New Fund Honors Life of Bryan Kisiel

Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science (SCS) has established the Bryan Kisiel Altruism Award in AI to support SCS students and remember the life of Bryan Kisiel, who earned his bachelor's degree in computer science and worked in SCS for well over a decade. 

After Bryan died in May 2023, his family and former SCS colleagues established this award to recognize a student who generously shares knowledge and gives back to the SCS community.

"We want to honor a person not just because of their talents, but for how they share their talents with others and how they help others develop their talents. That's what we think would honor Bryan's memory," said Don Kisiel, Bryan's father. 

Bryan majored in computer science at CMU and graduated in 2001. Following his graduation, he worked in SCS, becoming a senior research programmer and analyst for the Language Technologies Institute (LTI) and, later, the Machine Learning Department (MLD).

Bryan's parents said that from a young age, he showed a keen interest in all things technology and engineering, teaching himself to program in BASIC and asking to be read bedtime stories about the Wankel engine, a rotary type of combustion engine. As teachers, Don and Bonnie, Bryan's mother, nurtured Bryan's love of learning and encouraged him to pursue academic challenges and his curiosity. Bonnie said many of his skills were self-taught. 

"He could fix anything, whether it was electrical, plumbing or a car. If his car needed a new axle, he went on YouTube to learn how to fix it and did it."

Bryan applied that curiosity and ingenuity to his work as a research programmer in SCS. During his time at CMU, Bryan was a key part of a pioneering AI research endeavor called the Never-Ending Language Learner (NELL). Tom Mitchell, the SCS Founders University Professor who led the project, explained that this intelligent computer agent ran continuously, reading information from the web to learn and increase its knowledge base.

This year, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) recognized the 2010 research paper about NELL with a Classic Paper award. 

"Bryan became the key software developer and coordinator for the NELL research project, helping many of our graduate students incorporate their own research code into the growing NELL codebase over the years," Mitchell said. "I had the opportunity to watch Bryan generously share his own expertise with many students, helping them learn what he knew about parallel computing, software development and how to solve computer science problems."

The AAAI Classic Paper award, which honors influential research in artificial intelligence, came with a cash prize. Mitchell and his co-authors agreed that the best use of the prize money was to help fund the Bryan Kisiel Altruism Award in AI, "as a way of recognizing Bryan's spirit of helping others in the environment learn to excel themselves."

Don and Bonnie said they were extremely grateful when Bryan's colleagues came forward with this offer to fund an award in honor of their son. They said it reinforced what they always knew about Bryan: that he wasn't simply a gifted programmer, but was also kind. Bonnie and Don said Bryan found his community at SCS — a school full of people who thought and learned like him, who took apart electronics and first learned to code on a Commodore 64.

Learn more about the fund or make a donation on the website.