Afzal Upal

Afzal Upal is a writer and a cognitive scientist with contributions to cognitive science of religion,[1] machine learning for planning,[2][3] and agent-based social simulation.[4]

Birth and education

For his PhD research, he worked under the supervision of Professor Renee Elio at the University of Alberta. In December 1999, he successfully defended his thesis on "Learning to Improve the Quality of Plans Produced by Partial-order Planners".[5]

Leadership

He was chair of the First International Workshop on Cognition and Culture, the 14th Annual Conference of the North American Association for Computational, Social, and Organizational Sciences, the AAAI-06 Workshop on Cognitive Modeling and Agent-based Social Simulation,[6]

Professional career

In July 1999, Upal was hired as a tenure-track assistant professor of computer science at Dalhousie University's new Faculty of Computer Science. In 2001, he moved to Information Extraction & Transport (IET) Inc. to work as a senior scientist on various DARPA sponsored projects to develop Bayesian network based decision-aid systems. In July 2003, he joined the University of Toledo's Electrical Engineering & Computer Science Department as a tenure track assistant professor to teach computer science. Since 2008, he has been working as a defence scientist at Defence R & D Canada's Toronto Research Centre.[7]

Scientific contributions

He has contributed to research areas of Cognition & Culture and Cognitive science of religion through the development of the Context-based model of minimal counterintuiveness.[8][9] In a 2005 article in the Journal of Cognition and Culture, he proposed a cognitive science of new religious movements.[10] Upal has also pioneered a knowledge-rich agent-based social simulation technique for simulating the development of complex cultural beliefs.[11]

Bibliography

  1. ↑ Y. Russell & F. Gobet (2013) What is Counterintuitive? Religious Cognition and Natural Expectation, Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 4(4), 715-749.
  2. ↑ Fern, Alan. "Learning for Planning". Learning for Planning: Resources, Papers, and Researchers. University of Oregon. Retrieved 2014-02-07.
  3. ↑ M. A. Upal. (2005) Learning to improve plan quality, Computational Intelligence Journal, 21(4), 440-461.
  4. ↑ M. A. Upal (2014) Three practical lessons from the science of influence operations and message design, Canadian Military Journal, 14(2), 53-58
  5. ↑ Upal, M. Afzal. "Learning to improve quality of the plans produced by partial-order planners" (PDF). Collections Canada. Government of Canada. Retrieved 2014-02-07.
  6. ↑ M. A. Upal & R. Sun (editors) Cognitive Modeling and Agent-based Social Simulation: Papers from the AAAI-06 Workshop (ISBN 978-1-57735-284-6), Menlo Park, CA: AAAI Press, 2006.
  7. ↑ M. A. Upal (2014) Three practical lessons from the science of influence operations and message design, Canadian Military Journal, 14(2), 53-58
  8. ↑ M. A. Upal, L. Gonce, R. Tweney, and J. Slone (2007) Contextualizing counterintuitiveness: How context affects comprehension and memorability of counterintuitive concepts, Cognitive Science, 31(3), 415-439.
  9. ↑ M. A. Upal (2011) From Individual to Social Counterintuitiveness: How layers of innovation weave together to form tapestries of human cultures, Mind and Society, 10(1), 79-96.
  10. ↑ M. A. Upal. (2005) Towards A Cognitive Science of New Religious Movements, Journal of Cognition and Culture, 5(2), 214-239
  11. ↑ M. A. Upal (2005) Simulating the Emergence of New Religious Movements, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 8(1)
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