Ben Taskar (March 3, 1977 – November 18, 2013) was a professor and researcher in the area of machine learning and applications to computational linguistics and computer vision. He was a Magerman Term Associate Professor for Computer and Information Science at University of Pennsylvania. He co-directed PRiML: Penn Research in Machine Learning, a joint venture between the School of Engineering and Wharton. He was also a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Annenberg Center for Public Policy. At the University of Washington, he held the Boeing Professorship.
He was the first person to define Max-margin Markov networks and a pioneer in statistical relational learning.
Ben Taskar died of an apparent heart attack on the night of November 17, 2013, at the age of 36.
Bibliography
References
Sources Ben Taskar memorial, UW CSE News UW computer science professor Ben Taskar passes away at 36 news, Geek Wire