Benjamin Kuipers is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 computer scientist

Computer science

Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...

 at the University of Michigan

University of Michigan

The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

.

Educational Background

Kuipers graduated from Swarthmore College

Swarthmore College

Swarthmore College is a private, independent, liberal arts college in the United States with an enrollment of about 1,500 students. The college is located in the borough of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, 11 miles southwest of Philadelphia....

 in 1970 with a B.A.

Bachelor of Arts

A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...

 in Mathematics. He then did two years of alternate service as a conscientious objector to military service, working in the Psychology Department at Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

. He began his doctoral studies in pure mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

. He soon discovered the field of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

, and spent most of his time at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, where his advisor was Marvin Minsky. He received his PhD

Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...

 in Mathematics from MIT in 1977. He spent a post-doctoral year as a Research Associate at the MIT Division for Study and Research in Education, funded by a DARPA grant to support collaborative research with BBN psychologist Albert Stevens.

Personal Stance on Military Funding

Kuipers is also well known for his personal stance against accepting military funding for his research. As he explains in his essay, Why don't I take military funding?, during a DARPA-funded post-doctoral year he discovered that the primary interest in his early work on cognitive maps came from military agencies with the goal of building intelligent cruise missiles. As explained in his essay, he felt that he did not want his life's work to contribute to war.