BIOGRAPHY
My main research interests lie in Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly heuristics, metaheuristics, hyperheuristics and exact/heuristic hybrids. These techniques are used for constrained optimisation and agent control, particularly in games and in complex real-world planning and scheduling problems. I have over 20 years experience in research into new modelling, optimisation and decision support technologies, which bridge the gap between the theory and practice of optimisation, using artificial intelligence and operational research techniques. These approaches have been used in a variety of real world problems involving the planning and scheduling of personnel and production. I work with several companies in order to pursue these research aims. I am also deeply interested in the use of games as a testbed for the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI). I lead the Modelling Optimisation Scheduling And Intelligent Computing (MOSAIC) research group here at Bradford. Outside academia, I have worked as an investment banker, as a systems analyst for an insurance company and as a commercial software consultant, responsible for the development of a market-leading range of steel scheduling decision support systems. I have held positions at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, and the University of Nottingham in the UK, prior to joining the University of Bradford. I remain active in consultancy, having recently become a director of Cowling Scheduling Consultants Ltd. which make systems for automatically timetabling training courses for large service organisations.
GRANTS:
Applications submitted and currently under consideration
Several grant applications are currently under consideration for funding from EPSRC, DTI, EU and industrial sources.
Current, and significant recent, funded projects
"Control and decision support for virtual telephony", funded by Yorkshire Forward in collaboration with Gumption Centres Ltd.
"Concept Linkage in Knowledge Repositories", funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC).
"eLINK (east-west Link for Innovation, Networking and Knowledge exchange)", funded by EU FP7.
"An Industry/Academia Research Network on AI and Games Technologies", funded by EPSRC.
"Game Republic Academy", funded by Yorkshire Forward
"Knowledge Tranfer Partnership to investigate scheduling and inventory handling decision support systems", funded by the Department for Trade and Industry and Universal AV Ltd.
"Euro-ASia CollaboraTions and NetWorking in Information Engineering System Technology (EAST-WEST)", funded by the European Union's Framework 6 programme
"Development of a teaching/research platform for AI in Games", funded by Microsoft Ltd.
"Reactive Robust Scheduling of a large Mobile Workforce", jointly funded by a Smith Faraday EPSRC CASE studentship and @Road, Ltd. (a Trimble Company)
"Using real-time information for effective dynamic scheduling", funded by EPSRC and Dash Associates Ltd.
"Representational design principles to humanise automated systems", funded by the ESRC/EPSRC People At the Centre of Communication and Information Technologies (PACCIT) programme. Joint with the University of Nottingham and Queen's University, Belfast.
"An investigation of hyperheuristic methods", funded by EPSRC. Joint with Napier University and the University of Nottingham.
"A case-based approach to heuristic selection for timetabling", funded by EPSRC. Joint with the University of Nottingham.
"Case-based reasoning in personnel rostering", funded by EPSRC. Joint with the University of Nottingham.
"Stock cutting approaches using advanced heuristic methods", funded by the Teaching Company Directorate and Esprit Automation Ltd. Joint with the University of Nottingham.
"Supply chain logistics management", funded by the Teaching Company Directorate and Meads Ltd. Joint with the University of Nottingham.
"An Interdisciplinary Scheduling network", funded by EPSRC. Joint with several UK Universities.
Awards and Recognition:
2009 Best Student Paper award for my PhD student Youssef Al-Qasrawi at the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Systems Design and Applications (ISDA) 2009 conference, Pisa, Italy.
2009 Best Paper award at the 11th IEEE Conference on Commerce and Enterprise Computing (IEEE Computer Society press) (1 winner out of 98 papers submitted, 21 full papers accepted).
2007 Best Paper nomination at EvoCOP 2007 (Springer LNCS vol. 4446) (3 papers nominated for prizes out of 81 submitted, with 21 accepted for publication).
2006 Best Paper nomination at EvoCOP 2006 (Springer LNCS vol. 3906) (3 papers nominated for prizes out of 77 submitted, with 24 accepted for publication).
2003 Best Student Paper Award finalist for my PhD student, Djamila Ouelhadj, at the IEEE ICRA2003 conference.
2001 Best paper award at the EvoCOP 2001 workshop, (Springer LNCS vol. 2037).
INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC ACTIVITIES:
Programme Co-Chair of the Tenth European Conference on Evolutionary Computation and Metaheuristics in Combinatorial Optimization (EvoCOP 2010), Istanbul (Turkey), 7-9 April 2010
Programme Co-Chair of the Ninth European Conference on Evolutionary Computation and Metaheuristics in Combinatorial Optimization (EvoCOP 2009), Tuebingen (Germany), 15-17 April 2009
Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI for Games 2008-
Member of the review board of Applied Intelligence 2006-
Member of the programme/refereeing committees for:
o European Conference on Evolutionary Computation and Metaheuristics in Combinatorial Optimization (EvoCOP): 2010 (Turkey), 2009 (Germany), 2008 (Italy), 2007 (Spain), 2006 (Hungary), 2005 (Switzerland), 2004 (Portugal), 2003 (UK), 2002 (Eire), 2001 (Italy)
o IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC): 2009 (Norway), 2008 (Hong Kong), 2007 (Singapore), 2006 (Canada), 2005 (UK), 2002 (USA), 2001 (Korea), 2000 (USA), 1999 (USA)
o IEEE Symp. on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG): 2009 (Italy), 2008 (Australia), 2007 (USA)
o ACM Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO): 2009 (Canada), 2006 (USA), 2005 (USA), 2004 (USA), 2003 (USA), 2002 (USA), 2001 (USA)
o Parallel Problem Solving from Nature (PPSN): 2008 (Germany), 2000 (France)
o Simulated Evolution And Learning (SEAL): 2008 Australia
o Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA): 2009 (Holland)
o Practice and Theory of Automated Timetabling (PATAT): 2008 (Canada),2006 (Czech Republic), 2004 (USA), 2002 (Belgium), 2000 (Germany)
o AISB'09 Symposium (AISB): 2009 (UK)
o International Conference on Software, Knowledge, Information Management and Applications(SKIMA): 2008 (Nepal), 2006 (Thailand)
o GAME-ON-NA: (2006) USA
o DIgital Games Research Association conference (DIGRA): 2005 (Canada)
o Computer Games: AI and Mobile Systems (CGAIMS'2005, USA)
o Game Design and Technology Workshop (GDTW): 2005 (UK), 2006 (UK)
o Computer Games: Artificial Intelligence, Design and Education (CGAIDE): 2004 (UK)
o Multidisciplinary International Conference on Scheduling: Theory and Applications (MISTA): 2005 (USA), 2003 (UK)
o Parallel Computing Systems (PCS): 1999 (Mexico)
External examining:
I am external examiner for undergraduate degrees at the University of York and Manchester. I have acted as external PhD examiner for PhDs at the Universities of London (Imperial College IC-PARC), Sheffield (Engineering), Leeds (Computing), Sussex (COGS), Essex (Computer Science), Reading (Cybernetics) and Nottingham Trent University (Computing).
Consultancy:
Responsible for research, development and implementation of a system for scheduling the staff of Nationwide Building Society.
Responsible for research and development of a market-leading range of steel planning and scheduling systems.
Invited Talks:
Panel: "AI is dead! Long live online gaming!" Yorkshire Forward Game Republic meeting, Leeds, 2009.
Panel: "Realism in Video Games", National Media Museum, 2008.
"Playing Chess like HAL", Headingley Cafe Scientifique, Leeds, 2008.
"Recent Research Developments in Artificial Intelligence for Games", SKIMA conference, 2008, Kathmandu, Nepal.
"What can Universities and the Games Industry do for each other?", Yorkshire Forward Game Republic meeting, Leeds, 2007.
"Hyperheuristics", 7th EU/MEeting , University of Malaga, Spain, 2006.
"How can we get more from optimisation?", University of Akureyri, Iceland, December 2004.
"Can computers really help us to optimise productivity?", University of Exeter, June 2004.
"Recent advances in AI, Scheduling and Optimisation", @Road, Ltd., April 2004.
"Hyperheuristics and other tools which make optimisation easier to use", University of Leeds, 2003
"The Potential for Wider Use of Optimisation in Packaging", Faraday Packaging Centre Briefing, 2003, Leeds
RESEARCH STAFF:
Stephen Remde (Concept Linkage in Knowledge Repositories - funded by JISC)
Ruohui Yang (Inventory Management of Operations Scheduling at Universal AV Services, Bradford - Funded by DTI and Universal AV Services)
RESEARCH STUDENTS:
Colin Ward (AI for the world's bestselling card game - Magic:The Gathering - EPSRC-funded).
Stephen Remde (Hyperheuristics for work team scheduling - ESPRC/Trimble CASE PhD)
Wasim Siddiqui (Artificial Intelligence for RoboCup - external)
Rod Baker (Artificial Intelligence for Real-Time Strategy Games - EPSRC funded)
Tom Randall (Artificial Intelligence for Real-Time Strategy Games - EPSRC funded)
Sanat Kumar Bista (Artificial Intelligence for trust modelling - external scholarship funded)
Mohammad Azzeh (Artificial Intelligence for software engineering - external scholarship funded)
Yousef AlQasrawi (Artificial Intelligence for software engineering - external scholarship funded)
Recently Graduated:
Nic Colledge (Dynamic Work Team Scheduling - ESPRC/Trimble CASE PhD)
Konstantin Chakhlevitch (PhD in Hyperheuristics for Personnel Scheduling - University Scholarship)
Fadi Thabtah (PhD in Associative Data Mining for Hyperheuristics and Other Applications - external
Indicators of Esteem
Fellowships of Professional Institutions or equivalent
Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games
[2008]
Chair of the IEEE working group in "Interchange standards for Game Agents"
[2007]
International Conference Organisation
Programme Co-Chair of the Tenth European Conference on Evolutionary Computation and Metaheuristics in Combinatorial Optimization (EvoCOP 2010), Istanbul (Turkey)
[2010]
Programme/Refereeing Committee - IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG 2009), Italy
[2009]
Programme/Refereeing Committee - ACM Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2009), Canada
[2009]
Programme/Refereeing Committee - IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation ( CEC), Norway
[2009]
Programme Co-Chair of the Ninth European Conference on Evolutionary Computation and Metaheuristics in Combinatorial Optimization (EvoCOP 2009), Tuebingen (Germany)
[2009]
Programme/Refereeing Committee - IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG 2008), Australia
[2008]
Programme/Refereeing Committee - Simulated Evolution And Learning (SEAL 2008)
[2008]
Programme/Refereeing Committee - 10th International Conference on
Parallel Problem Solving From Nature (PPSN 2008), Dortmund, Germany
[2008]
Programme/Refereeing Committee - The 7th International Conference on the Practice and Theory of Automated Timetabling (PATAT 2008), Montréal, Canada.
[2008]
Programme/Refereeing Committee - IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation ( CEC), China
[2008]
Programme/Refereeing Committee - The Eighth European Conference on Evolutionary Computation and Metaheuristics in Combinatorial Optimization (EvoCOP 2008), Napoli (Italy)
[2008]
Co-chair of the special session committee on "Evolutionary Scheduling" at IEEE Conference on Evolutionary Computation 2007 (CEC2007), Singapore.
[2007]
Programme/Refereeing Committee - Seventh European Conference on Evolutionary Computation and Metaheuristics in Combinatorial Optimization (EvoCOP 2007), Valencia (Spain)
[2007]
Programme/Refereeing Committee - IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG 2007), Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
[2007]
International Plenary Lectures, Conference Keynote
Panel: "AI is dead! Long live online gaming!" Yorkshire Forward Game Republic/EPSRC Industry-Academia Games Network, Leeds
[2009]
Member of 4-person panel on "Realism in Video Games", Bradford Media Museum/Yorkshire Forward Game Republic.
[2008]
"Playing Chess like HAL", Headingley Café Scientifique, Leeds
[2008]
"Recent Research Developments in Artificial Intelligence for Games", International Conference on Software, Knowledge, Information Management and Applications (SKIMA 2008), Kathmandu, Nepal.
[2008]
"What can Universities and the Games Industry do for each other?", Yorkshire Forward Game Republic meeting, Leeds, UK
[2007]
Membership of Research Council Peer Review College
External expert reviewer for EU FP6 Project, Brussels, Belgium.
[2007]
Research Proposal review for the Research Council of Norway
[2007]
Other
PhD external examiner, University of Sussex (COGS)
[2008]
PhD external examiner, University of Essex (Computing)
[2007]
Member of the IEEE Games Technical Committee
[2007]
BBC "Look North" TV coverage for the Game Republic Academy and the University of Bradford MSc in AI for Games
[2007]
Game Republic Academy, games AI research in the Daily Mirror, the Yorkshire Post, the Telegraph & Argus, Techshout.com, Escapist magazine, GamesIndustry.biz, and Develop magazine
[2007]
External mock RAE assessor, University of Bedfordshire
[2007]
Review board member for the International Journal of Applied Intelligence
[2006]
Prizes, Medals, Awards
"Best Paper" nomination at the EvoCOP 2007 conference (Springer LNCS vol. 4446) (3 papers nominated for prizes out of 81 submitted, with 21 accepted for publication).
[2007]
