Sara Bernardini
Sara is a professor of Artificial Intelligence in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford and a Tutorial Fellow in Computer Science at Mansfield’s College.
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​Her research is in decision-making for intelligent autonomous systems. She is a world-leading expert in automated planning, which involves equipping artificial agents with the ability to synthesise plans to reach specific goals.
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Sara is a member of the Executive Council of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), where she leads the Partnership Committee, the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS), and the AI Scientific Organizations Coordinating Council (AISOCC).
Publications
My research has been regularly published in top-ranked AI and robotics journals, for example, the Artificial Intelligence Journal, the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, and IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, and conferences, such as AAAI, IJCAI, AAMAS, ICAPS and KR. My paper "Through the Lens of Sequence Submodularity" received the ICAPS-2020 Best Paper Honorable Mention Award.
Projects
At the heart of Sara’s research is the desire to combine theoretical and technical advancements in AI with the demands of the real world. Over the past few years, she has led several projects on intelligent autonomous systems for extreme environments. She has worked closely with industry and stakeholders, ensuring her solutions are crucial to tackling end users’ practical problems. She has worked in several domains, such as space mission operations, nuclear decommissioning, mining, underwater missions, and offshore energy, leading several projects funded by Innovate UK, EPSRC, NERC, the Turing Institute, and the Leverhulme Trust.
Conference
Organisation
I am the co-chair of the Bridge Program at the 39th Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-25).
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Last year, I was the Program co-chair of ICAPS 2024, the flagship International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS). ICAPS is the flagship conference for research in automated planning and scheduling.
Editorial
Work
I am an associate editor of the Artificial Intelligence Journal and a guest editor of the Artificial Intelligence Journal Special Issue "Risk-Aware Autonomous Systems: Theory and Practice".
