Keynote, Tuesday, May 18^th, 2004, 8:30 AM – 9:15 AM

 

Title:  Multi-agent Systems and Autonomic Computing

Speaker: Nick Jennings, Professor, Southampton University

 

Abstract:

The increasing complexity of configuring and operating large-scale computing systems has driven the I/T industry to seek architectures and technologies that support the creation of systems that manage their own behavior. For several years, the multi-agent systems community has grappled with a very similar set of issues. Software agents are autonomous, proactive, and goal-directed entities that continually sense and respond to the software environment in which they are imbedded. I have argued and demonstrated that agent-oriented approaches to computation, which entail the use of multiple interacting agents, can significantly enhance our ability to model, design and build complex, distributed software systems. In my talk, I will explore the extent to which architectural principles and technologies that have been explored and developed within the agents community might be applied profitably to the design and implementation of autonomic computing systems.

 

Speaker Bio:

Nick Jennings is Professor of Computer Science at Southampton University, where he carries out basic and applied research in agent-based computing. He is Deputy Head of School (Research), Head of the Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group (which consists of 120 research staff and postgraduate students) and is also the Chief Scientific Officer for Lost Wax. Professor Jennings helped pioneer the use of agent-based techniques for real-world applications and has also made foundational contributions in the areas of automated negotiation and auctions, cooperative problem solving and agent-oriented software engineering. Professor Jennings has been an invited speaker at numerous national and international conferences, including IJCAI, OOPSLA, ICMAS, PRICAI, AAMAS, and he co-initiated the ACM's Autonomous Agents Conference and the Agent Theories, Architectures and Languages (ATAL) workshop series. He was the founding Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, and sits on the editorial board of numerous artificial intelligence and e-commerce journals. He has published over 200 articles and 6 books on various facets of agent-based computing, and is among the top 125 most cited computer scientists according to CiteSeer. He has received a number of awards for his research, including the Computers and Thought Award (the premier award for a young AI scientist) in 1999, an IEE Achievement Medal in 2000, and the ACM Autonomous Agents Research Award in 2003. He is a Fellow of the British Computer Society, the Institution of Electrical Engineers, and the European artificial intelligence association and a member of the UK Computing Research Committee (UKCRC).