Rand Waltzman tells me that he's leaving DARPA the first of June for a tenured computer-science position at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH -- Kunglige Tekniska Hogskolan) in Stockholm. His replacement as director of DARPA's image-understanding effort will be Oscar Firschein from SRI International (and, before that, from Lockheed). Steve Cross will continue to run DARPA's AI programs. Both jobs were formerly handled by Bob Simpson, who is now with NCR's Human Interface Technology Center in Atlanta.

If you'd like to congratulate Rand or Oscar, their net addresses are randw@darpa.mil and firschein@iu.ai.sri.com. Oscar is a friend from my SRI days, when we studied Aikido together. (Don't mess with him!) He and Marty Fischler wrote a book on AI and vision a couple of years ago -- Eye and Brain -- stressing that perception is the most difficult and sophisticated level of intelligence. Oscar has long been involved with both aerial reconnaissance and the DARPA autonomous vehicles project. He also took over as head of SRI's planning and reasoning group when Michael Georgeff left to start the Australian AI Institute four years ago.