Rich Bernstein

Programmer/Analyst, Department of Computer Science, Cornell University
IT and Program Coordinator, Cornell University AI for Science Institute (CUAISci)
IT and Program Coordinator, Institute for Computational Sustainability (ICS)
Project Coordinator and IT Manager, Computational Sustainability Network (CompSustNet)

Contact Info

E-mail: rab38@cornell.edu
Office: 340 Bill and Melinda Gates Hall
Lab: 344 Bill and Melinda Gates Hall

Research

I am a research programmer/analyst in the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University, IT and program coordinator for the Cornell University AI for Science Institute (CUAISci) and the Institute for Computational Sustainability (ICS), and project coordinator and IT manager for the Computational Sustainability Network (CompSustNet). I received a master's degree in computer science from Cornell, with a focus on AI, ML, and HPC. I develop software and computational methods, and prepare data sets, for a variety of scientific applications related to sustainability. I've worked on a variety of projects, including the interpretation of crystal structure data from materials science experiments looking for battery and fuel cell catalysts, and solar fuels; understanding movement patterns of pastoralists in East Africa, their water and forage resource use, and estimation of related environmental conditions from satellite imagery; and the design of wildlife conservation corridors. I am particularly interested in applications related to renewable energy and power systems.

Prior Work

Previously, I worked with the outreach team at the Cornell Theory Center (now the Center for Advanced Computing), primarily on the SciCentr program, which developed interactive educational content and activities using a 3D multi-user virtual enviroment based on ActiveWorlds. This program was later directly by the Greater Southern Tier BOCES.

Publications

• Flecker, A. S., et al. (2022). Reducing Adverse Impacts of Amazon Hydropower Expansion. Science, 375(6582), 753–60. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abj4017
• Gomes, C. P., Bai, J., Xue, Y., Björck, J., Rappazzo, B., Ament, S., Bernstein, R., Suram, S. K., van Dover, R. B., Gregoire, J. M. (2019). CRYSTAL: a multi-agent AI system for automated mapping of materials' crystal structures. MRS Communications, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1557/mrc.2019.50
• Bai, J., Xue, Y., Bjorck, J., Le Bras, R., Rappazzo, B., Bernstein, R., Suram, S. K., van Dover, R. B., Gregoire, J. M., Gomes, C. P. (2018). Phase Mapper: Accelerating Materials Discovery with AI. AI Magazine, 39(1), 15. https://doi.org/10.1609/aimag.v39i1.2785
• Jensen, N. D., Toth, R. D., Xue, Y., Bernstein, R., Chebelyon, E. K., Mude, A. G., Barrett, C. B., Gomes, C. (2017). Don't Follow the Crowd: Incentives for Directed Spatial Sampling. Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA).
• Xue, Y., Bai, J., Le Bras, R., Rappazzo, B., Bernstein, R., Bjorck, J., Longpre, L., Suram, S., van Dover, B., Gregoire, J., Gomes, C. (2017). Phase-Mapper: An AI Platform to Accelerate High Throughput Materials Discovery. Twenty-Ninth Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-17).
• Suram, S.K., Xue, Y., Bai, J., LeBras, R., Rappazzo, B.H., Bernstein, R., Bjorck, J., Zhou, L., van Dover, R.B., Gomes, C.P. and Gregoire, J.M. (2017). Automated Phase Mapping with AgileFD and its Application to Light Absorber Discovery in the V-Mn-Nb Oxide System. ACS Combinatorial Science, 19(1): 37–46. https://doi.org/10.1021/acscombsci.6b00153
• Dilkina, B., Houtman, R., Gomes, C. P., Montgomery, C. A., McKelvey, K. S., Kendall, K., Graves, T. A., Bernstein, R. and Schwartz, M. K. (2016). Trade-offs and efficiencies in optimal budget-constrained multispecies corridor networks. Conservation Biology. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.12814
• Ermon, S., Xue, Y., Toth, R., Dilkina, B., Bernstein, R., Damoulas, T., Clark, P., DeGloria, S., Mude, A., Barrett, C., Gomes, C. (2015). Learning Large Scale Dynamic Discrete Choice Models of Spatio-Temporal Preferences with Application to Migratory Pastoralism in East Africa. Twenty-Ninth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-15), 644–650.
• Le Bras, R., Xue, Y., Bernstein, R., Gomes, C. P., & Selman, B. (2014). A Human Computation Framework for Boosting Combinatorial Solvers. 2nd AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing (HCOMP-14), 121–132.
• Damoulas, T., He, J., Bernstein, R., Gomes, C. P., & Arora, A. (2014). String Kernels for Complex Time-Series: Counting Targets from Sensed Movement. 22nd International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR 2014), 4429–4434. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICPR.2014.758
• Le Bras, R., Bernstein, R., Gregoire, J. M., Suram, S. K., Gomes, C. P., Selman, B., & van Dover, R. B. (2014). A Computational Challenge Problem in Materials Discovery: Synthetic Problem Generator and Real-World Datasets. Twenty-Eighth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-14), 438–443.
• Le Bras, R., Bernstein, R., Gomes, C. P., Selman, B., & van Dover, R. B. (2013). Crowdsourcing Backdoor Identification for Combinatorial Optimization. Twenty-Third International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-13), 2840–2847.
• Norton-Barker, C., Corbit, M., & Bernstein, R. (2011). Virtual Worlds for Teaching: A Comparison of Traditional Methods and Virtual Worlds for Science Instruction. In Ferdig, R. E. (Ed.), Discoveries in Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations: New Interdisciplinary Applications, 315–328. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-3604-0.ch015
• Norton-Barker, C., Corbit, M., Bernstein, R., & Greene, E. (2009). Leveraging Game-Play in a 3D World: A Comparative Study in a Biology Classroom. International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations, 1(2), 17–31. https://doi.org/10.4018/jgcms.2009040102
• Corbit, M., Kolodziej, S., Bernstein, R. & McIntyre, C. (2006). Student Project Virtual Worlds as Windows on Scientific Cultures in SciFair. 9th International Conference on Public Communication of Science and Technology, Seoul, Korea.
• Corbit, M., Kolodziej, S., & Bernstein, R. (2005). SciFair: a Multi-user Virtual Environment for Building Science Literacy. Beijing PCST Working Symposium, Beijing, China.