George Ferguson @ URCS

George Ferguson, Ph.D.
Professor (of Instruction) and Co-Director of Undergraduate Program
Dept. of Computer Science
Wegmans Hall 2103
University of Rochester
Rochester, NY USA 14627-0226
ferguson@cs.rochester.edu
http://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/ferguson

Teaching

Edward Peck Curtis Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, 2023

UR Students’ Association 2018-2019 Professor of the Year in Engineering and Applied Sciences

Present:

• CSC173: Computation and Formal Systems
• CSC254: Programming Language Design and Implementation
• Office hours for Fall 2024:
  • Monday 1530-1630 (after CSC173), Tuesday 1030-1130
  • Office hours start August 26 and end December 9

Past:

• CSC171: Intro to Computer Science
• CSC173: Computation and Formal Systems
• CSC242: Intro to Artificial Intelligence
• CSC254: Programming Language Design and Implementation
• DMS371/2/3: Junior & Senior Capstones
• DMS102: Intro to Computing and Multimedia
• CSC170: Web Programming

No expiration date:

• Required reading/viewing for students of Computer Science
• C Programming Resources (for CSC173 and beyond)
• Intro to Programming (Python Edition) (hands-on)
• Using Linux (including via Docker) (Docker images)

Research

From 1989 to 2013, I was part of a fantastic inter-disciplinary team working at the intersection of Cognitive Science and Computer Science. We developed Intelligent Conversational Assistants based on deep, formal models of natural language understanding and collaboration. We applied these to problems ranging from logistics to health care to command and control.

Expertise: Artificial intelligence; Intelligent agents: agent communication languages, agent architectures; User interfaces: speech recognition, natural language understanding, dialogue, conversational agents; User-centered design; Temporal reasoning: representation, planning, scheduling; Semantic web: ontologies, knowledge-based systems; Medical informatics: electronic medical records, personal health records, self-care technologies.