Stuart Russell
Stuart Russell studies how intelligent systems reason, learn and act. He moved from a physics degree at Oxford to a computer science doctorate at Stanford, then joined Berkeley in 1986. With Peter Norvig, he wrote Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, which organizes the field for students through topics such as search, probability and learning. Russell later developed research on AI systems that remain uncertain about human goals. With Dylan Hadfield-Menell, Anca Dragan and Pieter Abbeel, he proposed cooperative inverse reinforcement learning. His 2019 book Human Compatible brought the control problem to public readers. He directs Berkeley’s Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence. He is a professor emeritus and professor in the graduate school at Berkeley.
- Works
- 333
- Citations
- 27,894
- h-index
- 65
Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 14 October 2026.
Timeline
-
1982–1986
Moving from physics to computer science
Completed his Stanford doctorate and joined Berkeley in 1986.
-
1995
Writing an AI textbook with Norvig
Published Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach with Peter Norvig.
-
2016
Studying cooperation over uncertain goals
Coauthored cooperative inverse reinforcement learning, where a robot learns a human partner’s preferences.
-
2019
Taking the control problem to public readers
Published Human Compatible and explained the problem of specifying human goals.
-
2026
Continuing through research and teaching
He is Berkeley professor emeritus and professor in the graduate school, and leads CHAI.
Sources and credits
Photo: Unknown author Unknown author, via Wikimedia Commons. License: CC BY-SA 3.0. Source: commons.wikimedia.org. Cropped to a square and resized. Ask us to remove or replace this photo.
