Obituaries: Alison Cawsey

Alison Cawsey passed away in June 2009. She was a remarkable person and her death is a profound professional and personal loss. Born in 1963, Alison grew up in the south of England and, from 1981 to 1984, studied Natural Sciences at Jesus College Cambridge. During this period she met her life partner Richard. Alison always excelled academically but not always in the sporting arena; however, at Cambridge, like her dad, she finally found a sport she could sit down to: She took up rowing! After completing her degree in Physics she spent a year as a volunteer at a National Children’s Home. Among other things she helped disabled children organize their lives with the aid of a computer. This clearly influenced her choice of further study and career. Moving to the University of Edinburgh in 1985, she gained a distinguished Masters in Knowledge Based Systems in 1986, and a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence in 1989. Subsequently, she went on to carry out postdoctoral research at Cambridge and Glasgow, then teaching Computing at Glasgow before joining us at Heriot-Watt in 1995. Alison was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2002. I am sure that, were it not for her long battle with cancer, she would have enjoyed considerable further academic advancement and recognition. Alison’s doctorate was awarded for her sterling research into the Computer Generation of Explanatory Dialogues. Explanation is an excellent way of characterizing Alison’s many professional contributions: she was always concerned with making complicated ideas understandable, both as a researcher and as a teacher. Certainly, her research in this area was pioneering and influential: Her 1992 book from MIT Press based on her Ph.D. has over 120 citations, no mean feat given that most Ph.D.s are read by at most four people. Alison received sustained funding from the Research Councils, the European Union, and the Scottish Office. Most recently she worked on how to make personalized explanation systems for helping explain medical diagnoses from experts to patients. Her focus on cancer diagnosis drew both on her personal experience and her familiar desire to do things that would help other people. Alison’s excellence in teaching, from which so many students benefited, is also recognized internationally. Her highly cited book on Artificial Intelligence has been in print continuously since 1997, and has been translated into German andHungarian. Her more recent book, with Rick Dewar, on Internet Technology and eCommerce shows both her versatility and engagement with our dynamically changing discipline. Students clearly like her books. One anonymous Amazon reviewer wrote: “I missed most of the lectures but thanks to this short and sweet book I passed my first year introduction to AI course. If you are a slack student taking an AI course—buy this book.” Alison was our colleague for 14 years. She was a pillar of our Department, contributing strongly to all our academic development activities. In particular, she ran our