Barbara Hayes-Roth

Barbara (Bella) Hayes-Roth is an American computer scientist and psychologist whose research in artificial intelligence includes work on knowledge acquisition, automated planning and scheduling, spatial cognition, the blackboard system, real-time computing, adaptation, and intelligent behavior in interactive storytelling. She was a senior research scientist and lecturer in computer science at Stanford University 1982–2002. She holds two patents on interactive characters and founded Extempo Systems, Inc.

Education and career Hayes-Roth majored in psychology at Boston University, graduating magna cum laude in 1971. She went to the University of Michigan for graduate study in psychology, earning a master's degree in 1973 and completing her Ph.D. in 1974. Her dissertation, Interactions in the Acquisition and Utilization of Structured Knowledge, was supervised by Robert Bjork.

She became a researcher at Bell Laboratories from 1974 to 1976, and at the RAND Corporation from 1976 to 1982, also holding a position as consulting assistant professor in psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She became a senior research scientist and lecturer at Stanford in 1982.

Selected publications

Fiction writing In addition to her many publications as a computer science researcher, Hayes-Roth is working on a fiction novel, The Ravishing Monica B. Reddy. An excerpt from the novel, Devesh Reddy, D-Day, was published in a 2020 issue of Chicago Quarterly Review. The novel is set in early 21st century Silicon Valley. In the excerpt, the titular character, Monica B. Reddy, is an Oracle executive in her forties who has just left her home to meet with her boss. Due to sexual frustrations in the marriage, Monica's husband Devesh suspects she may be having an affair.

Recognition Hayes-Roth was named a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence in 1991.