Dr. Barry G. Silverman
Barry
is Professor of Engineering (ESE), Medicine, and Wharton (OPIM) at the
University of Pennsylvania where he is also Director of the Ackoff
Collaboratory for Advancement of the Systems Approach (ACASA) and a
core
faculty member of the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science, and
The
Center for Human Modeling and Simulation. He holds the BSE (’75), MSE
(’77) and
PhD (also ’77) all from the University of Pennsylvania, is a Fellow of
IEEE,
AAAS, and the Washington Acad. of Science, and sits on the board of
several
organizations and journals in the intelligent systems fields. The focus
of his
research has largely been on aesthetic and cognitive engineering of
embedded
game-theoretic agents that can help humans improve their learning,
performance,
and systems thinking in task-environments. Over the years, his lab has
produced
or is in the process of creating patient and human physiology
simulations; a
terrorist campaign and crowd simulator; numerous autonomous and
emergent agent
tools; several distributed, computer-mediated, human-to-human
collaborative
systems; 3 role playing games (RPGs); and the AESOP interactive fiction
game
generator. Some of these are: (1) Finished in 1992, Gericase© is for
helping
doctors to learn to attend to psycho-social (as well as biomedical)
issues of
terminally ill patients they encounter in a simulated ward. (2)
Finished in
2003 for NIH, Heart Sense Game© is an interactive fiction where you
solve a
crime but must rescue several potential allies (NPCs) from health
mishaps if
you are to get the clues you need to defeat the villain, free the
hostage, and
find romance. (3) Barry’s lab has spent the past six years converting
Performance Moderator Functions (PMFs) from the literature (exertion,
fatigue, stress,
emotion, judgment, bounded rationality, cultural standards, etc.) into
an
integrated mind-body model for improving the realism of agents for use
in
various games/simulators of terrorists, a car buying family, soccer
hooligans,
crowd protesters, and the like. This model, called PMFserv© received 4
Outstanding Paper Awards at the Behavior Representation in Modeling
&
Simulation (BRIMS) Annual Conference the past few years, and in 2003 it
was
embedded within Unreal Tournament to drive the behavior of Somalian
crowds and
opponents in a Mogadishu recreation (first person shooter) and crowd
control
simulation. And, (4) From 2003-2006, PMFserv was adapted to provide the
AI/Affect of various world leaders for a diplomacy simulator and role
playing
game called Athena’s Prism©. Athena’s Prism allows players to try out
alternative competing hypotheses on how to influence leaders and
conflict
situations. Barry invented that RPG for the USG, has been granted the
rights,
and has spun a version into a commercial board game for family
entertainment.
As a result of all this work, Barry is also the author of over 120
articles, 12
books/proceedings, over 100 technical reports, 7 copyrighted software
systems,
a boardgame, and several research and teaching excellence awards.
Selected Relevant Publications
Silverman,
BG, Holmes, J, Kimmel, S., et al., “Modeling Emotion and Behavior in
Animated
Personas to Facilitate Human Behavior Change,” INFORMS
J. of HealthCare Management Science ,
Sept. 2001, 4/3, 213-228.
Weaver, R., Silverman, BG,
Shin, H, Dubois, R., “Performance Moderator Functions for
Modeling
Adversary Organizations in Asymmetric Conflicts,” 10th
Conf. On
CGF – renamed Behavioral Representation in Modeling & Simulation
(BRIMS),
SISO, May. 2001. (Winner Outstanding
Paper Award)
Johns, M, Silverman, BG,, “How
Emotion and Personality Effect the
Utility of Alternative Decisions: A Terrorist Target Selection Case
Study,” 10th
Conf. On CGFs and Behavioral Representation, SISO, May.
2001.
Silverman, BG, “Crowd Tipping,
Provocateurs, and the Emergence of Violence in Artificial Societies,” Proc. Adaptive Agents, Intelligence and Emergent Human
Organization:Wash DC: Natl
Acad of
Science, 9/01.
Silverman,
BG, Johns, M., et al., “Constructing Virtual Asymmetric Opponents from
Data and
Models in the Literature: Case of Crowd Rioting “,11th BRIMS,
SISO, May. 2002. (Winner Outstanding
Paper Award)
Cornwell, J., Silverman, BG, et
al., “A Demonstration of the PMF-Extraction Approach: Modeling The
Effects of
Sound on Crowd Behavior” 11th BRIMS, SISO, May.
2002. (Winner Outstanding Paper Award)
Silverman, BG, Johns, M, Weaver, R,
O’Brien, K,
Silverman, R, “Human Behavior Models
for Game-Theoretic Agents,” Cognitive Science Quarterly, v.2,
n.3-4,
Fall’02, pp. 273-301.
Silverman, BG, Johns, M, Weaver,
R., et al. " Authoring Edutainment Stories for Online Players
(AESOP): Introducing Gameplay into Interactive Dramas," Internat’l
Conf.Virtual Storytelling, Toulouse: Springer, Nov 2003.
Silverman, BG, “Human
Performance Simulation”, Ch.9 in J.Ness, D.Ritzer, V.Tepe (eds.), The
Science and Simulation of Human Performance, NY: Elsevier, Jan.2005.
Silverman, BG, Bharathy, G. (May 2005),“Modeling the Personality & Cognition of Leaders,” in 14th
Conf
on Behavioral Representations In Modeling and Simulation, SISO (www.sisostds.org), May’05.
Silverman, BG, Rees, R., Toth,
J, et al. (2005, May), “Athena’s Prism—A Diplomatic Strategy Role
Playing
Simulation for Generating Ideas and Exploring Alternatives,” in Proc.
of
First Internat’l Conf on
Intelligence Analysis,
MacLean, VA:
Mitre.
Silverman, BG, Johns, M,
Cornwell, J, O’Brien, K, “Human Behavior Models for Agents in
Simulators and
Games: Part I – Enabling Science with PMFserv,” PRESENCE, April
2006,
15:2, 139-162.
Silverman, BG, Bharathy, G,
Cornwell, J, O’Brien, K, “Human Behavior Models for Agents in
Simulators and
Games: Part II – Gamebots for a Foreign Culture,” PRESENCE,
April, 2006,
15:2,163-185.
Silverman, BG, Johns, M, Weaver,
R., et al., “Gameplay, Interactive Drama, and Training: case of the
Heart Sense
Game”, PRESENCE, Feb 2007, 16:1.