Robert Lee Simpson, Jr.

Responsible for PreAct Software, a hierarchical suite of intelligent software components that deliver efficient design, development, and tracking of associate systems projects, Simpson is an American scientist whose primary research interest is in applied artificial intelligence. He has served as Chief Scientist at Applied Systems Intelligence, Inc. (ASI), a small business focused on applied artificial intelligent solutions to government and industry.

Prior to joining ASI, he was at IET, where he served as the Principal Investigator (PI) for a DARPA sponsored project evaluating cognitive systems under the Personalized Assistants that Learn program. Before joining IET, he worked at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) as a Principal Research Scientist, where he was Co-PI on an ARDA funded GTRI research project called "Case-Based Reasoning for Knowledge Discovery." This project discovered and made explicit in software the knowledge discovery plans and meta-information about those plans that intelligence analysts implicitly used in performing their analysis tasks. Another project at GTRI was a study of Internet Voting that included technical as well as policy issues such as data privacy and security.

In addition, Simpson investigated the representation and use of meta-data in a DARPA interoperability program called FastC2AP. The Fast Connectivity for Coalition and Agents Project (FastC2AP) proved that agent-based technology can provide key capabilities identified by users as critical for dynamic interoperability in military architectures. The goal of the FastC2AP program was to extend agent-based technologies developed in the DARPA CoABS program, to accommodate secure web services and user-level implementations.

During his over ten years of employment with NCR Corp., he served as a member of NCR's Corporate Technology staff focused on strategic technology investments. He also served as Director at NCR's Human Interface Technology Center (HITC). From 1998–2000, Simpson participated on the NCR Privacy Steering Committee, served as chairman of the NCR technical workshop on security, privacy, and trust, and acted as NCR representative to the World-Wide Web Standards Committee Privacy Outreach Committee. He was also instrumental in the formation of the International Security Trust and Privacy Alliance, a global alliance of companies and technology providers working together to clarify and resolve existing and evolving issues related to security, trust, and privacy.

His key technical accomplishments while at the NCR HITC included establishing technical initiatives in intelligent software agents, image understanding, case-based reasoning, and spoken language. His key business accomplishments were in establishing customer relationships with AT&T Health Informatics and Telemedicine, as well as internal NCR retail and financial business units. In addition, Simpson was able to establish the national technical reputation of the NCR HITC by successfully competing for three large national research and development contracts totaling over $90M. The most significant of these was the award of two DARPA Technology Reinvestment Projects and one National Institutes of Standards and Technology, Advanced Technology Program grant.

During his USAF career, he participated in and directed a broad range of computer-related projects spanning research, data processing, and personnel development. Between 1985 and 1990, Simpson served as Program Manager for Machine Intelligence at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), responsible for research investment decisions within DARPA's basic science and Strategic Computing programs. Specifically, he was responsible for developing the national technology base in knowledge-based systems, image understanding, automated planning/design, and machine learning technologies. Some of the results of these research and development activities were highlighted in a series of articles in the June and August 1991 and February 1992 issues of IEEE Expert. He retired from the USAF as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1990.

Simpson has authored or co-authored several major publications, including among others: with Rouff, Christopher; Roberts, Joe; and Edwards, Gary. "An Autonomic System for Close Air Support." In Proceedings of Sixth IEEE Conference and Workshops on Engineering of Autonomic and Autonomous Systems, San Francisco, CA, April 14–16, 2009; with Twardy, Charles. "Refining the Cognitive Decathlon." In Proceedings of Performance Evaluation of Intelligent Systems — PerMIS08, Aug 19–21, 2008, NIST, Bethesda, MD; with Whitaker, Elizabeth. "The Evolution and Evaluation of an Internet Search Tool for Information Analysts." In Proceedings of 20th Annual FLAIRS Conference, Key West, FL, 7–9 May 2007; and with Whitaker, Elizabeth; Burkhart, Laura; MacTavish, Reid; and Lobb, Collin. "Cognitive Factors in Homeland Defense: Reusing Intelligence Analysts' Search Plans." In Proceedings of Human Factors and Ergonomics '04, New Orleans, LA, 20–24 September 2004.