Dr. Colleen (McCarthy) van Lent is originally from Ashtabula Ohio. She received her BS in computer science from Kent State University in 1996 and her PhD from the University of Pittsburgh in 2002. At Pittsburgh she was part of the Nursebot project, a collaborative effort between the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University and University of Michigan to develop a robotic assistant for the elderly. Her doctoral work was in the use of planning techniques to develop a cognitive orthotic onboard the robotic platform. She completed her final two years of thesis work at the Artificial Intelligence Lab at University of Michigan. This is also where she met her husband Mike van Lent, a researcher at ICT/USC.
Dr van Lent is now an Associate Professor in the Computer Engineering and Computer Science Department at California State University Long Beach, where she teaches introductory programming courses, undergraduate and graduate courses in artificial intelligence, and courses in the new Computer Science Minor program such as Internet Applications and Robotics.
Her other work experience includes the National Security Agency, Naval Research Lab, and NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Her awards include a National Physical Sciences Consortium Fellowship (1996-2002), a CSULB Enhancing Educational Effectiveness Award (2003), a NASA Summer Faculty Fellowship (2004), and CSULB SCAC research awards (2006 & 2007). In 2007 she was nominated by the Colleege of Engineering for the Outstanding Professor Award. She is currently the chair of the AAAI Doctoral Consortium in Chicago, IL.
Colleen and Mike have a son Christopher and a daughter Catherine.
