Bart Selman
Dutch-American computer scientist

Bart Selman is a Dutch-American professor of computer science at Cornell University. He is also co-founder and principal investigator of the Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence (CHAI) at the University of California, Berkeley, led by Stuart J. Russell, and co-chair of the Computing Community Consortium's 20-year roadmap for AI research. In 2020-2022, he was the president of AAAI.
Education
Selman attended the Technical University of Delft, from where he received a master's degree in physics, graduating in 1983. He received his master's and PhD in computer science from the University of Toronto in 1985 and 1991 respectively.
Career
Selman has been working at AT&T Bell Laboratories before becoming professor of computer science at Cornell University.
His research areas include tractable inference, knowledge representation, stochastic search methods, theory approximation, knowledge compilation, planning, default reasoning, satisfiability solvers like WalkSAT, and connections between computer science and statistical physics, namely phase transition phenomena.
Selman co-founded in 2016 an AI alignment research organization named Center for Human-Compatible AI (CHAI), and became one of its principal investigators. His role in CHAI and some of his recent lectures notably focus on the safety and ethical aspects of advanced artificial intelligence.
Honors and awards
Selman has received six Best Paper Awards for his work. He also received the Cornell Stephen Miles Excellence in Teaching Award, the Cornell Outstanding Educator Award, a National Science Foundation Career Award, and an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Bart Selman” is dutch-American computer scientist. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Bart, Selman and Dutch-American, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “dutch-American computer scientist” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4865105. VIAF identifies the subject as 53312277. The Library of Congress control number is n90661925. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2020, 2022, 1983 and 1985.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
- Establishing names and roles
- Building a first chronology
- Locating cited institutions
Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Bart Selman”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Bart Selman primary sources, Bart Selman archive and Bart research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Bart Selman”?
- Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
- How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Bart Selman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.