Benjamin 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, the  Algernon system for knowledge representation, and the  Spatial Semantic Hierarchy model of knowledge for robot exploration and mapping. He has served as Department Chairman, and is a Fellow of AAAI and IEEE.