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Professor Jennings divides his time between his posts as a Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Government and Professor of Computer Science in the School of Electronics and Computer Science at Southampton University, where he heads the Agents, Interaction and Complexity Group. He is involved with the agent start-ups aroxo and aerogility.

Nick is an internationally-recognised authority in the areas of agent-based computing and intelligent systems. His research covers both the science and the engineering of such systems. Specifically, he has undertaken fundamental research on automated bargaining, auctions, mechanism design, trust and reputation, coalition formation and decentralised control. He has also pioneered the application of multi-agent technology; developing some of the first real-world systems (in domains such as business process management, energy systems/smart grid, sensor networks, disaster response, telecommunications, and eDefence) and generally advocating the area of agent-oriented software engineering.

In undertaking this research, he has attracted grant income of over £20M (mainly from EPSRC), published more than 500 articles (with some 250 co-authors) and graduated 35 PhD students (two of whom have won the BCS/CPHC Distinguished Dissertation Award). He is recognised as highly cited by ISI Web of Science in both the Engineering and the Computer Science categories. With nearly 50,000 citations in Google Scholar, he is the second most highly cited researcher in the area of artificial intelligence (according to Microsoft's Academic Search system) and has an h-index of 97 (the second top non-American according to Palsberg). He has received a number of international awards for his research: the Computers and Thought Award (the premier award for a young AI scientist and the first European-based recipient in the Award's 30 year history), the ACM Autonomous Agents Research Award and an IEE Achievement Medal. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, the British Computer Society, the Institution of Engineering and Technology (formerly the IEE), the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (AISB), the German AI Institute (DFKI) and the European Artificial Intelligence Association (ECCAI) and a member of Academia Europaea and the UK Computing Research Committee (UKCRC).

Nick was the founding Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems and a founding director of the International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems. He has also led teams that have won competitions in the areas of: the Iterated Prisoners' Dilemma (the 20th Anniversary competitions in 2004 and 2005), RoboCup Rescue (the Infrastructure competition in 2007), Agent Trust and Reputation (the ART competitions in 2006 and 2007), the Lemonade Stand Game (2009 & 2010), Market Design (the TAC CAT competition in 2007), and technology-mediated social mobilization and rapid information gathering (the US Department of State's TAG Challenge in 2012).

Wordle from publications from 2005 onwards

Latest News

Smart software: How it can change our energy habits

‘Energy avatars’ in our homes that could advise us on how best to use our energy, and even prompt us on changing appliances to gain better cost savings, are part of the future of energy use described by Professor Nick Jennings in a new video on the BBC website.

Making crowdsourcing more reliable

Researchers from Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton are designing incentives for collection and verification of information to make crowdsourcing more reliable.

Disaster drones: How robot teams can help in a crisis

Research on drone technology and disaster management led by Professor Nick Jennings and highlighted by the BBC could prove vital in improving the response of emergency services and populations to disaster management.