The Association for Logic Programming and KR, Inc. are highly prestigious, non-profit scientific foundations dedicated to fostering research in artificial intelligence, driving worldwide research for decades.
Three New Mexico State University researchers received awards for their contributions to the field of Artificial Intelligence at two co-located premier conferences in the field – the 2026 International Conference on Logic Programming (ICLP) and the 2026 International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR).
ICLP is the longest running conference series focused on symbolic AI and logic-based methods for programming and reasoning, while KR is recognized as the top-tier flagship conference for symbolic knowledge representation and reasoning; together these venues explore foundational research needed for the creation of autonomous systems, robotics, automated planning and natural language processing.
Son Tran, NMSU computer science professor and department head, received two Test of Time Awards at the conference for AI research conducted with co-authors.
“The award recognizes the longevity of our research,” Tran said. “Other researchers refer to our work and build upon the direction which we developed. In AI, there are many subfields. I work in two areas and happened to get two awards on the same day. It’s a humbling experience.”
The aim of the KR Test of Time Award is to recognize papers published whose contributions have made a significant and lasting impact on the academic discipline and/or the application or adoption of techniques in industry and/or for the betterment of society.
One award recognized Tran’s 20 years of significant foundational research in the area of Knowledge Representation Research along with Shiela McIlraith, professor of computer science at the University of Toronto.
Enrico Pontelli, dean of NMSU’s College of Arts and Sciences was the lead author on a second paper recognized along with Tran for a Test of Time Award for AI research in the area of Logic Programming.
“The ‘Test of Time’ means that you have done work that has gained a lot of attention, not just in the moment in which it was published but it continuously has been cited for many years,” Pontelli said. “This award was for work we did 20 years ago, which a lot of researchers built on. In lay persons terms, our research was about tracing back to why a certain AI answer comes out the way it does. It explains why a certain inference results from an AI system.”
The third NMSU professor honored at the KR conference is Stylianos Vasileiou, an NMSU assistant computer science professor, who received an Early Career Award for his contributions in the area of explainable decision making.
“Explainable AI is how to explain the decisions of AI systems to human users,” Vasileiou said. “The award I received is based on my Ph.D. work, which was about creating frameworks to explain the decisions of AI systems. To put it very simply, the award is for the contributions that I did for this area during and after my Ph.D.”
“The early career award shows that the individual is one of the top researchers of their generation,” said Tran of Vasileiou’s award. “Stylianos has exhibited his ability in several publications, in premier conferences and journals. He stands out among those who would be eligible for this award.”
Vasileiou’s Ph.D. dissertation also received the 2026 Outstanding Dissertation Award from the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS). ICAPS is considered the premier, top-ranked international conference on automated planning and scheduling research, sub-areas of AI.
KR Inc. operates as a specialized, academic foundation and is ranked at the highest possible tier, reserved for the top 7.5% of flagship venues. It holds this distinction across both artificial intelligence and theory of computation fields.
ICLP is the premier global academic event for the study and deployment of logic programming. For more than 40 years, it has served as the anchor for researchers working on automated reasoning, symbolic artificial intelligence and knowledge representation.
The awards for both were announced at the Conference in Lisbon, Portugal in late July.
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