FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CombineNet Founder and Chief Technology Officer Receives Prestigious Awards for
Scientific Achievement
PITTSBURGH, PA—March 5, 2003
CombineNet, developer of the world's most advanced technology for solving real-world
business problems, is pleased to announce that its founder, chairman, and chief
technology officer, Tuomas Sandholm, PhD, has received two of the scientific community's
most prestigious awards: the Computers
and Thought Award, presented by the International Joint Conference on Artificial
Intelligence (IJCAI), and the Sloan Research Fellowship, presented by the Alfred P. Sloan
Foundation. Both awards recognize the accomplishments of promising scientists and
provide funding to encourage and advance their research efforts.
As the recipient of the 2003 IJCAI Computers and Thought Award, Dr. Sandholm received
a certificate of merit, as well as $2,000, and will be a featured lecturer during
the 2003 IJCAI Conference in Acapulco, Mexico, August 9-15. The award is presented
every two years to a prominent young scientist (under the age of 35) working in
the field of artificial intelligence, which encompasses such areas as robotics,
vision, natural language processing, reasoning, speech recognition, game playing,
etc. First presented in 1971 to Terry Winograd, the award has recognized the efforts
of 17 leading scientists since then.
As a 2003 Sloan Research Fellow, Dr. Sandholm receives a two-year grant totaling
$40,000 given directly to Carnegie Mellon University for equipment, technical assistance,
professional travel, trainee support, or any other activity directly related to
Dr. Sandholm's research.
Established in 1955, Sloan Research Fellowships are intended to stimulate scientific
research with the most promise of making fundamental contributions to new knowledge
in physics, chemistry, mathematics, neuroscience, economics, computer science, and
in 2002, computational and evolutionary molecular biology.
Twenty-six Sloan Fellowship recipients have gone on to win the Nobel Prize.
Nominees are selected on the basis of strong evidence of their independent creativityone
of the most important considerations in the review processas seen in submitted publications
and supporting letters. The Sloan Foundation currently awards 112 fellowships each
year, annually allocating $4.5 million as follows: 23 for physics, 23 for chemistry,
20 for mathematics, 16 for neuroscience, 16 for computer science, 8 for economics,
and 8 for computational and evolutionary molecular biology.
Dr. Sandholm is a globally renowned researcher in the fields of computer science
and applied mathematics, and leads CombineNet's research team in Pittsburgh. He
is a Professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University.
He received his PhD and MS degrees in computer science from the University of Massachusetts
at Amherst, and an MS (BS included) with distinction in Industrial Engineering and
Management Science from the Helsinki University of Technology in Finland. He has
published more than 130 technical papers on electronic commerce, game theory, artificial
intelligence, multi-agent systems, auctions, automated negotiation and contracting,
coalition formation, bounded rationality, machine learning, constraint satisfaction,
and combinatorial optimization.
In addition to these honors, Dr. Sandholm has received several prestigious academic
awards including the 2001 ACM Autonomous Agents Research Award and the 1997 National
Science Foundation Career Award.
About CombineNet
CombineNet, the advanced sourcing technology company, helps companies achieve the absolute best value and lowest total cost of ownership for goods and services. CombineNet's Advanced Sourcing Application Platform enables companies to engage in Expressive Commerce™, the strategic sourcing initiative that allows buyers and sellers to communicate supply and demand more expressively, collaboratively and strategically. The result is a win-win for both buyer and supplier, where greater innovation and efficiency are driven into the supply chain. CombineNet's ASAP consistently produces 10, 15, even 20 percent greater actual cost savings than other e-sourcing solutions, and has delivered more than 45x ROI for the largest businesses in the world including General Mills, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, Siemens and others. For more information, visit www.combinenet.com.
Media Contacts:
Greg Holt
CombineNet Inc.
Director of Marketing
Phone: 412.471.8200
gholt@combinenet.com