A 1948 graduate of the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion), Dr. Amarel received his Master of Science degree from Columbia University in New York in 1953, and his Doctorate in Engineering Science from the same university in 1955.
Saul Amarel, D.Sc.,Alan M. Turing Professor of Computer Science at Rutgers University, passed away in Princeton, NJ on Wednesday, December 18, just as the celebration of his retirement from Rutgers after 33 years of leadership in Computer Science nationally and internationally, was in preparation for December 20.
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Dr. Amarel founded the Department of Computer Science at Livingston
College, Rutgers University in New Brunswick NJ in 1969 and was its
Chairman until 1984. Earlier he had led the Computer Theory Group at
RCA Sarnoff Labs in Princeton from 1958 to 1969, where he developed
network synthesis and computer simulation methods. .He is best known
as a pioneer in artificial intelligence, having written the seminal
paper on how to represent knowledge about problem solving and the
logic of theory formation on computers in 1968. At Rutgers
University, Amarel led the first NIH funded Special Research Resource
on Computers in Biomedicine at Rutgers from 1971, laying the
foundation for widespread research in expert systems applied to such
diverse fields as medicine, biochemistry, psychology, engineering
design, and ecology. In 1977 he founded the Laboratory for Computer
Science Research at Rutgers, which pioneered the introduction of
time-shared computing for scientific communication at Rutgers and was
an early node in the ARPA net the predecessor of the Internet. In
1983 Dr. Amarel was named General Chair of the International Joint
Conference on Artificial Intelligence the triennial international
meeting for the field, held in Karlruhe, Germany. He was subsequently
Director of the Information Sciences and Technology Office of the
Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA) from 1985 to 1988. On
returning to Rutgers, he was named Alan M. Turing Professor of
Computer Science, and in 1989 led a major project on Hypercomputing
and Design under the largest federal grant received by Rutgers ($12.4
million from the Department of Defense) to that time. The project
investigated how to apply advanced artificial intelligence techniques
to the design of VLSI circuits, voice recognition systems, high speed
aircraft and missile inlets, naval vessels, and supersonic transports,
This reflected Dr. Amarelšs unique abilities as a leader in organizing
networks of collaborating scientists and engineers to develop advanced
computer science methods for biomedical research and engineering
design. His accomplishments were recognized by the premier Computer
Science organization - the Association for Computing Machinery from
which he received the Allen Newell Award. He was also elected a Fellow
of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and
received the Rutgers Research Excellence Award in 1994. From 1995 he
has chaired the Information Sciences and Technology Council at Rutgers
University. A 1948 graduate of the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion), Dr. Amarel received his Master of Science degree from Columbia University in New York in 1953, and his Doctorate in Engineering Science from the same university in 1955.
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