Rate My Professor Mark Winands

Mark Winands is the Chair of the Department of Advanced Computing Sciences and Professor of Machine Reasoning in the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Maastricht University. He received his Ph.D. degree in Artificial Intelligence from Maastricht University. His research centers on machine reasoning, with a particular emphasis on heuristic and adaptive search techniques, especially the underlying principles of Monte-Carlo Tree Search (MCTS), for which he has received two NWO grants. Applications of his work span video game AI, structural engineering, job-scheduling, and quantum computing. Winands has also advanced other intelligent search methods, including the minimax framework, hierarchical task networks, proof-number search, progressive strategies, parallel MCTS, single-player and multi-player MCTS, N-grams, last-good-reply policy, and self-adaptive MCTS. His contributions extend to quantum algorithms for stabilizer Rényi entropy estimation and quantum circuit design, as well as conformal prediction for time-series forecasting.

Winands has published in leading journals such as Artificial Intelligence, IEEE Transactions on Games, Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, Knowledge-Based Systems, Information Sciences, and Theoretical Computer Science. Notable publications include 'Progressive Strategies for Monte-Carlo Tree Search' (2008, New Mathematics and Natural Computation), 'Parallel Monte-Carlo Tree Search' (2008, Computers and Games), 'Single-Player Monte-Carlo Tree Search' (2008, Computers and Games), 'Algorithms for computing strategies in two-player simultaneous move games' (2016, Artificial Intelligence), and 'Self-Adaptive Monte Carlo Tree Search in General Game Playing' (2020, IEEE Transactions on Games). He has organized international conferences, serving as program chair of the 15th International Conference on Advances in Computer Games, general chair of the 2018 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games, and local chair of the 2026 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence. As Editor-in-Chief of the ICGA Journal (SAGE Publishing), Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Games, and Vice-President of the International Computer Games Association, he significantly influences the field. Winands directed the Bachelor Data Science & Knowledge Engineering and Master programs in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science for Decision Making (2010-2013, 2017-2020), achieving top rankings in Keuzegids and Elsevier, and led multiple program accreditations.