PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Sandip Sen

Sandip Sen is a computer scientist at the University of Tulsa whose research on intelligent agents and multiagent systems asks how autonomous agents learn to coordinate and form social norms. He earned a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan in 1993 under Edmund Durfee and received an NSF CAREER award in 1997, the first for a Tulsa professor. His 1994 AAAI paper with Mahendra Sekaran and John Hale applied reinforcement learning to agents pushing a block, and his 2007 IJCAI paper with Stéphane Airiau modeled norms emerging through social learning. He was program co-chair of the Autonomous Agents conference in 2001, General Co-Chair of AAMAS in 2010, an elected AAAI Senior Member in 2014, and a recipient of Tulsa's lifetime Outstanding Researcher Award in 2023. He is a professor in the Tandy School of Computer Science and leads the MASTERS research group.

Now at
University of Tulsa
Born
1964
Works
345
Citations
4,928
h-index
37
Badges

Years link to their sources. Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 1986–1993

    Ph.D. at Michigan under Durfee

    He earns a B.E. in electronics and telecommunication engineering from Jadavpur University in 1986 and an M.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Alabama in 1988. In 1993, he completes a Ph.D. in computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with the dissertation "Predicting Tradeoffs in Contract-Based Distributed Scheduling" under Edmund Durfee.

  2. 1994

    Coordination by reinforcement learning

    In 1994, he coauthors "Learning to Coordinate Without Sharing Information" with Mahendra Sekaran and John Hale at AAAI. The paper applies reinforcement learning to a block pushing problem, where agents learn complementary policies without any knowledge about each other.

  3. 1997

    An NSF CAREER award

    At the University of Tulsa, he receives the National Science Foundation CAREER award in 1997, the first for a Tulsa professor.

  4. 2001–2010

    Chairing AGENTS-01 and AAMAS-2010

    In 2001, he is program co-chair of the Fifth International Conference on Autonomous Agents in Montreal. In 2010, he is General Co-Chair of the Ninth International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, together with Michael Luck.

  5. 2007

    Norms through social learning

    In 2007, he and Stéphane Airiau present "Emergence of Norms Through Social Learning" at IJCAI. Their model has agents learn from repeated stage-game interactions with many partners, and it asks whether a whole population converges to a consistent norm.

  6. 2014

    AAAI Senior Member

    In 2014, he is elected a Senior Member of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.

  7. 2023

    Lifetime Outstanding Researcher Award

    The University of Tulsa gives him its Outstanding Researcher Award in 2023, a lifetime distinction, as he completes 30 years of teaching, service and research there. By then he has authored about 350 peer-reviewed papers with students in his multiagent systems lab and with collaborators.

  8. As of October 2026

    Professor at the University of Tulsa

    He is a professor in the Tandy School of Computer Science at the University of Tulsa, with research interests in artificial intelligence, intelligent agents, machine learning and evolutionary computation. He leads the Multi-agent Systems Research Group (MASTERS), also called the DAI-Hards.

Career

  1. Since 1994University of TulsaProfessor

Education

  1. 1993University of MichiganPh.D.
  2. 1988University of AlabamaM.S.
  3. 1986Jadavpur UniversityB.E.

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

Most-cited works

  1. Learning to coordinate without sharing information1994 · 323 citations
  2. Emergence of norms through social learning2007 · International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence · 282 citations
  3. Evolving behavioral strategies in predators and prey1996 · Lecture notes in computer science · 182 citations
  4. Learning in multiagent systems1999 · 158 citations
  5. Searching for optimal coalition structures2002 · International Conference on Multi Agent Systems · 146 citations

From OpenAlex, as of 21 October 2026.

  1. Universities had a net outflow of 2,068 moves in AI careersIncludes University of Michigan. Our estimates of career flows and median h-index across universities and companies in AI, including the role of joint appointments and earlier academic jobs.
  2. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes University of Michigan. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  3. Universities keep AI researchers for a median of 6 years, compared with 2 years at frontier labsIncludes University of Michigan. Across 15,811 dated work stays (6,529 people), median role tenure runs from 6 years at universities to 2 years at frontier labs. We compare all five organization types, starting decades from the 1970s to the 2020s, and the organizations that keep people longest.
  4. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes University of Michigan. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. Sandip Sen, Ph.D. - The University of Tulsa utulsa.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  2. Sandip Sen - The Mathematics Genealogy Project mathgenealogy.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  3. Learning to Coordinate Without Sharing Information | ML Anthology mlanthology.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  4. Outstanding Researchers 2023 - The University of Tulsa utulsa.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  5. Sandip Sen's Home Page sandip.ens.utulsa.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  6. AAMAS 2010 ifaamas.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  7. Emergence of Norms Through Social Learning | ML Anthology mlanthology.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  8. Multi-agent Systems Research Group (MASTERS) – at The University of Tulsa sites.utulsa.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.