Blue Sky Panel

The purpose of the panel is to share thoughts and suggestions about future research directions of the AAMAS research community, starting from a short-term view and moving to long-term challenges, blue visionary ideas and research opportunities that can spur controversial debate. The panel should serve as a forum for innovative, risky and provocative ideas for the AAMAS research community fostered by inter-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary viewpoints. In short, we expect the panel to foresee the future of our community within one decade and beyond. With this aim, we highly encourage the participation and involvement of the AAMAS community.

The Panelists

Prof. Cristiano Castelfranchi

Prof. Cristiano Castelfranchi

Prof. Castelfranchi has been Full Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Siena (2001-2011), Director of the Institute for Sciences and Technologies at the National Research Council (2002-2011), Professor of Psychology and Economics at LUISS Università Roma (2005-2015). The guiding aim of Castelfranchi’s research is to   study autonomous goal-directed behavior as the root of all social phenomena, at the same time highlighting how social life shapes individual cognition. The following contributions have earned him special recognition in this area: autonomous agency and goal dynamics, the cognitive structure of society, social and evolutionary functions and their relationship with individual goals, the cognitive anatomy of emotions, and pathologies of goal-directed cognition: goals and power in psychopathologies and their treatment.

He was Program Co-Chair of the first International Conference on Autonomous Agents & Multi-Agent Systems in 2002 and General Co-Chair of the 8th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems in 2009. He received the IFMAAS Most Influential Paper Award in 2013 and the Mind & Brain prize from the University of Turin for the integration of psychology in cognitive science and breakthroughs on autonomous agents and their interactions. He is also an Emeritus Member, Board of Directors of the International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, a fellow of the European Association for Artificial Intelligence since 2003, and a honorary member of the Italian Society of Behavioral & Cognitive Psycho-terapy since 1991. He also was a member of the directive board of Italian  Association for AI – AI*IA in charge of the “Agent” interest group. 

Professor Castelfranchi has published more than 250 papers in journals, books, proceedings of international conferences.

Prof. Milind Tambe

Prof. Milind Tambe

Milind Tambe is Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science and Director of Center for Research in Computation and Society at Harvard University; concurrently, he is also Director “AI for Social Good” at Google Research India. Prof. Tambe’s research focuses on advancing AI and multiagent systems research for Social Good. He is recipient of the IJCAI  John McCarthy Award, ACM/SIGAI Autonomous Agents Research Award, AAAI Robert S Engelmore Memorial Lecture award and the International Foundation for Agents and Multiagent Systems influential paper award; he is also a fellow of AAAI and ACM. For his research in and pioneering real-world deployment of security games, Prof. Tambe has received the INFORMS Wagner prize, the Rist Prize of the Military Operations Research Society, the Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation Homeland security award, as well as Commendations from the US Coast Guard, LA Airport Police, and US Federal Air Marshals Service. Prof. Tambe received his Ph.D. from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.

Prof. Sarvapali Ramchurn

Prof. Sarvapali Ramchurn

Prof. Sarvapali Ramchurn is a Professor of Artificial Intelligence, Turing Fellow, and Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology. He is the Director of the Centre for Machine Intelligence at the University of Southampton. His research is about the design of Responsible Artificial Intelligence for real-world socio-technical applications including energy systems and disaster management. His research involves applying techniques from Machine Learning, Data Science, and Game Theory.   He has won multiple best paper awards for his research and is a winner of the AXA Research Fund Award for his work on Responsible Artificial Intelligence. He is the Chief Scientist for North Star Solar Ltd and advises a number of SMEs and Defence suppliers. He has pioneered the development of AI-based disaster response systems using multi-UAV systems, AI-driven large-scale battery management for smart grids, and an AI bot that outperformed more than 5M human players (top 0.7%) in the English Premier League Fantasy Football Tournament. His papers have been cited more than 7000 times (according to Google scholar). He is originally from Mauritius and is interested in promoting applications of AI in developing countries.

Prof. Munindar Singh

Prof. Munindar Singh

Prof. Munindar P. Singh is an Alumni Distinguished Graduate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at North Carolina State University.  Munindar’s research interests include artificial intelligence and multiagent systems with applications in cybersecurity, privacy, and social computing.  He is a co-director of the DoD-sponsored Science of Security Lablet at NCSU, one of six nationwide.

Munindar was the editor-in-chief of the ACM Transactions on Internet Technology from 2012 to 2018 and the editor-in-chief of IEEE Internet Computing from 1999 to 2002.  His current editorial service includes IEEE Internet Computing, Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, and ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology.  His previous editorial service includes the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research and the Journal of Web Semantics. Munindar served on the founding board of directors of IFAAMAS, the International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems.  He also served on the founding steering committee for the IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing. Munindar was a general co-chair for the 2005 International Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems and a general co-chair for the 2016 International Conference on Service-Oriented Computing.

Munindar is a Fellow of both the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI).  He won the 2020 ACM/SIGAI Autonomous Agents Research Award as well as the 2016 IFAAMAS Influential Paper Award for his 1998 paper on agent communication. He won NC State University’s Outstanding Research Achievement Award in 2015 and 2017, was selected as an Alumni Distinguished Graduate Professor in 2016, and is a member of NCSU’s Research Leadership Academy.  Munindar’s research has been recognized with awards and sponsorship by (alphabetically) Army Research Lab, Army Research Office, Cisco Systems, Consortium for Ocean Leadership, DARPA, Department of Defense, Ericsson, IBM, Intel, National Science Foundation, and Xerox.