Roni Stern | Heuristic Search

Research Interests

I enjoy almost anything that has to do with Artificial Intelligence, but mostly work on heuristic search, multi-agent planning, automated diagnosis, learning model for planning, and using AI for better Software Engineering.

Current Roles

Faculty member at the Dept. of Software and Information Systems Engineering, in Ben Gurion University (BGU)
Head of the Software Engineering program in BGU
Associate Editor and Chair of the Award-Winning Papers track in the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR).

Open positions

I am currently looking for motivated Ph.D. students and Post-doctoral researchers to work with me on funded projects in the following topics:

Learning action models for planning in a multi-agent system. Funded by the Israeli Science Foundation (ISF).
AI methods for improving Software Quality. Funded by the Israel Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST).
Automated diagnosis of computer networks. Funded by the Israeli Ministry of Innovation, in collaboration with Ceragon Inc.

Contact me at first_name.last_name @ gmail.com

News

The paper "Multi-Agent Corridor Generating Algorithm" was accepted to IJCAI 2025! joint work with Arseni Pertzovskiy, Ariel Felner, and Roie Zivan.
The paper "Why Do Multi-Agent Path Finding Algorithms Coordinate Target Arrival Times?" was accepted to SoCS 2025! this is joint work with Jonathan Morag, Noy Gabay, and Daniel Koyman.
Honored to be an invited speaker in the Conference on Prestigious Applications of Intelligent Systems (PAIS), 2025.

Two former students recieving their Ph.D.: Dr. Dor Atzmon and Dr. Ilya Leybovitch. Dor is current af faculty member in Bar-Ilan University and Ilya is teaching courses at Ben Gurion University while holding a researcher position at a tech company.

The Online Hebrew Intro to AI Course

I'm delighted to invite everyone to the first online "Introduction to AI" course in Hebrew! covering the basics of classical AI, and features a team of top AI researchers including Prof. Ariel Felner, Prof. Ronen Brafman, Prof. Kobi Gal, Prof. Guy Shani, Dr. Nadav Rappapot, Dr. Dor Atzmon, and Argaman Mordoch.
You can watch the course as part of the campus.il platform via this link or directly in YouTube via this link.

Group photo from the internatinoal Symposium on Comabinatorial Search (SoCS) 2019 at Napa, CA, USA. Thanks to William Yeoh and Pavel Surynek for organizing and chairing it.