Oral History Interview with Allen R. Hanson

Abstract

This interview was conducted by CBI for CS&E in conjunction with the 50th Anniversary of the University of Minnesota Computer Science Department (now Computer Science and Engineering, CS&E). Professor Hanson briefly discusses his early education and interests through his graduate education completing his doctorate at Cornell (dissertation was on games and prediction problems). Most of the interview focuses on his career and he was one of the early faculty members of the newly formed Computer Science Department at the University of Minnesota. He discusses the early department, interaction, and teaching, and research. His research focused heavily on vision and computing, pattern recognition, and AI. He partnered on early research with University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Ed Riseman and later left University of Minnesota to join the CS faculty of UMass and lead the lab in this collaboration. Among other topics, he outlines his evolving research, applications in medicine, autonomous vehicles and other areas, as well as reflects on a range of issues on research funding, and computing and society. Finally, he briefly discusses Applied Imaging, Dataviews and concurrent enterprises he led/helped to lead.