Dr. Chairi Kiourt is a research associate with the ATHENA - Research and Innovation Centre in Information, Communication and Knowledge Technologies - Xanthi’s Division, multimedia department since 2014. Also, as of December 2017, heis PostDoctoral researcher with the Hellenic Open University, School of Science and Technology, and as of 2018, visiting Lecturer at the Department of Informatics Engineering, Eastern Macedonia and Thrace Institute of Technology, Greece.
In 2003, he received his BSc degree in Electrical Engineering from the Electrical Engineering Department of the Eastern Macedonia and Thrace Institute of Technology, Greece. He also received an M.Sc. in System Engineering and Management in the specialty area: A. Information and Communication Systems Management from the Democritus University of Thrace, Greece. In 2017, received his PhD in Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering from the Hellenic Open University. He has participated in several national and European research programs and co- authored to the writing of several scientific publications in international peer-reviewed journals and conferences with judges in the fields of collective artificial intelligence, multi-agent systems, reinforcement learning agents, virtual worlds, virtual museums and gamification.

To tackle the scientific challenges proposed by landscape dynamics and cooperation processes, I have developed a research methodology based on field work and companion modelling (ComMod) combined with the formalisation of the observed processes and agents based models.
This approach offers the possibility to understand : spatial, social, cultural and / or economic conditions that take place on territories, and to provide prospective scenarios.
These methods have been applied in various contexts: steep slope vineyards landscapes (2011), water resource management cooperation (2015), vegetation cover in dry climate (2017). The established research networks are still active through sustained collaborations and activities.

My technical expertise grew and evolved through investment in several workgroups: MAPS Team (Modelling Applied to Space Phenomena), OSGeo (president of the OSGeo’s French chapter between 2013 and 2016, member of the OSGeo-international chapter since 2015), various initiatives around modelling, exploration and sensibility analysis of spatial patterns behaviours, and more generally in Free Software communities.

Master Degree

I discovered at the same time Agent-Based Modeling method and Companion Modelling approach during my master degrees (engeenering and artificial intelligence and decision) internship at CIRAD in 2005 and 2006 where I had the opportunity to participate as a modeller to a ComMod process (Farolfi et al., 2010).

PhD

Then, during my PhD in computer Science applied to Modeling and Simulation, I learned the Theory of Modeling and Simulation and the Discrete EVent System specification formalism and proposed a conceptual, formal and operational framework to evaluate simulation models based on the way models are used instead of their ability to reproduce the target system behavior (Bonté et al., 2012). Applied to the surveillance of Epidemics, this work was rather theoritical but very educative and structuring to formulate my further models and research questions about modeling and simulation.

Post-Doc

From 2011 to 2013, I worked on viability theory applied to forest management at the Compex System Lab of Irstea (now Inrae) and learned about the interest of agregated models for analytical results (Bonté et al, 2012; Mathias et al, 2015).

G-EAU

Since 2013, I’m working for Inrae at the joint The Joint Research Unit “Water Management, Actors, Territories” (UMR G-EAU) where I’m involved in highly engaging interdisciplinary researches such as:
- The Multi-plateforme International Summer School about Agent Based Modelling and Simulation (MISSABMS)
- The development of the CORMAS (COmmon Pool Resources Multi-Agents Systems) agent-based modeling and simulation Platform (Bommel et al., 2019)
- Impacts of the adaptation to global changes using computerised serious games (Bonté et al., 2019; Bonté et al. , 2021)
- The use of experimentation to study social behaviors (Bonté et al. 2019b)
- The impact of information systems in SES trajectories (Paget et al., 2019a)
- Adaptation and transformations of traditional water management and infrastructures systems (Idda et al., 2017)
- Situational multi-agent approaches for collective irrigation (Richard et al., 2019)
- Combining psyhcological and economical experiments to study relations bewteen common pool resources situations, economical behaviours and psychological attitudes.

I am an agent-based simulation modeler and social scientist living near Cambridge, UK.

In recent years, I have developed supply chain models for Durham University (Department of Anthropology), epidemiological models for the Covid-19 pandemic, and agent-based land-use models with Geography PhD students at Cambridge University.

Previously, I spent three years at Ludwig-Maximillians University, Munich, working on Human-Environment Relations and Sustainability, and over two and a half years at Surrey University, working on Innovation with Nigel Gilbert in the Centre for Research in Social Simulation (CRESS). The project at Surrey resulted in a book in 2014, “Simulating Innovation: Computer-based Tools for Rethinking Innovation”. My PhD topic, modeling human agents who energise or de-energise each other in social interactions, drew upon the work of sociologist Randall Collins. My multi-disciplinary background includes degrees in Operational Research (MSc) and Philosophy (BA/MA).

I got hooked on agent-based modeling and complexity science some time around 2000, via the work of Brian Arthur, Stuart Kauffman, Robert Axelrod and Duncan Watts (no relation!).

About me
Name: Dr. Julia Kasmire
Position: Post-doctoral Research Fellow
Where: UK Data Services and Cathie Marsh Institute at the University of Manchester.
Short Bio
2004 - BA in Linguistics from the University of California in Santa Cruz, including college honours, departmental honours and one year of study at the University of Barcelona.
2008 - MSc in the Evolution of Language and Cognition from the University of Edinburgh, with a thesis on the effects of various common simulated population features used when modelling language learning agents.
2015 - PhD from Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management at the Delft University of Technology under the supervision of Prof. dr. ig. Margot Wijnen, Prof. dr. ig. Gerard P.J. Dijkema, and Dr. ig. Igor Nikolic. My PhD thesis and propositions can be found online, as are my publications and PhD research projects (most of which addressed how to study transitions to sustainability in the Dutch horticultural sector from a computational social science and complex adaptive systems perspective).
Additional Resources
Many of the NetLogo models I that built or used can be found here on my CoMSES/OpenABM pages.
My ResearchGate profile and my Academia.org profile provide additional context and outputs of my work, including some data sets, analytical resources and research skills endorsements.
My LinkedIn profile contains additional insights into my education and experience as well as skills and knowledge endorsements.
I try to use Twitter to share what is happening with my research and to keep abreast of interesting discussions on complexity, chaos, artificial intelligence, evolution and some other research topics of interest.
You can find my SCOPUS profile and my ORCID profile as well.

Dr. William G. Kennedy, “Bill,” is continuing to learn in a third career, this time as an academic, a computational social scientist.

His first a career was in military service as a Naval Officer, starting with the Naval Academy, Naval PostGraduate School (as the first computer science student from the Naval Academy), and serving during the Cold War as part of the successful submarine-based nuclear deterrent. After six years of active duty service, he served over two decades in the Naval Reserves commanding three submarine and submarine-related reserve units and retiring after 30 years as a Navy Captain with several personal honors and awards.

His second career was in civilian public service: 10 years at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and 15 years with the Department of Energy. At the NRC he rose to be an advisor to the Executive Director for Operations and the authority on issues concerning the reliance on human operators for reactor safety, participating in two fly-away accident response teams. He left the NRC for a promotion and to lead, as technical director, the entrepreneurial effort to explore the use of light-water and accelerator technologies for the production of nuclear weapons materials. That work led to him becoming the senior policy officer responsible for strategic planning and Departmental performance commitments, leading development of the first several DOE strategic plans and formal performance agreements between the Secretary of Energy and the President.

Upon completion of doctoral research in Artificial Intelligence outside of his DOE work, he began his third career as a scientist. That started with a fully funded, three-year post-doctoral research position in cognitive robotics at the Naval Research Laboratory sponsored by the National Academy of Science and expanding his AI background with research in experimental Cognitive Science. Upon completion, he joined the Center for Social Complexity, part of the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University in 2008 where he is now the Senior Scientific Advisor. His research interests range from cognition at the individual level to models of millions of agents representing individual people. He is currently leading a multi-year project to characterize the reaction of the population of a mega-city to a nuclear WMD (weapon of mass destruction) event.

Dr. Kennedy holds a B.S. in mathematics from the U.S. Naval Academy, and Master of Science in Computer Science from the Naval PostGraduate School, and a Ph.D. in Information Technology from George Mason University and has a current security clearance. Dr. Kennedy is a member of Sigma Xi, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and a life member of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He is a STEM volunteer with the Senior Scientists and Engineers/AAAS Volunteer Program for K-12 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education in the DC-area schools.