Scott Sanner

BibTeX | Publications | Presentations | Thesis | Tech Reports / Unpublished Works

Selected Publications (Chronological)

S. Sedhain, H. Bui, J. Kawale, N. Vlassis, B. Kveton, A. Menon, T. Bui and S. Sanner (2016). Practical Linear Models for Large-Scale One-Class Collaborative Filtering. In Proceedings of the 25th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-16). New York, USA. [pdf]

S. Kinathil, S. Sanner, S. Das, N. Della-Penna (2016). A Symbolic Closed-form Solution to Sequential Market Making with Inventory. In Proceedings of the 25th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-16). New York, USA. [pdf]

I. Guilliard, S. Sanner, F. Trevizan, and B. Williams (2016). A Non-homogenous Time Mixed Integer LP Formulation for Traffic Signal Control. Transport Research Record (TRR): Journal of the Transport Research Board, accepted. [pdf (pre-print)] [(video 1) (video 2) (video 3)]

K. V. Delgado, L. N. de Barros, D. B. Dias, and S. Sanner (2016). Real-time Dynamic Programming for Markov Decision Processes with Imprecise Probabilities. Artificial Intelligence Journal (AIJ). Volume 230, pp 192-223. [link]

H. Afshar, S. Sanner, and C. Webers (2016). Closed-form Gibbs Sampling for Graphical Models with Algebraic Constraints. In Proceedings of the 30th Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-16). Phoenix, USA. [pdf] [slides (pdf)] [code (github)]

S. Sedhain, A. Menon, S. Sanner, and D. Braziunas (2016). On the Effectiveness of Linear Models for One-Class Collaborative Filtering. In Proceedings of the 30th Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-16). Phoenix, USA. [pdf] [slides (pdf)] [code (github)]

M. Vallati, L. Chrpa, M. Grzes, T. L. McCluskey, M. Roberts, and S. Sanner (2015). The 2014 International Planning Competition: Progress and Trends. AI Magazine, 36 (3), 90-98. [pdf (pre-print)]

H. Yu, L. Xie, and S. Sanner (2015). The Lifecycle of a Youtube Video: Phases, Content, and Popularity. In Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM-15). Oxford, UK. [pdf] [code (github)]

S. Sedhain, A. Menon, S. Sanner, and L. Xie (2015). AutoRec: Autoencoders Meet Collaborative Filtering. In Proceedings of the 24th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW-15). Florence, Italy. [pdf] [code (github)]

H. Afshar, S. Sanner, and E. Abbasnejad (2015). Linear-time Gibbs Sampling in Piecewise Graphical Models. In Proceedings of the 29th Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-15). Austin, USA. [pdf] [code]

E. Abbasnejad, J. Domke, and S. Sanner (2015). Loss-calibrated Monte Carlo Action Selection. In Proceedings of the 29th Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-15). Austin, USA. [pdf] [code]

L. G. Rocha Vianna, L. N. de Barros, and S. Sanner (2015). Real-time Symbolic Dynamic Programming for Hybrid MDPs. In Proceedings of the 29th Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-15). Austin, USA. [pdf] [code] [evaluation domains]

G. Wu, S. Sanner, and R. F.S.C. Oliveira (2015). Bayesian Model Averaging Naive Bayes: Averaging over an Exponential Number of Feature Models in Linear Time. In Proceedings of the 29th Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-15). Austin, USA. [pdf] [code]

M. Golestan Far, S. Sanner, M. R. Bouadjenek, G. Ferraro, and D. Hawking (2015). On Term Selection Techniques for Patent Prior Art Search. In Proceedings of the 38th Annual ACM SIG Information Retrieval Conference (SIGIR-15). Santiago, Chile. [pdf] [poster (pdf)] [code]

M. R. Bouadjenek, S. Sanner, and G. Ferraro (2015). A Study of Query Reformulation for Patent Prior Art Search with Partial Patent Applications. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence & Law (ICAIL-15). San Diego, USA. [pdf] [code]

K.-N. Tran, P. Christen, S. Sanner, and L. Xie (2015). Context-Aware Detection of Sneaky Vandalism on Wikipedia Across Multiple Languages. Advances in Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining - 19th Pacific-Asia Conference (PAKDD-15). Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Recipient of the Best Student Paper Award. [pdf]

S. Sedhain, S. Sanner, D. Braziunas, L. Xie, and J. Christensen (2014). Social Collaborative Filtering for Cold-start Recommendations. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Recommender Systems (RecSys-14). Silicon Valley, USA. [pdf] [slides (pdf)] [poster (pdf)]

H. Yu, L. Xie, S. Sanner (2014). Twitter-driven Youtube Views: Beyond Individual Influencers. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Multimedia (ACM MM-14). Orlando, USA. [pdf] [poster (pdf)] [code (github)] [demo (online)]

S. Kinathil, S. Sanner, and N. Della Penna (2014). Closed-form Solutions to a Subclass of Continuous Stochastic Games via Symbolic Dynamic Programming. In Proceedings of the 30th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI-14). Quebec City, Canada. [pdf] [code]

R. Marchant, F. Ramos, and S. Sanner (2014). Sequential Bayesian Optimisation for Spatial-Temporal Monitoring. In Proceedings of the 30th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI-14). Quebec City, Canada. [pdf]

J. Furnkranz, E. Hullermeier, C. Rudin, S. Sanner, and R. Slowinski (2014). Preference Learning: Report from Dagstuhl Seminar 14101. Dagstuhl Reports. Volume 4, Issue 3, pp 1-27. Dagstuhl, Germany. [pdf]

S. Sedhain, S. Sanner, L. Xie, R. Kidd, K.-N. Tran, and P. Christen (2013). Social Affinity Filtering: Recommendation through Fine-grained Analysis of User Interactions and Activities. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Online Social Networks (COSN-13). Boston, USA. [pdf] [slides (pdf)] [code]

E. Abbasnejad, S. Sanner, E. Bonilla, and P. Poupart (2013). Learning Community-based Preferences via Dirichlet Process Mixtures of Gaussian Processes. In Proceedings of the 23rd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-13). Beijing, China. [pdf] [appendix (pdf)] [data] [code]

Z. Zamani, S. Sanner, K. V. Delgado, and L. N. de Barros (2013). Robust Optimization for Hybrid MDPs with State-dependent Noise. In Proceedings of the 23rd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-13). Beijing, China. [pdf] [code]

T. Nguyen and S. Sanner (2013). Algorithms for Direct 0-1 Loss Optimization in Binary Classification. In Proceedings of the 30th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML-13). Atlanta, USA. [pdf] [code (zip)]

R. Mehrotra, S. Sanner, W. Buntine, and L. Xie (2013). Improving LDA Topic Models for Microblogs via Automatic Tweet Labeling and Pooling. In Proceedings of the 36th Annual ACM SIG Information Retrieval Conference (SIGIR-13). Dublin, Ireland. [pdf] [code]

L. G. Rocha Vianna, S. Sanner, and L. N. de Barros (2013). Bounded Approximate Symbolic Dynamic Programming for Hybrid MDPs. In Proceedings of the 29th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI-13). Bellevue, USA. [pdf] [slides (pdf)] [code]

J. Noel, S. Sanner, K.-N. Tran, P. Christen, L. Xie, E. Bonilla, E. Abbasnejad, and N. Della Penna (2012). New Objectives for Social Collaborative Filtering. In Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on the World Wide Web (WWW-12). Lyon, France. [pdf] [slides (pdf)] [code]

S. Guo, S. Sanner, T. Graepel, and W. Buntine (2012). Score-based Bayesian Skill Learning. In Proceedings of the European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (ECML/PKDD-12). Bristol, UK. [pdf] [pdf (supplementary material)] [code]

K.-W. Lim, S. Sanner, and S. Guo (2012). On the Mathematical Relationship between Expected n-call@k and the Relevance vs. Diversity Trade-off. In Proceedings of the 35th Annual ACM SIG Information Retrieval Conference (SIGIR-12). Portland, USA. [pdf] [appendix with full derivation (pdf)] [slides]

Z. Zamani, S. Sanner, P. Poupart, and K. Kersting (2012). Symbolic Dynamic Programming for Continuous State and Observation POMDPs. In Proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference on Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS-12). Lake Tahoe, USA. [pdf] [code]

S. Sanner and E. Abbasnejad (2012). Symbolic Variable Elimination for Discrete and Continuous Graphical Models. In Proceedings of the 26th Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-12). Toronto, Canada. [pdf] [slides (pdf)] [poster (pdf)] [code]

Z. Zamani, S. Sanner, and C. Fang (2012). Symbolic Dynamic Programming for Continuous State and Action MDPs. In Proceedings of the 26th Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-12). Toronto, Canada. [pdf] [slides (pdf)] [poster (pdf)] [code]

A. Coles, A. Coles, A. Garcia Olaya, S. Jimenez, C. Linares Lopez, S. Sanner, and S. Yoon (2012). A Survey of the Seventh International Planning Competition. AI Magazine, 33 (1), pp. 83-88. [pdf (pre-print)]

S. Sanner and M. Hutter, editors (2012). Recent Advances in Reinforcement Learning - 9th European Workshop (EWRL). Springer Verlag, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Volume 7188, ISBN 978-3-642-29945-2. [pdf (table of contents)]

S. Sanner, S. Guo, T. Graepel, S. Kharazmi, and S. Karimi (2011). Diverse Retrieval via Greedy Optimization of Expected 1-call@k in a Latent Subtopic Relevance Model. In Proceedings of the 20th ACM Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM-11). Glasgow, UK. [pdf] [code]

S. Sanner, K. V. Delgado, and L. N. de Barros (2011). Symbolic Dynamic Programming for Discrete and Continuous State MDPs. In Proceedings of the 27th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI-11). Barcelona, Spain. [pdf] [slides (pdf)] [code]

M. Robards, P. Sunehag, S. Sanner, and B. Marthi (2011). Sparse Kernel-SARSA(lambda) with an Eligibility Trace. In Proceedings of the European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (ECML/PKDD-11). Athens, Greece. [pdf]

B. Ahmadi, K. Kersting, and S. Sanner (2011). Multi-Evidence Lifted Message Passing with Application to PageRank and the Kalman Filter. In Proceedings of the 22nd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-11). Barcelona, Spain. [pdf]

K. V. Delgado, S. Sanner, and L. N. de Barros (2011). Efficient Solutions to Factored MDPs with Imprecise Transition Probabilities. Artificial Intelligence Journal (AIJ). Volume 175, pp 1498-1527. [pdf (pre-print)]

K. V. Delgado, L. N. de Barros, F. G. Cozman, and S. Sanner (2011). Using Mathematical Programming to Solve Factored Markov Decision Processes with Imprecise Probabilities. International Journal of Approximate Reasoning (IJAR). Volume 52, Issue 7, October, pp 1000-1017. [pdf (pre-print)]

E. Bonilla, S. Guo, and S. Sanner (2010). Gaussian Process Preference Elicitation. In Proceedings of the 24th Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS-10). Vancouver, Canada. [pdf]

C. Downey and S. Sanner (2010). Temporal Difference Bayesian Model Averaging: A Bayesian Perspective on Adapting Lambda. In Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML-10). Haifa, Israel. [pdf] [slides (pdf)]

S. Sanner and K. Kersting (2010). Symbolic Dynamic Programming for First-order POMDPs. In Proceedings of the 24th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-10). Atlanta, USA. [pdf] [slides (pdf)]

S. Guo and S. Sanner (2010). Probabilistic Latent Maximal Marginal Relevance. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM SIG Information Retrieval Conference (SIGIR-10). Geneva, Switzerland. [pdf] (Note: CIKM-11 and SIGIR-12 supercede this work.)

S. Sanner, W. Uther, and K. V. Delgado (2010). Approximate Dynamic Programming with Affine ADDs. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS-10). Toronto, Canada. [pdf] [slides (pdf)] [code]

S. Guo and S. Sanner (2010). Real-time Multiattribute Bayesian Preference Elicitation with Pairwise Comparison Queries. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AISTATS-10). Sardinia, Italy. [pdf] [slides for older version of work (pdf)] [code (zip)]

S. Sanner and K. Kersting (2010). Symbolic dynamic programming. In C. Sammut, editor, Encyclopedia of Machine Learning, pp. 946-954. Springer-Verlag. [pdf (pre-print)]

K. V. Delgado, S. Sanner, L. N. de Barros, and F. G. Cozman (2009). Efficient Solutions to Factored MDPs with Imprecise Transition Probabilities. In Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS-09). Thessaloniki, Greece. [pdf] [slides (pdf)]

S. Sanner, R. Goetschalckx, K. Driessens, and G. Shani (2009). Bayesian Real-time Dynamic Programming. In Proceedings of the 21st International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-09). San Jose, USA. [pdf] [slides (pdf)] [code (tgz)]

S. Sanner and C. Boutilier (2009). Practical solution techniques for first-order MDPs. Artificial Intelligence Journal (AIJ). Volume 173, pp 748-788. Recipient of the 2014 AI Journal (AIJ) Prominent Paper Award. [pdf (pre-print)]

R. Goetschalckx, S. Sanner, and K. Driessens (2008). Cost-sensitive parsimonious linear regression. In Proceedings of the 8th IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM-08). Pisa, Italy. [pdf]

R. Goetschalckx, S. Sanner, and K. Driessens (2008). Reinforcement learning with the use of costly features. Proceedings of the 18th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI-08). Patras, Greece. [short version (pdf)] Extended version in European Workshop on Reinforcement Learning (EWRL-08). [extended version (pdf)]

S. Sanner (2008). How to spice up your planning under uncertainty research life. Workshop on a Reality Check for Planning and Scheduling Under Uncertainty (at ICAPS-08). Sydney, Australia. [pdf] [slides (pdf)]

S. Sanner, and C. Boutilier (2007). Approximate solution techniques for factored first-order MDPs. In Proceedings of the 17th Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS-07). [ps.gz] [pdf] [slides (pdf)]

S. Sanner, T. Graepel, R. Herbrich, and T. Minka (2007). Learning CRFs with hierarchical features: An application to the game of Go. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Constrained Optimization and Structured Output Spaces (at ICML-07). [ps.gz] [pdf] [slides (pdf)]

S. Sanner and C. Boutilier (2006). Practical linear value-approximation techniques for first-order MDPs. In Proceedings of the 22nd Conference on Uncertainty in AI (UAI-06). [ps.gz] [pdf] [slides (pdf - color)] [slides (pdf - bw)] (Note: A first-order planner based on this approach placed 2nd according to # of problems solved in the ICAPS 2006 International Probabilistic Planning Competition.)

S. Sanner and S. McIlraith (2006). An ordered theory resolution calculus for hybrid reasoning in first-order extensions of description logic. In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR-06). [ps.gz] [pdf] [slides (pdf - color)] [slides (pdf - bw)]

S. Sanner (2006). Online feature discovery in relational reinforcement learning. In Proceedings of the Open Problems in Statistical Relational Learning Workshop (SRL-06). [ps.gz] [pdf] [slides (pdf - color)] [slides (pdf - bw)]

S. Sanner and D. McAllester (2005). Affine algebraic decision diagrams (AADDs) and their application to structured probabilistic inference. In Proceedings of the 19th International Joint Conference on AI (IJCAI-05). [ps.gz] [pdf] [slides (pdf - color)] [slides (pdf - bw)] [code]

S. Sanner and C. Boutilier (2005). Approximate linear programming for first-order MDPs. In Proceedings of the 21st Conference on Uncertainty in AI (UAI-05). [ps.gz] [pdf] [slides (pdf - color)] [slides (pdf - bw)]

S. Sanner (2005). Simultaneous learning of structure and value in relational reinforcement learning. In Proceedings of the Rich Representations for Relational Reinforcement Learning Workshop (RRfRL-05). [ps.gz] [pdf] [slides (pdf - color)] [slides (pdf - bw)]

D. Anguelov, R. Biswas, D. Koller, B. Limketkai, S. Sanner, and S. Thrun (2002). Learning hierarchical object maps of non-stationary environments with mobile robots. In Proceedings of the 18th Conference on Uncertainty in AI (UAI-02). [ps.gz (large)] [pdf]

R. Biswas, B. Limketkai, S. Sanner, and S. Thrun (2002). Towards object mapping in dynamic environments with mobile robots. In Proceedings of the Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS-02). [ps.gz (large)] [pdf]

S. Sanner, J. R. Anderson, C. Lebiere, and M. Lovett (2000). Achieving efficient and cognitively plausible learning in backgammon. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML-00). [ps.gz] [pdf] (C++ Source Code [tar.gz] and associated [README] file.)

Presentations

S. Sanner (2014). Tutorial Slides for Decision Diagrams in Automated Planning and Scheduling from ICAPS-2011. [pdf]

S. Sanner (2014). Tutorial Slides for Introduction to Planning Domain Modeling in RDDL from ICAPS-2011. [pdf]

S. Sanner (2013). Tutorial Slides for Symbolic Methods for Probabilistic Inference, Optimization, and Decision-making from ICAPS-2011. [pdf]

S. Sanner (2010). Tutorial Slides for Graphical Models from ICAPS-2010. [pdf]

S. Sanner (2010). Tutorial Slides for Traffic Control from ICAPS-2010. [pdf]

S. Sanner (2009). Tutorial Slides for Reinforcement Learning from SSLL-2009. [pdf]

S. Sanner (2008). Newly revised First-order MDP (FOMDP) Tutorial Slides. [pdf]

ICAPS-2008 tutorial

First-order Planning Techniques

Kristian Kersting

Saket Joshi

S. Sanner (2006). Lecture slides for an introduction to the field of Automated Theorem Proving. [pdf]

S. Sanner (2001). Talk slides for a quick introduction to the field of Description Logics, its history, and some of its core (and beautiful) motivating ideas. [ps.gz] [pdf]

Thesis

S. Sanner (2008). First-order decision-theoretic planning in structured relational environments. PhD Thesis, University of Toronto. Accepted: 12/2007; Publication Date: 3/2008. [ps.gz] [pdf]

Technical Reports and Unpublished Works

S. Sanner (2011). Relational Dynamic Influence Diagram Language (RDDL): Language Description. Unpublished. [pdf] [tutorial slides (pdf)]

S. Sanner (2005). Future directions for first-order decision-theoretic planning. Research Proposal, University of Toronto. [ps.gz] [pdf] (Presentation Slides: [pdf (color)] [pdf (bw)])

S. Sanner (2004). Relational and first-order decision-theoretic planning: Foundations and future directions. Depth Report, University of Toronto. [ps.gz] [pdf] (Note: There is also a deterministic planning supplement to this report. [ps.gz] [pdf] )

S. Sanner (2004). Refutation-complete binary decision diagrams. Unpublished. [ps.gz] [pdf]

S. Sanner (2003). Towards practical taxonomic classification for description logics on the Semantic Web. Technical Report, Stanford University, Knowledge Systems Lab: KSL-03-06. [ps.gz] [pdf] [Java Theorem Prover (JTP) software including the DAML+OIL classification reasoner] (Note: There is also a less technical, condensed version of this paper. [ps.gz] [pdf] )