Sebastian Stein

ss2@ecs.soton.ac.uk

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Note: A full CV with references is available on request.

I am interested in the challenges that arise when building complex and open distributed systems, where autonomous agents interact and trade resources. Continuing from my thesis work, my research combines notions from multi-agent systems, artificial intelligence and decision theory to harness the potential of these systems. In the longer term, my aim is to play a key role in putting agent-based techniques into practice to solve real-world problems.

• 2004 - 2008: PhD in Computer Science — University of Southampton, UK
  • Title: Flexible Service Provisioning in Multi-Agent Systems
  • Supervisors: Prof Nick R. Jennings and Dr Terry R. Payne
  • Examiners: Prof Dr Jörg P. Müller and Dr Nick M. Gibbins
• 2000 - 2004: MEng in Computer Science — University of Warwick, UK
  • First Class Honours — Best graduate
  • Completed 35 courses, including Artificial Intelligence (89%), Programming (83%), Logic (96%), Algorithms (86%), Neural Computing (83%), Mathematics (84%), Discrete Mathematics (96%) and Computer System Design (94%).
• 1995 - 2000: European Baccalaureate — European School, Culham, UK
  • Overall Mark: 92.88% — Best graduate
  • Equivalent to German Abitur: 1.0
  • Subjects included Mathematics (95.1%), Physics (98.8%), Chemistry (100%), Biology (97%), German (94.7%) and English (86.4%).

• 2007 - present: University of Southampton, UK
  • Research Fellow: Working on the Aladdin, Hyperion and Autonomic Supply Chain Management projects, applying techniques from multi-agent systems to large-scale distributed and decentralised systems.
• 2004 - 2007: University of Southampton, UK
  • Lab Demonstrator: Provided programming tuition to students, gave support during practical Java tutorials and assisted with marking. Supervised software engineering project groups.
• 2003 - 2004: University of Warwick, UK
  • Teaching Assistant: Supervised first-year undergraduate students during practical lab sessions on computer organisation and hardware.
• July - September 2003: IBM UK Ltd
  • Extreme Blue Intern: Selected to participate in the prestigious Extreme Blue internship. Played key role in designing and implementing the Synapse project, a knowledge management tool extending the Eclipse platform. Filed three patent applications.
• July - September 2002: United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority
  • Software Developer: Worked as an intern at the site of the Joint European Torus (JET). Independently developed Java application for testing data acquisition API used by scientists. Implemented several databases to track software bugs and to manage staff holidays. Provided software and programming support.

2004 - 2008: PhD scholarship from BAE Systems and the EPSRC (fully funded).

2005 - 2008: Competitive scholarships from SIGART/AAAI, IFAAMAS, ECCAI and AgentLink for attending academic conferences (over £1300).

2004: Best Graduate Award for performance on MEng course (£150).

2004: IBM Achievement Award for three patent applications filed during Extreme Blue internship (£900).

See here.

• PC Member of:
  • Second International Workshop on Optimisation in Multi-Agent Systems (OPTMAS 2009).
• Reviewer for:
  • IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT 2009), Milan, Italy.
  • ACM Transactions on the Web.
  • Journal of Systems and Software (Elsevier).
  • International Journal of Computer Mathematics (Taylor & Francis).
  • IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part A: Systems and Humans.
  • Workshop on Service-Oriented Computing: Agents, Semantics, and Engineering (SOCASE 2007), Honolulu, Hawai'i, USA.
  • Workshop on Service-Oriented Computing and Agent-Based Engineering (SOCABE 2006), Hakodate, Japan.
  • Tenth International Workshop on Cooperative Information Agents (CIA 2006), Edinburgh, UK.
  • 2005 AAAI Fall Symposium on Agents and the Semantic Web, Arlington, Virginia, USA.
• Presentations given:
  • 2 invited university seminars (sample: KEG Seminar 2008).
  • 8 paper presentations at international conferences and workshops.
  • 2 thesis presentations at doctoral mentoring programmes.
  • 3 poster presentations at international conferences (sample: AAMAS 2007).

• Extensive knowledge of Java, including Swing, JDBC, JNI and networking.
• Competent programmer in C, comfortable with Pascal, SML and Prolog.
• Good knowledge of database technologies (Oracle and Access). SQL experience.
• Proficient user of Eclipse and WSAD (including plug-in development).
• Experience with software engineering processes and tools (UML, JUnit, MVC, XP).
• Knowledge of Web technologies: HTML, XML, OWL, RDF, Web services.
• Experience with mathematical software tools: Maple, Minitab and ILOG CPLEX.
• Fluent in English and German. Basic French and Mandarin.