Dr. Michael Fehling

 

Personal Data

 

1. Email: fehling@synergia.com

 

Education:

 

1. B.S. - June 1968 - Psychology and Mathematics (co majors), University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. IL.
2. Ph.D. – January 1973 - Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford CA.

 

Partial List of Awards:

 

1. Phi Kappa Phi Engineering Society – 1967
2. Phi Beta Kappa Academic Honorary Fraternity – 1967
3. Graduated Magna cum Laude and with Highest Distinction in Psychology, U. of Illinois, June, 1968
4. Numerous invitations as keynotes and plenary speaker at major international conferences in the fields of Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, and Computational Social Science.

 

Professional Appointments:

 

1. Assistant Professor of Psychology – Rutgers University, 1972 - 1978.
2. Professional Consultant to software r&d firms – Los Angeles , CA., 1978 – 1980.
3. Research Associate – U. of Southern California, Behavioral Technology Laboratory, 1980 – 1981.
4. Senior Research Associate – U. of Southern California – Information Sciences Institute, 1981 – 1983.
5. Director of R&D – Advanced Decision Systems – Mountain View, CA., 1983 – 1984.
6. Senior Scientist – Teknowledge, Inc., Palo Alto, CA. 1984 – 1985.
7. Principal Scientist – Rockwell International Science Center, Palo Alto and Thousand Oaks, CA. 1985 – 1988.
8. Associate Professor (Consulting) – Stanford University, Dept. of Engineering- Economic Systems, 1985 –1989.
9. Associate Professor (Research) – Stanford University, Dept. of EES and OR, 1989 – 2000.
10. CEO and Chief Scientist – Synergia LLC, Redwood City, CA, 1996 – present.

 

Other Professional Affiliations/Activities:

 

1. Book Review Editor – AI Magazine – 1983 – 1986.
2. Editor – Journal of Expert Systems in Accounting and Finance. 1989 – 2004.
3. Editor – Journal of Computational and Mathematical Social Sciences – 1990 – 2003.

 

Courses Taught (partial list):

 

1. Advanced Survey of Cognitive Psychology.
2. History of Social and Psychological Science.
3. Artificial Intelligence Programming.
4. Computational Methods in Social Science Research.
5. Institutions and Organizations.
6. Numerous graduate seminars on such topics as Organizational Learning, Organizational Decisions and Planning Processes, and The Organizational Dynamics of Health-Care Delivery.

 

Biographical Sketch:

 

For over 30 years, Dr. Michael Fehling has contributed to Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence as well as to Cognitive and Social Science. His interdisciplinary work is providing improved methods and computer-based technology to improve collaboration in human activities such as planning, decision-making, and management of operations in private- and public-sector organizations. Dr. Fehling exploits the results of his basic and applied research to develop fieldable computational tools and technology. For example, he is the architect of SCHEMER, a general-purpose software environment for building distributed, real-time, knowledge-based systems. SCHEMER is the software architecture for numerous knowledge-system applications addressing practical needs of real-world organizations. Prof. Fehling has also been awarded a patent for the ABEÔ architecture, a next-generation software environment for implementing large-scale systems that combine AI and non-AI methods.

 

From 1985 through August of 1999, Dr. Fehling was a member the Stanford faculty, appointed within the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems and Operations Research. In 1989 he became a full-time member of Stanford's Academic Council, and founded the Laboratory for Intelligent Systems (LIS). In 1994, Dr. Fehling founded Stanford's Organizational Dynamics Center (ODC), with the aim of creating technology to enhance organizational productivity. The ODC developed new computational tools to improve organizational practices such as distributed planning and management decision-making. Synergia's focus on meeting the needs of its client organizations provides a challenging context within which the academic contributions of Dr. Fehling and others can be put to good use.

 

Dr. Fehling is a founding partner, CEO, and Chief Scientist of Synergia LLC. He directs projects that help clients in the private- and public sector identify ways to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their work practices.  He directs the development of practical computational tools for modeling and analyzing complex organizational practices as well as knowledge-systems that support the problem solving and decision making of organizational workers and managers. In recent work he has invented a group-work architecture, the Consensus Facilitation Architecture, based on Synergia’s prior work in advanced distributed argumentation and conflict resolution. In this architecture the participants gain access to one another and to information and other resources, and have the ability to influence the course of work, in light of their roles and resources in their own organization. This architecture will also employ Synergia’s advanced new methods for quantitative assessment of the risks and benefits of forming consensus over a given domain.  He also has primary responsibility for formal computational modeling of human systems, to support advanced simulation studies.

 

Before coming to Stanford, Dr. Fehling was Principal Scientist at Rockwell International Science Center; he helped establish a laboratory for Artificial Intelligence research. He taught and conducted research at Rutgers University and the University of Southern California.  Dr. Fehling received his B.S. degree from the University of Illinois and graduated Magna cum Laude. He received his Ph.D. in Psychology in 1973 from Stanford University.  He is an active member of numerous professional societies and a former editor of the journals "Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory" and "IEEE Expert." Dr. Fehling is the author of over 200 articles in archival journals, book chapters, published conference presentations, and (Papers available upon request.)