Title:
Multi-agent systems, from theory to practise.

Ann Nowé

Abstract: 
Over the past years important contributions to field of Multi-agent systems have been made. However, its adoption in industry is still limited. The fact that there is no one size fits all solution, for sure has an impact on this. However, other aspects also play a role. In this talk I will propose some actions we can take to increase the adoption of learning agents in real-life applications.

  Ann Nowé is a full professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), where she leads the Artificial Intelligence Lab Brussels. She graduated in 1987 at the University of Ghent in Mathematics with a minor in Computer Science, and obtained her PhD in 1994 at the VUB in collaboration with Queen Mary and Westfield college London, UK. Her research focuses mainly on autonomous learning systems, and in particular on Reinforcement Learning. In addition, she studies how the resulting learned models can be made more transparent, such that they can be more easily interpreted by domain experts. Her research considers both theoretical and experimental aspects, as well as a wide spectrum of applications, such as robotics, telecommunication, bioinformatics, security, smart grids and smart appliances in the context of Internet of Things. She was a board member of both BNVKI and EURAI, respectively BeNeLux and European associations for Artificial Intelligence, and is currently a board member of IFAAMAS (International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems) and a member of the FWO (Flemish Funds Scientific Research) commission on Informatics and Artificial Intelligence. She is also the Challenge Leader for Multi-agent Systems in the Flemish AI plan.

Slides