Henry Lieberman has been a Research Scientist at the MIT Media Laboratory
since 1987. His interests are in the intersection of artificial intelligence
and the human interface.  He directs the Software Agents group, which
is concerned with making intelligent software that provides assistance to users in
interactive interfaces.  

Many of his current projects revolve around applying Common Sense Reasoning 
to interactive interfaces. He is using a large knowledge base of Commonsense facts 
about everyday life to streamline interfaces, provide intelligent defaults, 
and proactive help. Application areas include predictive typing, multilingual communication, 
management of photo and media libraries, product recommendation and e-commerce tools. 
He has edited or co-edited three books, including End-User Development 
(Springer, 2006), Spinning the Semantic Web (MIT Press, 2004), and 
Your Wish is My Command: Programming by Example (Morgan Kaufmann, 2001). 

From 1987-1994 he worked with graphic designer Muriel Cooper on tools for 
visual thinking, and new graphic metaphors for information visualization and 
navigation.  He holds a strong interest in making programming easier for 
non-expert users. He is a pioneer of the the technique of Programming by Example, where
a user demonstrates examples, which are recorded and generalized using techniques from 
machine learning. He has also worked on reversible debuggers, 3D programming, 
and natural language programming. 

From 1972-87, he was a researcher at the MIT Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory. He started with Seymour Papert in the group that originally
developed the educational language Logo, and wrote the first bitmap
and color graphics systems for Logo. He also worked with Carl Hewitt on
actors, an early object-oriented, parallel language, and developed the
notion of prototype object systems and the first real-time garbage collection 
algorithm. He holds a doctoral-equivalent degree (Habilitation) from the 
University of Paris VI and was a Visiting Professor there in 1989-90.