enjamin Kuipers holds an endowed Professorship in Computer Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. He investigates the representation of commonsense and expert knowledge, with particular emphasis on the effective use of incomplete knowledge. He received his B.A. from Swarthmore College, and his Ph.D. from MIT. He has held research or faculty appointments at MIT, Tufts University, and the University of Texas. His research accomplishments include developing the TOUR model of spatial knowledge in the cognitive map, the QSIM algorithm for qualitative simulation, theAlgernon system for knowledge representation, and the Spatial Semantic Hierarchy model of knowledge for robot exploration and mapping.