Gabriel Catalin Balan - Department of Computer Science - George ...

Gabriel Catalin Balan
Curriculum Vitae
10404 Fairfax Village Drive #1121
Fairfax, VA, 22030
(401)699-9697 (C)
gbalan@cs.gmu.edu
http://cs.gmu.edu/~gbalan
Education 2000-2009 PhD in Computer Science, George Mason University, USA. 3.98 GPA.
Research /
Work
Experience
1995-2000 BS Computer Science, Bucharest Polytechnic University, Romania,
School of System Control and Computer Science. Specialization: Application
Programs and Artificial Intelligence. 3.87 GPA (top 2% of class).
2002-2009 As a Graduate Research Assistant, was a major coauthor of two opensource
projects:
⎭ ECJ:
an “industrial-grade“ evolutionary computation research toolkit. Probably the
most widely used such system worldwide.
⎭ MASON:
a massive single-process multi-agent simulation library. Popular in
biology, multi-agent systems and social sciences.
Most notable contribution: the java3D module for MASON, allowing users with no
graphics experience to add 3D visualizations (grid, continuous space, network) to
their simulations. In ECJ I contributed to the multi-objective functionality, test-beds,
and progress measures.
Either alone or as part of a team, I developed a large number of multi-agent
simulations in web service, urban traffic, political science, anthropology, and
economics, in conjunction with the Department of Computer Science and Krasnow
Institute at George Mason University, with the Department of Anthropology at the
Smithsonian Institution, and with the Mongolian Science Foundation.
2003-2004 Graduate Teaching Assistant for both graduate and undergraduate level
classes in Analysis of Algorithms and Artificial Intelligence.
2000-2002 Graduate Research Assistant (Learning Agents Laboratory, George
Mason University). Designed and implemented a system that retrieves and exports
knowledge between Cyc (Lenat) and Disciple (Tecuci). Also developed knowledge
management tool GUIs.
1996-1998 Part-time high-school teacher at NICOLAE TONITZA High School,
Bucharest, Romania, teaching “Computer Aided Image Processing.”
Publications 2010
1. “An Agent-Based Model of Conflict in East Africa and the Effect of Watering
Holes,” Kennedy W., Hailegiorgis A., Bassett J., Coletti M., Balan G., Gulden
T. In the 19th Annual Conference on Behavior Representation in Modeling
Simulation (BRIMS-2010).
2009
2. “Computational Issues in Long-term Fairness Among Groups of Agents,”
Balan G., PhD thesis, George Mason University
3. “Long-term Fairness with Bounded Worst-case Losses,” Balan G., Richards
D., and Luke S. In Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems,
doi 10.1007/s10458-009-9106-9.

2008
4. “Long-term Fairness with Bounded Worst-case Losses,” Balan G.,
Richards D., and Luke S. In Multidisciplinary Workshop on Advances in
Preference Handling, AAAI-2008.
2007
5. “Finding Interesting Things,” Luke S., Sharma D., Balan G. GECCO-2007,
86—93.
2006
6. “History-based Traffic Control”, Balan G., and Luke S. In Proceedings of
the Fifth International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi
Agent Systems.
7. “Can Good Learners Always Compensate for Bad Learners?”, Sullivan K.,
Panait L., Balan G., and Luke S. In Proceedings of the Fifth International
Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi Agent Systems.
2005
8. “MASON: A Multiagent Simulation Environment”, Luke S., Cioffi-Revilla C.,
Panait L., Sullivan K., and Balan G., Simulation 81(7), 517—527.
9. “Tunably Decentralized Algorithms for Cooperative Target Observation”,
Luke S., Sullivan K., Panait L., and Balan G. In Proceedings of the Fourth
International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi Agent
Systems, Utrecht, The Netherlands
2004
10. “A Demonstration of Neural Programming Applied to Non-Markovian
Problems”, Balan G., Luke S., GECCO (2) 2004, 422—433.
2003
11. “Population Implosion in Genetic Programming”, Luke S., Balan G., Panait
L., GECCO-03 (Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference);
nominated for the “Best GP Paper” award.
12. “MASON: A Java Multi-agent Simulation Library”, Luke S., Balan G. and
Panait L. In Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on the
Mathematics and Algorithms of Social Insects.
13. “MASON: A Java Multi-agent Simulation Library”, Luke S., Balan G.,
Panait L., Cioffi-Revilla C. and Paus S. In Proceedings of Agent 2003
Conference on Challenges in Social Simulation.
14. “Ontologies for Learning Agents: Problems, Solutions and Directions”
Stanescu B., Boicu C., Balan G., Barbulescu M., Boicu M. and Tecuci G.,
AAAI-03, Acapulco, Mexico.
15. “Rapid Development of Large Knowledge Bases”, Barbulescu M., Balan
G., Boicu M., Tecuci G.; SMC-2003 (IEEE International Conference on
Systems, Man & Cybernetics), Washington DC.
2002
16. “Disciple-RKF/COG: Agent Teaching by Subject Matter Experts” Boicu M.,
Tecuci G., Marcu D., Stanescu B., Boicu C., Balan G., Barbulescu M. and
Hao X.; AAAI-2002 (Intelligent Systems Demonstrations program).
2001
17. “Ontologies and the Knowledge Acquisition Bottleneck”, Boicu M, Tecuci
G., Stanescu B, Balan G., Popovici E.; Ontologies and Information Sharing
workshop, International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI).

Presentations ⎭ Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) 2003.
Professional
Service
⎭ Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS) 2005, 2006.
⎭ AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence 2008.
Paper reviewer for:
⎭ “Artificial Multi-Agent Learning” workshop, 2004 AAAI Fall Symposium;
⎭ Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) 2005;
⎭ Adaptation and Learning in Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent Systems
(ALAAMAS) workshop, part of AAMAS 2006;
⎭ Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (JASSS) 2008.
⎭ Behavior Representation in Modeling & Simulation (BRIMS) 2010.
⎭ Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR) 2010.