SwiftFile

About the technology author(s):

Richard Segal

Richard Segal has a PhD in computer science from the University of Washington. He works at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center, and his research interests include text classification, intelligent software agents, and application of massive search to data mining. Dr. Segal is currently working on advanced technologies for e-mail and is part of an IBM team developing a large-scale "Information Economy" of software agents in which agents buy and sell information on the Internet.

Jeffrey O. Kephart manages the Agents and Emergent Phenomena group at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center. He studied electrical engineering and physics at Princeton University and Stanford University. After a post-doctoral stint at Xerox PARC, he joined IBM Research in 1990. Dr. Kephart's primary research interest is the exploration and exploitation of analogies between large-scale computer systems and large-scale natural systems such as ecologies and economies. He has investigated a number of theoretical and practical issues relating to computer viruses, and he led the development of some novel, anti-virus technologies, including a neural net virus detector and an immune system for cyberspace. His work has been cited or published in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, IEEE Spectrum, and Scientific American. Recently, Dr. Kephart has led IBM's Information Economy research effort, which is aimed at understanding and designing the future of software agents and electronic commerce. His other research interests include emergent phenomena in computer networks and intelligent mail agents.