Joost Breuker (31-1-1944) studied cognitive psychology and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Amsterdam (1963 - 1970) (Adriaan de Groot; Nico Frijda). He obtained his PhD in 1981 at the same University (supervisors: Nico Frijda, Willem Levelt). Since 1966 he worked as a researcher at various institutes of the University of Amsterdam (1966 -1974: Institute for Cognitive Research (ICO), 1975-1982: Centre for Research in Higher Education (COWO); 1983-now: Social Science Informatics (SWI) (Fac. of Psycholoy) and also from 1988 Computer Science & Law (LRI, at Fac. of Law)).

Major areas of research are: experimental cognitive psychology (text understanding; problem solving), AI (intelligent teaching systems (ITS), knowledge acquisition & engineering, artificial legal reasoning). His current work is particularly in: methodologies for building knowledge based systems (KBS), artificial problem solving, intelligent help and tutoring systems, and reasoning in regulation domains (law). Most of the research is performed in collaboration with academic institutes and industries in Europe, in particular within the framework of Esprit. He took the initiative for and was technical manager of the EUROHELP project for building intelligent help systems (1985 -- 1990, 120 personyears). Together with Bob Wielinga he was the originator of CommonKADS. CommonKADS is a methodology for developing knowledge systems that has become a world wide standard. It has been developed in a number of Esprit projects (1984--1994, 250 manyear). Joost Breuker holds a chair in Computer Science and Law (full professor), and is a senior researcher at SWI (Associate professor).

Joost Breuker was member of the board of the NVKI (Dutch AI Association) (1989-1997). He is the also Secretary of the International AI and Education Society. Together with Prof. dr Wielinga (Un.of Amsterdam) he was awarded the ECAI-1984 price for expert systems research. Together with Prof S.A. Cerri (Un.of Milano) he received the CILEA/Sperry price for Computer Science and education in 1985. He is on the board of international journals (International Journal of Human Computer Interaction, International Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Education, Interactive Learning Environments, Intelligent Systems Engineering, AI Communications) and editor of the book-series "Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications" (IOS-Press) (see also Publications)