David Waltz facts for kids

David Leigh Waltz (born May 28, 1943 – died March 22, 2012) was a smart computer scientist. He made big contributions to artificial intelligence (AI). AI is about making computers think and learn like humans.

David Waltz helped computers understand things like how to solve problems, remember past experiences, and use many computers at once to tackle big challenges. He worked at universities and in companies. When he passed away, he was a professor at Columbia University. There, he led a center that studied how computers learn.

His Early Life and Education

David Waltz was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1943. He went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). This is a very famous science and technology school.

At MIT, he studied under Marvin Minsky, who was a pioneer in artificial intelligence. David Waltz was part of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He earned three degrees in Electrical Engineering, including his Ph.D. in 1972.

His Ph.D. project was about computer vision. This field teaches computers to "see" and understand images. David Waltz's work showed how a computer could figure out a detailed 3D object from a 2D drawing, even if it had shadows. This idea helped start a new way of solving problems called "constraint propagation."

What He Did in His Career

After finishing his studies at MIT in 1972, David Waltz became a computer science professor. He taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

In 1984, he joined a company called Thinking Machines Corporation. There, he led a group that worked on how computers understand information and language. He got to use very powerful supercomputers. This helped him find new ways for computers to find information by comparing huge amounts of data.

With a colleague named Craig Stanfill, he created a new field called "memory-based reasoning." This is a type of case-based reasoning. It means computers learn by remembering and using past examples.

His research also included using many computers at once to find information. He worked on data mining (finding patterns in large datasets) and how computers learn and sort information. He even applied his ideas to predicting protein structures and understanding the electric power grid. While at Thinking Machines, he was also a professor at Brandeis University.

In 1993, David Waltz moved to the NEC Research Institute in Princeton. He eventually became the President of NEC Research. Then, in 2003, he joined Columbia University. He became the Director of the Center for Computational Learning Systems there.

Leading AI Groups

David Waltz was a leader in the field of artificial intelligence. He served as president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) from 1997 to 1999. He was also the former Chairman of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence (SIGART). These are important groups for computer scientists.

He was also on advisory boards for many other important organizations. These included the IEEE Intelligent Systems and the Computing Community Consortium. He also advised the National Science Foundation (NSF) on computer science.

Awards and Recognition

David Waltz received several important awards for his work. In 1990, he was chosen as a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). This means he was recognized as a top expert in AI.

In 1998, he became a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. In 2011, he received the AAAI Distinguished Service Award. This award recognized his amazing and long-lasting service to the artificial intelligence community.

His Family Life

David Waltz married Bonnie Freedson in 1970. They had two children, Vanessa (born 1972) and Jeremy (born 1975). He was a very dedicated husband and father. His wife and children often traveled with him to his conferences and work events.

In 2003, his son Jeremy and his wife Kathy had a daughter named Hannah. At this point, David Waltz earned the nickname "The Dude" from his family and friends.

His Passing

David Waltz passed away on March 22, 2012, at the age of 68. He died in the University Medical Center at Princeton, New Jersey, from brain cancer.

He is survived by his wife, Bonnie Waltz, his brother Peter, his son Jeremy, his daughter Vanessa, and his granddaughter Hannah.