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Guni Sharon

Assistant professor
Texas A&M University
Computer Science & Engineering
    • OFFICE
    • PETR 316
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    • +1 (979) 845-5498
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    • guni (at) tamu (dot) edu
    • G. SCHOLAR
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Research Interests

I am a researcher with a strong theoretical basis in artificial intelligence. Specifically, reinforcement learning, combinatorial search, multiagent route assignment, game theory, flow and convex optimization, and multiagent modeling and simulation. I view myself as part of the AI community where my work is highly cited. I strive to further the impact of my applicable expertise for solving real-life problems while simultaneously continuing to make theoretical advances that justify the proposed solutions.

The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
― Edsger W. Dijkstra

Artificial Intelligence

Autonomous Traffic Management

Network Flow Optimization

Game Theory

Multiagent Systems

Reinforcement Learning

Heuristic Search

Graph-Based Pathfinding




For a description of my current research projects please visit my lab's website: http://faculty.cse.tamu.edu/guni/pistar/research.html


Publications


    2023


  • The (Un)Scalability of Informed Heuristic Function Estimation in NP-Hard Search Problems
    Sumedh Pendurkar, Taoan Huang, Brendan Juba, Jiapeng Zhang, Sven Koenig, and Guni Sharon
    In Transactions on Machine Learning Research, 2023
    pdf  bib  code  Talk 

  • Comparison between popular genetic algorithm (GA)-based tool and covariance matrix adaptation – evolutionary strategy (CMA-ES) for optimizing indoor daylight
    Manal Anis, Sumedh Pendurkar, Yun Kyu Yi, and Guni Sharon
    In Proceedings of Building Simulation 2023: 18th Conference of IBPSA., 2023
    pdf  bib  code 

  • Task Phasing: Automated Curriculum Learning from Demonstrations.
    Vaibhav Bajaj, Guni Sharon, and Peter Stone
    In Proceedings of the 33rd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS), 2023
    pdf  bib  code 

  • Socially Optimal Non-Discriminatory Restrictions for Continuous-Action Games.
    Michael Oesterle and Guni Sharon
    In Proceedings of the 37th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2023
    pdf  bib  code 

  • Bilevel Entropy based Mechanism Design for Balancing Meta in Video Games.
    Sumedh Pendurkar, Chris Chow, Luo Jie, and Guni Sharon
    In Proceedings of the 22th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (AAMAS), 2023
    pdf  bib  code 


    • 2022


  • Intersection Management Protocol for Mixed Autonomous and Human-Operated Vehicles.
    Aaron Parks-Young and Guni Sharon
    In IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, DOI: 10.1109/TITS.2022.3169658.
    pdf  bib  technical report (simulation environment)  code 

  • A Discussion on the Scalability of Heuristic Approximators.
    Sumedh Pendurkar, Taoan Huang, Sven Koenig, and Guni Sharon
    In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Combinatorial Search, 2022
    pdf  bib 

    • 2021

  • Reinforcement Learning Benchmarks for Traffic Signal Control.
    James Ault and Guni Sharon
    In Proceedings of the 35th Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2021) Track on Datasets and Benchmarks, 2021
    pdf  bib 

  • Agent-Based Markov Modeling for Improved COVID-19 Mitigation Policies.
    Roberto Capobianco and Varun Kompella and James Ault and Guni Sharon and Stacy Jong and Spencer Fox and Lauren Meyers and Peter R. Wurman and Peter Stone
    In Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR), 2021
    pdf  bib  code 

  • Alleviating Road Traffic Congestion with Artificial Intelligence.
    Guni Sharon
    In Proceedings of the 30th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-21), Early-Career Spotlight, 2021
    pdf  bib 

  • A Joint Imitation-Reinforcement Learning Framework for Reduced Baseline Regret.
    Sheelabhadra Dey, Sumedh Pendurkar, Guni Sharon, and Josiah Hanna
    In the Proceedings of the 34th International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2021), 2021
    pdf  bib  slides  demo  code 

  • Multiagent Epidemiologic Inference through Realtime Contact Tracing.
    Guni Sharon, James Ault, Peter Stone, Varun Kompella, and Roberto Capobianco
    In The Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (AAMAS 2021) 2021
    pdf  bib 


    • 2020

  • Learning an Interpretable Traffic Signal Control Policy.
    James Ault, Josiah P. Hanna, and Guni Sharon
    In the Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (AAMAS 2020), 2020
    pdf  bib 

    • 2019

  • Selecting Compliant Agents for Opt-in Micro-Tolling.
    Josiah P. Hanna, Guni Sharon, Steve D. Boyles, and Peter Stone
    In the Proceedings of the 33rd AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-19), 2019
    pdf  bib 

  • Multi-robot planning with conflicts and synergies.
    Yuqian Jiang, Harel Yedidsion, Shiqi Zhang, Guni Sharon, and Peter Stone
    In Autonomous Robots, 2019
    pdf  bib 

  • Marginal Cost Pricing with a Fixed Error Factor in Traffic Networks.
    Guni Sharon, Stephen D. Boyles, Shani Alkoby, and Peter Stone
    In the Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2019), 2019
    pdf  bib 

    • 2018

  • Smart Transport for Cities & Nations: The Rise of Self-Driving & Connected Vehicles.
    Kara Kockelman and Stephen D. Boyles
    The University of Texas at Austin, ISBN-10: 0692121501, ISBN-13: 978-0692121504, 2018
    pdf  hard-copy 
    Chapter 9: Traffic Models for Automated Vehicles.
    Michael W. Levin, Guni Sharon, Stephen D. Boyles, Michael Albert, Josiah P. Hanna, Peter Stone, Rahul Patel, Hagen Fritz, Tianxin Lee, Jun Liu, Aqshems Nichols, Kara Kockelman.
    Chapter 11: Application of Traffic Models.
    Michael W. Levin, Guni Sharon, Stephen D. Boyles, Michael Albert, Josiah P. Hanna, Peter Stone, Rahul Patel, Hagen Fritz, Tianxin Lee, Jun Liu, Aqshems Nichols, Kara Kockelman.
    Chapter 12: Implementation of Dynamic Micro-Tolling.
    Michael W. Levin, Guni Sharon, Stephen D. Boyles, Michael Albert, Josiah P. Hanna, Peter Stone, Rahul Patel, Hagen Fritz, Tianxin Lee.

  • Enhanced Delta-tolling: Traffic Optimization via Policy Gradient Reinforcement Learning.
    Hamid Mirzaei, Guni Sharon, Stephen D. Boyles, Tony Givargis, and Peter Stone
    In the Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC-18), 2018
    pdf  bib 

  • Traffic Optimization for a Mixture of Self-interested and Compliant Agents.
    Guni Sharon, Michael Albert, Tarun Rambha, Stephen Boyles and Peter Stone
    In the Proceedings of the 32nd AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-18), 2018
    pdf  bib 

  • DyETC: Dynamic Electronic Toll Collection for Traffic Congestion Alleviation.
    Haipeng Chen, Bo An, Guni Sharon, Josiah P. Hanna and Peter Stone
    In the Proceedings of the 32nd AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-18), 2018
    pdf  bib 

    • 2017

  • Network-wide Adaptive Tolling for Connected and Automated Vehicles.
    Guni Sharon, Michael W. Levin, Josiah P. Hanna, Tarun Rambha, Stephen D. Boyles and Peter Stone
    In Transportation Research Part C, September, 2017
    pdf  bib 

  • MM: A Bidirectional Search Algorithm That Is Guaranteed to Meet in the Middle.
    Robert C. Holte, Ariel Felner, Guni Sharon, Nathan R. Sturtevant, and Jingwei Chen
    In Artificial Intelligence, 252:232--266, 2017
    Preliminary version appeared in the Proceedings of the 30th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-16)

    Awarded best paper award in AAAI 2016

    pdf-AIJ17  bib-AIJ17 
    pdf-AAAI16  bib-AAAI16 

  • Multirobot symbolic planning under temporal uncertainty.
    Shiqi Zhang, Yuqian Jiang, Guni Sharon, and Peter Stone
    In the Proceedings of the 16th Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (AAMAS 17), 2017
    pdf  bib 

  • Search-Based Optimal Solvers for the Multi-Agent Pathfinding Problem: Summary and Challenges.
    Ariel Felner, Stern Roni, Eyal Shimony, Eli Boyarski, Meir Goldenerg, Guni Sharon, Nathan R. Sturtevant, Glenn Wagner, and Pavel Surynek
    In the Proceedings of the 10th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SOCS 17), 2017
    pdf  bib 

  • Real-time Adaptive Tolling Scheme for Optimized Social Welfare in Traffic Networks.
    Guni Sharon, Josiah P. Hanna, Tarun Rambha, Michael W. Levin, Michael Albert, Stephen D. Boyles, and Peter Stone
    In the Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2017), 2017
    pdf  bib 

  • An Assessment of Autonomous Vehicles: Traffic Impacts and Infrastructure Needs .
    Dr. Kara Kockelman, Dr. Stephen Boyles, Dr. Peter Stone, Dr. Dan Fagnant, Rahul Patel, Michael W. Levin, Dr. Guni Sharon, Michele Simoni, Dr. Michael Albert, Hagen Fritz, Rebecca Hutchinson, Prateek Bansal, Gleb Domnenko, Pavle Bujanovic, Bumsik Kim, Elham Pourrahmani, Sudesh Agrawal, Tianxin Li, Josiah Hanna, Aqshems Nichols, and Dr. Jia Li
    The University of Texas at Austin Center for Transportation Research., 2017
    pdf  bib 

  • Bringing Smart Transport to Texans: Ensuring the Benefits of a Connected and Autonomous Transport System in Texas.
    Dr. Kara Kockelman, Dr. Stephen Boyles, Paul Avery, Dr. Christian Claudel, Lisa Loftus-Otway, Dr. Daniel Fagnant, Prateek Bansal, Michael W. Levin, Dr. Yong Zhao, Dr. Jun Liu, Lewis Clements, Wendy Wagner, Dr. Duncan Stewart, Dr. Guni Sharon, Dr. Michael Albert, Dr. Peter Stone, Josiah Hanna, Rahul Patel, Hagen Fritz, Tejas Choudhary, Tianxin Li, Aqshems Nichols, Kapil Sharma, and Michele Simoni
    The University of Texas at Austin Center for Transportation Research., 2017
    pdf  bib 

    • 2016

  • Multi-Agent Path Finding with Payload Transfers and the Package-Exchange Robot-Routing Problem.
    Hang Ma, Craig Tovey, Guni Sharon, T. K. Satish Kumar, and Sven Koenig
    In the Proceedings of the 30th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-16), 2016
    pdf  bib 

  • An Improved Priority Function for Bidirectional Heuristic Search.
    Guni Sharon, Robert C. Holte, Ariel Felner, and Nathan R. Sturtevant
    In the Proceedings of the 9th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SOCS-16), 2016
    pdf  bib 

    • 2015

  • Conflict-based search for optimal multi-agent pathfinding.
    Guni Sharon, Roni Stern, Ariel Felner, and Nathan R. Sturtevant
    In Artificial Intelligence 219 (2015): 40-66., 2015
    Preliminary version appeared in the Proceedings of the 26th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-12)
    pdf-AIJ15  bib-AIJ15 
    pdf-AAAI12  bib-AAAI12 

  • ICBS Improved Conflict-based Search algorithm for Multi-Agent Pathfinding.
    Eli Boyarski, Ariel Felner, Guni Sharon, and Roni Stern
    In the Proceedings of the 24th International Joint Conference (IJCAI 15), 2015
    pdf  bib 

  • Multi-Agent Pathfinding as a Combinatorial Auction.
    Ofra Amir, Guni Sharon, and Roni Stern
    In the Proceedings of the 29th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-15), 2015
    pdf  bib 

  • Don't Split, try to Work It Out: Bypassing Conflicts in Multi-Agent Pathfinding.
    Eli Boyarski, Ariel Felner, Guni Sharon, and Roni Stern
    In the Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 15), 2015
    pdf  bib 

    • 2014

  • Suboptimal variants of the conflict-based search algorithm for the multi-agent pathfinding problem.
    Max Barer, Guni Sharon, Roni Stern, and Ariel Felner
    In the Proceedings of the 7th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SOCS 14), 2014
    pdf  bib 

  • Enhanced Partial Expansion A*.
    Meir Goldenberg, Ariel Felner, Roni Stern, Guni Sharon, Nathan R Sturtevant, Robert C Holte, Jonathan Schaeffer
    In Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research 50 (2014) 141-187, 2014
    pdf  bib 

  • Exponential deepening A* for real-time agent-centered search.
    Guni Sharon, Ariel Felner, and Nathan Sturtevant
    In the Proceedings of the 28th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-14), 2014
    pdf  bib 

    • 2013

  • The Increasing Cost Tree Search for Optimal Multi-agent Pathfinding.
    Guni Sharon, Roni Stern, Meir Goldenberg, and Ariel Felner
    In Artificial Intelligence 195 (2013): 470-495., 2013
    Preliminary version appeared in the Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-2011)
    pdf-AIJ13  bib-AIJ13 
    pdf-IJCAI11  bib-AIJ13 

  • Online Detection of Dead States in Real-Time Agent- Centered Search.
    Guni Sharon, Ariel Felner, Nathan Sturtevant
    In the Proceedings of the 5th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SOCS 13), 2013
    pdf  bib 

    • 2012

  • Meta-Agent Conflict-Based Search for Optimal Multi-Agent Path Finding.
    Guni Sharon, Roni Stern, Ariel Felner, Nathan R Sturtevant
    In the Proceedings of the 4th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SOCS 12), 2012

    Awarded best paper in SOCS 2012

    pdf  bib 

  • Partial-Expansion A* with Selective Node Generation.
    Ariel Felner, Meir Goldenberg, Guni Sharon, Roni Stern, Tal Beja, Nathan R Sturtevant, Jonathan Schaeffer, Robert Holte
    In the Proceedings of the 26th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-12), 2012
    pdf  bib 

    • 2011

  • Pruning Techniques for the Increasing Cost Tree Search for Optimal Multi-Agent Pathfinding.
    Guni Sharon, Roni Stern, Meir Goldenberg, and Ariel Felner
    In the Proceedings of the 3ed Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SOCS 11), 2011
    pdf  bib 


  • PhD Thesis: Novel Search Techniques for Path Finding in Complex Environment.
    Guni Sharon
    In PhD thesis, Information Systems Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheba, Israel., 2016
    pdf  bib 

Biography

Dr. Guni Sharon is an assistant professor in the department of computer science and engineering (CSE) at Texas A&M University. He received his doctoral, master’s and bachelor’s degrees in information systems engineering from Ben-Gurion University. Dr. Sharon has strong research record in artificial intelligence. Specifically, reinforcement learning, combinatorial search, multiagent route assignment, game theory, flow and convex optimization, and multiagent modeling and simulation. He was recognized on his contributions to these disciplines by receiving the Outstanding Paper Award from the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and the Prominent Paper Award from the journal of Artificial Intelligence (AIJ). Dr. Sharon gained vast knowledge and experience in utilizing his theoretical foundations towards traffic management and traffic optimization application. Nonetheless, he sees himself as part of the AI community where his work is highly cited. Dr. Sharon strives to further the impact of his applicable expertise for solving real-life problems while simultaneously continuing to make theoretical advances that justify the proposed solutions. As an educator, Dr. Sharon is committed to training engineers who are highly capable of applying advanced, theoretical AI approaches to real-life applications while instilling them with the responsibility of shaping the technology to be safe and sustainable. Dr. Sharon's curriculum vitae is avilable here.


High-level Time Line

2018 onward

Assistant professor

Texas A&M University, Computer Science and Engineering. Develop and provide academic courses at the graduate and undergraduate levels. Guide, lead and mentor students during classes and research projects. Create, innovate and implement career-enhancement programs and activities. Serve and support functional activities of departmental committees.

2015-2018

Postdoc

University of Texas at Austin, Computer Science. Member in TxDOT 6838 Project titled “Bringing smart transport to Texans: ensuring the benefits of a connected and autonomous transport system in Texas”. Part of a research collaboration between UT-Austin and Toyota, InfoTechnology Center Co., Ltd. Coordinating and leading a bi-weekly project meeting on traffic management including 2 faculty members, 3 post-docs and 2 Ph.D. students.

2011 - 2015

Ph.D.

Ben-Gurion University, Information Systems Engineering; Dean award for outstanding Ph.D student. Thesis title “Novel Search Techniques for Path Finding in Complex Environment”. Awarded the "Darom" Graduate Research Scholarship.

2010 - 2015

Teaching fellow

Ben-Gurion University. Led discussions in a class of up to 30 students. Prepared course material including laboratory experiments, lectures, exams, homework, and practice problems. TA for the following courses: Introduction to Operation Systems, Operations Research, Introduction to A.I., Automata and computability Theory.

2010 - 2012

M.Sc.

Ben-Gurion University, Information Systems Engineering; graduation with Honors. Thesis title “Optimal Multiagent Pathfinding”. Awarded the Harbor Foundation Graduate Research Scholarship.

2007 - 2011

B.Sc.

Ben-Gurion University, Information Systems Engineering; graduation with Honors. Winner of the South African Zionist Federation Scholarship.

2003 - 2006

Military Service

Israeli Defense Force; Head of the operations department of an artillery brigade. supervised two soldiers.

Joining my group

Thank you for your interest in joining my research group. If you are interested in joining my research group, please read and follow the guidelines specified in my lab's webpage: http://faculty.cse.tamu.edu/guni/pistar/joining.html


Address

Department of Computer Science and Engineering, H. R. Bright Building, 3112 TAMU, 710 Ross St, College Station, TX 77843

E-Mail

guni (at) tamu (dot) edu

Phone

+(1) 979 845 5498














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