Kate Larson, Professor at the Cheriton School of Computer Science, has been named a 2025 Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.
Each year, AAAI recognizes individuals who have made significant and sustained contributions to the field of artificial intelligence. Professor Larson has been honoured by the Association for her significant contributions to the foundations of multiagent systems, and for service to the broader AI community.
“Congratulations to Kate on being elected a Fellow of AAAI,” said Raouf Boutaba, University Professor and Director of the Cheriton School of Computer Science. “Kate has made many significant and lasting contributions to multiagent systems, among them addressing challenges in semi-cooperative and negotiation-based settings.”
Kate Larson, Professor at the Cheriton School of Computer Science and Research Scientist at Google DeepMind, holds a PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University, a master’s in computer science from Washington University, and an undergraduate degree in mathematics from Memorial University of Newfoundland. Her recognitions include being named a University Research Chair in 2019, a Pasupalak AI Fellow in 2018, an Outstanding Early Career Researcher by CS-Can | Info-Can in 2015, and a Cheriton Faculty Fellow from 2012 to 2015.
Professor Larson is interested in issues that arise in settings where self-interested agents interact, where the agents may be AI agents, humans — or a combination. In particular, she is interested in understanding how computational limitations influence strategic behaviour in multiagent systems, as well as developing approaches to address computational issues that arise in practical applications of multiagent systems.
More about Professor Larson’s research and service to the AI community
Professor Larson has made profound and lasting contributions to the field of multiagent systems by studying strategic challenges that arise in cooperative, semi-cooperative and negotiation-based settings, accounting for models of bounded rationality and the impact that limited computation and information has on the strategic behaviour of agents in a variety of settings.
With her colleagues, Professor Larson coined the term and introduced the concept of “cooperative AI,” emphasizing the need for AI agents to possess social understanding and cooperative intelligence to integrate effectively and beneficially into society. This comprehensive research agenda has since inspired multiple workshops and an ongoing summer school on the topic. Her interests in cooperative structures, however, are long-standing and can be traced back to her citation classic from 1999 on coalition structure generation, a key topic in multiagent systems.
Her more recent work has examined cooperative game theory, teamwork, and mechanisms for supporting human group-work — including research with colleagues working in human-computer interaction that examined whether disagreements among crowd workers can be resolved in the context of both objective and subjective classification. This research received a best paper award at the 21st ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.
Professor Larson has also served the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. In addition to being a program committee member, a senior program committee member, and an area chair, she was an AAAI Councillor from 2011–14 and the program co-chair for the AAAI Senior Members Track in 2024.
Professor Larson has undertaken important service roles for the broader AI community. She served as Program Chair for the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in 2024, and currently serves as co-editor-in-chief for the Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems. She has served as an associate editor for both Artificial Intelligence and the Journal of AI Research, and was an elected board member for the International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems from 2010–16 and was its president from 2013–15.