoral poster view describing some of my work.

Some awards I've been fortunate to receive:

• Recipient of "AI's Ten to Watch" award from IEEE Intelligent Systems Magazine.
  • Intelligent Systems Magazine (May/June 2006) article [PDF]
• Best Student Paper Nomination, Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems Conference, 2003
• Invited Young Investigator, Darpa/IPTO Cognitive Systems Conference, 2003
• Meritorious Service Award, Information Sciences Institute/University of Southern California, 2003.
• University Honors, Carnegie Mellon University, 1997

Available positions

• Student research positions in my lab are available. If you are a Drexel student and interested in AI research, please contact me.
• Non-student research positions are also available. See here for more information.

• Postdoctoral Fellow, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA (Sept 2003 - Aug 2005).
  • Member of CORAL research group, led by Manuela Veloso.

• Ph.D. Computer Science, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA (Dec 2003).
  • PhD advisors: Wei-Min Shen and Milind Tambe

• Research Assistant, Information Sciences Institute, Marina del Rey, CA (July 1997 - July 2003).
  • Member of Intelligent Systems Division

• B.S. Computer Science/Math, with University Honors, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA (May 1997).

2007

• On Modeling Multiagent Task Scheduling as a Distributed Constraint Optimization Problem [PDF]
  Evan Sultanik, Pragnesh Jay Modi, William Regli.
  Proceedings of the Twentieth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence , (IJCAI) 2007. [16%]

2006

• Constraint Propagation for Domain Bounding in Distributed Task Scheduling [PDF] [PS]
  Evan Sultanik, Pragnesh Jay Modi, William Regli.
  Proceedings of Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (Poster), (CP) 2006
• Towards a Reference Model for Agent-Based Systems [PDF] [PS]
  Pragnesh Jay Modi, Spiros Mancoridis, William M. Mongan, William Regli, Israel Mayk.
  Proceedings of Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, Industry Track, (AAMAS) 2006
• Hierarchical Variable Ordering for Multiagent Agreement Problems [PDF] [PS]
  John Davin, Pragnesh Jay Modi
  Proceedings of Seventh Workshop on Distributed Constraint Reasoning, DCR 2006.
  Proceedings of Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (Poster), (AAMAS) 2006
• Reasoning About and Dynamically Posting n-ary Constraints in ADOPT [PDF] [PS]
  Federico Pecora, Pragnesh Jay Modi, and Paul Scerri
  Proceedings of Seventh Workshop on Distributed Constraint Reasoning, DCR 2006.
  
• Quorum Sensing on Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks [PDF] [PS]
  Maxim Peysakhov, Christopher Dugan, Pragnesh Jay Modi, William Regli
  Proceedings of Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (Poster), (AAMAS) 2006

2005

• Do Humans Adapt Their Emails So That Agents Can Understand? [PDF] [PS]
  Pragnesh Jay Modi, Kerry Hannan, Manuela Veloso
  Proceedings of AAAI Symposium on Mixed Initiative Problem Solving Assistants, November 2005.
• Algorithmic and Domain Centralization in Distributed Constraint Optimization Problems [PDF] [PS]
  John P. Davin, Master's Thesis
  Advisors: Pragnesh Jay Modi, Manuela Veloso
  CMU-CS-05-154, CMU Tech Report, 2005.
  
• Classification of Examples by Multiple Agents with Private Features [PDF] [PS]
  Pragnesh Jay Modi, Peter Woo Tae Kim
  Proceedings of Intelligent Agent Technologies, (IAT) 2005. [18%]
  
• Impact of Problem Centralization in Distributed Constraint Optimization Algorithms [PDF] [PS]
  John Davin, Pragnesh Jay Modi
  Proceedings of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, (AAMAS) 2005. [24%]
  
• Bumping Strategies for the Multiagent Agreement Problem [PDF] [PS]
  Pragnesh Jay Modi, Manuela Veloso
  Proceedings of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, (AAMAS) 2005. [24%]
  
• ADOPT: Asynchronous Distributed Constraint Optimization with Quality Guarantees [PDF] [PS]
  Pragnesh Jay Modi, Wei-Min Shen, Milind Tambe, Makoto Yokoo
  Artificial Intelligence Journal, (AIJ) 2005.
  
• Conflicts in Teamwork: Hybrids to the Rescue [Available from TEAMCORE website]
  M. Tambe, E. Bowring, H. Jung, G. Kaminka, R. Maheswaran, J. Marecki, P. J. Modi, R. Nair, S. Okamoto, J. Pearce, P. Paruchuri, D. Pynadath, P. Scerri, N. Schurr, P. Varakantham.
  Proceedings of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, (AAMAS) 2005. (Invited Paper)

2004

• Multiagent Meeting Scheduling with Rescheduling [PDF] [PS]
  Pragnesh Jay Modi, Manuela Veloso
  Proceedings of the Fifth Workshop on Distributed Constraint Reasoning, DCR 2004.
  
• CMRADAR: A Personal Assistant Agent for Calendar Management [PDF] [PS]
  Pragnesh Jay Modi, Manuela Veloso, Stephen F. Smith, Jean Oh
  Agent Oriented Information Systems, (AOIS) 2004.
  

2003

• Distributed Constraint Optimization for Multiagent Systems [PDF] [PS] (PhD Thesis)
  Pragnesh Jay Modi
  Department of Computer Science
  University of Southern California, 2003.
  
• An Asynchronous Complete Method for Distributed Constraint Optimization [PDF] [PS] (Nominated for Best Student Paper)
  Pragnesh Jay Modi, Wei-Min Shen, Milind Tambe, Makoto Yokoo
  Proceedings of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, (AAMAS) 2003. [25%]
• Distributed Constraint Reasoning Under Unreliable Communication [PDF] [PS]
  Pragnesh Jay Modi, Syed Muhammad Ali
  Proceedings of the Fourth Workshop on Distributed Constraint Reasoning, DCR 2003
  To appear in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications, IOS Press
• Distributed Resource Allocation: A Distributed Constraint Reasoning Approach (Book Chapter)
  Pragnesh Jay Modi, Paul Scerri, Wei-Min Shen, Milind Tambe
  Distributed Sensor Networks: A Multiagent Perspective
  Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003.
• Are Multiagent Algorithms Relevant for Real Hardware? A Case Study of Distributed Constraint Algorithms [PDF] [PS]
  Paul Scerri, Pragnesh Jay Modi, Wei-Min Shen, Milind Tambe
  ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, (SAC) 2003.
  

2001

• A Dynamic Distributed Constraint Satisfaction Approach to Resource Allocation [PDF] [PS] (Extended Version [PDF] [PS])
  Pragnesh Jay Modi, Hyuckchul Jung, Milind Tambe, Wei-Min Shen, Shriniwas Kulkarni
  Proceedings of Seventh International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming, (CP) 2001.
  
• Collaborative Multi-Agent Learning for Classification Tasks [PS] [PDF]
  Pragnesh Jay Modi, Wei-Min Shen
  Autonomous Agents Workshop on Learning Agents, Agents 2001

> 2000

• Purposeful Behavior in Robot Soccer Team Play
  Wei-Min Shen, Rogelio Adobbati, Pragnesh Jay Modi, Behnam Salemi.
  RoboCup 1999: Robot Soccer World Cup III. Lecture Notes in Computer Science.
  (Ed.) M. Veloso, E. Pagello, H. Kitano. Springer 2000.
• Teamwork in Cyberspace: Using TEAMCORE to Make Agents Team-ready [PS]
  Tambe, M., Shen, W., Mataric, M., Goldberg, D., Modi, J, Qiu, Z., and Salemi, B.
  Proceedings of AAAI Spring Symposium on Agents in Cyberspace, pp 136-141, 1999.
• Modeling Web Sources for Information Integration
  Craig Knoblock, Steven Minton, Jose Luis Ambite, Naveen Ashish, Pragnesh Jay Modi, Ion Muslea, Andrew G. Philpot, Sheila Tejada
  Proceedings of the Fifteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, (AAAI) 1998. [30%]

Hobbies: I enjoy snowboarding, scuba-diving, and running.