Tom Mitchell Named Carnegie Mellon's Fredkin Professor of AI and Learning

Tom M. Mitchell, son of Robert and Louise Mitchell of McFadden Road in Apalachin, Carnegie Mellon University professor of computer science and robotics, and director of the Center for Automated Learning and Discovery (CALD) in the School of Computer Science (SCS), has been named the Fredkin Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Learning in SCS.

Mitchell is best known for his work on machine learning, where he has developed algorithms that allow computers to automatically improve with experience, software that learns to customize to its users, robots that automatically learn about their environment and web browsers that learn to extract information from hypertext. He is the author of the widely used textbook Machine Learning.

Mitchell is a graduate of Vestal Central High School and earned his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from MIT in 1973. He received master's and doctors degrees from Stanford University in the same field in 1975 and 1979, respectively. Prior to joining the Carnegie Mellon faculty in 1986, he taught at Rutgers University.

Mitchell, his wife Jean, and their daughters, Shannon and Meghan, live in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania.