Tom M. Mitchell

Tom Michael Mitchell (born August 9, 1951) is an American computer scientist and E. Fredkin University Professor at the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). He is currently the Chair of the Machine Learning Department at CMU. Mitchell is known for his contributions to the advancement of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and cognitive neuroscience and is the author of the textbook Machine Learning. He is a member of the United States National Academy of Engineering since 2010. He is also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a Fellow the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.

Mitchell was born in Blossburg, Pennsylvania and grew up in Upstate New York, in the town of Vestal. He received his Bach of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1973 and a Ph.D. from Stanford University under the direction of Bruce G. Buchanan in 1979.

Mitchell began his teaching career at the Rutgers University in 1978. During his tenure at Rutgers, he held the positions of Assistant and Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science. In 1986 he left Rutgers and joined Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh as a Professor. In 1999 he became the E. Fredkin Professor in the School of Computer Science. In 2006 Mitchell was appointed as the first Chair of the Machine Learning Department within the School of Computer Science. He became University Professor in 2009.

He was elected into the United States National Academy of Engineering in 2010 "for pioneering contributions and leadership in the methods and applications of machine learning." He is also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) since 2008 and a Fellow the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) since 1990. In 2016 he became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Mitchell is also a recipient of the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1984.

Mitchell is a prolific author of scientific works on various topics in computer science, including machine learning, artificial intelligence, robotics, and cognitive neuroscience. He has authored about 130 scientific articles. Mitchell published one of the first textbooks in machine learning, entitled Machine Learning, in 1997. He is also a coauthor of the following books:

• J. Franklin, T. Mitchell, and S. Thrun (eds.), Recent Advances in Robot Learning, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996.
• T. Mitchell, J. Carbonell, and R. Michalski (eds.), Machine Learning: A Guide to Current Research, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1986.
• R. Michalski, J. Carbonell, and T. Mitchell (eds.), Machine Learning: An Artificial Intelligence Approach, Volume 2, Morgan-Kaufman, 1986.
• R. Michalski, J. Carbonell, and T. Mitchell (eds.), Machine Learning: An Artificial Intelligence Approach, Tioga Press, 1983.