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- Ada Lovelace (Scholarship) Coordinator
- ECS EDI Committee
- Advisory Board for the UKRI project on Computational Agent Responsibility
- Organising Committee of AAMAS 2023
I am an Assistant Professor (Lecturer) of Computer Science in the Agents, Interaction and Complexity (AIC) research group in the Department of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, and a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Twente.
I received my PhD from the University of Twente on the application of multiagent techniques for implementing circular economy practices (2015 - 2019) and did my Master in Artificial Intelligence at Utrecht University (2013 - 2015). I also hold a Master degree in Business Administration (MBA) from University of Greenwich in a joint program with Saxion UAS (2011 - 2012).
A list of my publications is available at ORCID, DBLP, and Google Scholar.
Research
Research interests
My focus is on intelligent agent technologies, decision support concepts, and formal methods for multiagent systems. In particular, modeling the behavior of multiagent systems and logical frameworks to represent and reason about decision processes in multiagent settings. The following points characterize my general research interests:
- Agent-based computing
- Logics for multiagent systems
- Strategic decision making and game theoretic approaches
- Temporal representation and reasoning
- Virtual organizations/institutions
- Group responsibility and related socio-technical concepts
Research Projects
- Co-Investigator at ARGOS (AI-assisted Resilience Governance Systems)
- Research Fellow at AutoTrust (Human Centered Internet of Vehicles)
- Research Fellow at TAS Hub (UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Hub)
- Research Collaborator at CCAIS (Citizen-Centric AI Systems)
- PhD Researcher at SHAREBOX (Innovative Technologies for Circular Economy)
Academic Visit
From July to October 2019, I was an academic visitor at Imperial College London, visiting Prof. Nick Jennings.
Professional Services
Program Committee Member:
- The 31st International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence and the 25th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-ECAI 2022)
- The 36th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-2022)
- The 30th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-2021)
- The 35th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-2021)
- The 20th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS-2021)
- The 34th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-2020)
- The 24th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI-2020)
Reviewer:
- Journal of Artificial Intelligence (Elsevier)
- Communications of the ACM
- AI & Society (Springer)
- Annals of Operations Research (Springer)
- International Journal of Production Economics (Elsevier)
- EUMAS - European Conference on Multiagent Systems
- MATES - German Conference on Multiagent Systems
- BNAIC - Benelux Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Awards
-
Special Mention at the Blue Sky Ideas track of AAMAS 2021 (20th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems) for "Responsibility Research for Trustworthy Autonomous Systems" (joint work with Enrico Gerding, Sebastian Stein, Mehdi Dastani, Catholijn Jonker and Tim Norman).
-
Best Abstract at the 2021 Rabb Symposium on Embedding AI in Society for "Responsibility Ascription in Trustworthy Autonomous Systems" (joint work with Enrico Gerding, Sebastian Stein, Mehdi Dastani, Catholijn Jonker, Tim Norman and Gopal Ramchurn).
-
Best paper award of PRIMA 2016 (19th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems) for “Distant Group Responsibility in Multi-Agent Systems” (joint work with Mehdi Dastani).
Teaching
University of Southampton:
- 2021- : COMP2211 (Software Engineering Group Project)
- 2021- : COMP3200 (Part III Individual Project)
University of Twente (The Netherlands):
- 2016-2021: Multiagent Systems
- 2017-2020: Sustainable Business Development
- 2018-2020: Bioresource Supply Chain Management
Publications
Yazan, Devrim Murat, Yazdanpanah, Vahid and Fraccascia, Luca (2020) Learning strategic cooperative behavior in industrial symbiosis: a game-theoretic approach integrated with agent-based simulation. Business Strategy and the Environment, 29 (5), 2078-2091. (doi:10.1002/bse.2488).
Fraccascia, Luca, Yazdanpanah, Vahid, Van Capelleveen, Guido and Yazan, Devrim Murat (2019) A framework for industrial symbiosis systems for agent-based simulation. Becker, Jorg and Novikov, Dmitriy (eds.) In 2019 IEEE 21st Conference on Business Informatics (CBI). vol. 1, IEEE. pp. 419-428 . (doi:10.1109/CBI.2019.00055).
Yazdanpanah, Vahid, Dastani, Mehdi, Jamroga, Wojciech, Alechina, Natasha and Logan, Brian (2019) Strategic responsibility under imperfect information. Agmon, N., Taylor, M.E., Elkind, E. and Veloso, M. (eds.) In AAMAS '19: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems. vol. 2, International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (IFAAMAS). pp. 592-600 . (doi:10.5555/3306127.3331745).
Yazdanpanah, Vahid, Yazan, Devrim Murat and Zijm, W. Henk M. (2019) FISOF: A formal industrial symbiosis opportunity filtering method. Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 81, 247-259. (doi:10.1016/j.engappai.2019.01.005).
Yazdanpanah, Vahid, Yazan, Devrim Murat and Zijm, Henk (2018) Industrial symbiotic networks as coordinated games. In 17th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, AAMAS 2018. vol. 3, International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (IFAAMAS). pp. 2145-2147 .
Dastani, Mehdi, Sardina, Sebastian and Yazdanpanah, Vahid (2017) Norm enforcement as supervisory control. Bazzan, Ana, Villata, Serena, An, Bo, Leite, Joao and van der Torre, Leendert (eds.) In PRIMA 2017: Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems - 20th International Conference, Proceedings. vol. 10621 LNAI, Springer. pp. 330-348 . (doi:10.1007/978-3-319-69131-2_20).
Yazdanpanah, Vahid and Dastani, Mehdi (2016) Quantified group responsibility in multi-agent systems. In Proceedings of the 17th Workshop "From Objects to Agents" co-located with 18th European Agent Systems Summer School (EASSS 2016), Catania, Italy, July 29-30, 2016. vol. 1664, pp. 44-49 .
Yazdanpanah, Vahid and Dastani, Mehdi (2016) Quantified degrees of group responsibility. Dignum, Virginia, Noriega, Pablo, Sensoy, Murat and Sichman, Jaime Simão (eds.) In Coordination, Organizations, Institutions, and Normes in Agent Systems XI - COIN 2015 International Workshops COIN@AAMAS, Revised Selected Papers. vol. 9628, Springer. pp. 418-436 . (doi:10.1007/978-3-319-42691-4_23).
Yazdanpanah, Vahid, Yazan, Devrim Murat and Zijm, W. Henk M. (2017) Normative industrial symbiotic networks: a position paper. Carrascosa, Carlos, Julian Inglada, Vicente, Criado Pacheco, Natalia and Osman, Nardine (eds.) In Multi-Agent Systems and Agreement Technologies. EUMAS 2016, AT 2016. vol. 10207, Springer. pp. 314-321 . (doi:10.1007/978-3-319-59294-7_26).
Yazdanpanah, Vahid and Dastani, Mehdi (2016) Distant group responsibility in multi-agent systems. Baldoni, Matteo, Hirayama, Katsutoshi, Torroni, Paolo, Son, Tran Cao and Chopra, Amit K. (eds.) In PRIMA 2016: Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems. vol. 9862 LNCS, Springer. pp. 261-278 . (doi:10.1007/978-3-319-44832-9_16).
Fraccascia, Luca, Yazdanpanah, Vahid, van Capelleveen, Guido and Yazan, Devrim Murat (2021) Energy-based industrial symbiosis: a literature review for circular energy transition. Environment, Development and Sustainability, 23 (4), 4791–4825. (doi:10.1007/s10668-020-00840-9).
Yazdanpanah, Vahid, Dastani, Mehdi, Fatima, Shaheen, Jennings, Nicholas R., Yazan, Devrim Murat and Zijm, W. Henk M. (2020) Task coordination in multiagent systems. Nineteenth International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, Auckland, New Zealand, Auckland, New Zealand. 09 - 13 May 2020. pp. 2056-2058 . (doi:10.5555/3398761.3399073).
Yazdanpanah, Vahid, Mehryar, Sara, Jennings, Nicholas R., Surminski, Swenja, Siegert, Martin J. and van Hillegersberg, Jos (2020) Multiagent climate change research. Nineteenth International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, Auckland, New Zealand, Auckland, New Zealand. 09 - 13 May 2020. pp. 1726-1731 . (doi:10.5555/3398761.3398962).
Yazdanpanah, Vahid and Dastani, Mehdi (2018) Quantified degrees of group responsibility: extended abstract. 27th Benelux Artificial Intelligence Conference, , Hasselt, Belgium. 05 - 06 Nov 2015. 2 pp .
Yazdanpanah, Vahid, Yazan, Devrim Murat and Zijm, W. Henk M. (2020) A multiagent framework for coordinating industrial symbiotic networks. 21st Workshop "From Objects to Agents" (WOA 2020), online virtual conference. 14 - 16 Sep 2020. pp. 38-53 .
Yazdanpanah, Vahid, Yazan, Devrim Murat, Hillegersberg, Jos van and Dastani, Mehdi (2019) An introduction to engineering multiagent industrial symbiosis systems: potentials and challenges. Bordini, Rafael H., Dennis, Louise A. and Lespérance, Yves (eds.) In Pre-proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Engineering Multi-Agent Systems (EMAS 2019). Springer. 10 pp .
Yazdanpanah, Vahid, Yazan, Devrim Murat and Zijm, W. Henk M. (2020) Coordinating multiagent industrial symbiosis 26pp.
Yazdanpanah, Vahid, Yazan, Devrim Murat and Zijm, W. Henk M. (2020) Dynamics and allocation of transaction cost in multiagent industrial symbiosis
Yazdanpanah, Vahid, Dastani, Mehdi, Fatima, Shaheen, Jennings, Nicholas R., Yazan, Devrim Murat and Zijm, W. Henk M. (2021) Multiagent task coordination as task allocation plus task responsibility. In Multi-Agent Systems and Agreement Technologies. EUMAS 2020, AT 2020. vol. 12520, Springer. pp. 571-588 . (doi:10.1007/978-3-030-66412-1_37).
Yazdanpanah, Vahid, Gerding, Enrico H., Stein, Sebastian, Dastani, Mehdi, Jonker, Catholijn M., Norman, Timothy J. and Ramchurn, Sarvapali D. (2021) Responsibility ascription in trustworthy autonomous systems. Embedding AI in Society, North Carolina State University, Raleigh (online), United States. 18 - 19 Feb 2021. 5 pp . (In Press)
Yazdanpanah, Vahid, Gerding, Enrico, Stein, Sebastian, Dastani, Mehdi, Jonker, Catholijn M. and Norman, Timothy (2021) Responsibility Research for Trustworthy Autonomous Systems. 20th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, London (Virtual), Virtual, United Kingdom. 03 - 07 May 2021. pp. 57-62 . (doi:10.48448/w5y9-qk13).
Gomer, Richard, Stein, Sebastian, Gerding, Enrico, schraefel, m.c., Maple, Carsten and Yazdanpanah, Vahid (2020) AutoTrust in 2020 and beyond: The landscape, stakeholders and possible futures of the Internet of Vehicles The Autotrust Platform
Yazdanpanah, Vahid, Gerding, Enrico H., Stein, Sebastian, Cirstea, Corina, schraefel, m.c., Norman, Timothy J. and Jennings, Nicholas R. (2021) Collective responsibility in multiagent settings. ACM Collective Intelligence Conference 2021 (CI-2021), Virtual, Copenhagen, Denmark. 29 - 30 Jun 2021. 4 pp . (In Press)
Yazdanpanah, Vahid, Stein, Sebastian, Gerding, Enrico H. and schraefel, m.c. (2021) Multiagent strategic reasoning in the IoV: A logic-based approach. ACM Collective Intelligence Conference 2021 (CI-2021), Virtual, Copenhagen, Denmark. 29 - 30 Jun 2021. 4 pp . (In Press)
Yazdanpanah, Vahid and Dastani, Mehdi (2021) Formal methods for responsibility reasoning in multiagent systems. Third International Workshop on Formal Methods in Artificial Intelligence (FMAI 2021), Virtual, London, United Kingdom. 15 - 16 Apr 2021. 1 pp .
Yazdanpanah, Vahid, Yazan, Devrim Murat and Zijm, W. Henk M. (2020) Transaction cost allocation in industrial symbiosis: a multiagent systems approach. Cao, Lu, Kosters, Walter and Lijffijt, Jefrey (eds.) In Proceedings of the 32nd Benelux Conference on Artificial Intelligence (BNAIC-2020). Benelux Association for Artificial Intelligence (BNVKI). pp. 324-338 .
Yazdanpanah, Vahid, Stein, Sebastian, Gerding, Enrico and Jennings, Nicholas R. (2021) Applying strategic reasoning for accountability ascription in multiagent teams. The IJCAI-21 Workshop on Artificial Intelligence Safety (AISafety 2021), Virtual. 21 - 22 Aug 2021. 9 pp .
Yazdanpanah, Vahid, Gerding, Enrico and Stein, Sebastian (2021) Formal Methods to Verify and Ensure Self-Coordination Abilities in the Internet of Vehicles. In Computational Logistics: 12th International Conference, ICCL 2021, Enschede, The Netherlands, September 27–29, 2021, Proceedings. Springer.. (In Press)
Edmonds, Bruce and Yazdanpanah, Vahid (2021) Open, Contingent, Adaptive and Reactive Resilience: Using ABM and other tools to facilitate our collective survival in an uncertain world. 16th Annual Social Simulation Conference, Virtual, Kraków, Poland. 20 - 24 Sep 2021. (In Press)
Yazdanpanah, Vahid, Stein, Sebastian, Gerding, Enrico and Jennings, Nicholas R. (2021) Task-oriented accountability in autonomous systems. The UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Programme: All Hands Meeting, Virtual, Southampton, United Kingdom. 14 - 16 Sep 2021.
Zavvos, Efstathios, Gerding, Enrico, Yazdanpanah, Vahid, Maple, Carsten, Stein, Sebastian and schraefel, m.c. (2021) Privacy and Trust in the Internet of Vehicles. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems. (doi:10.1109/TITS.2021.3121125). (In Press)
Yazdanpanah, Vahid, Gerding, Enrico, Stein, Sebastian, Cirstea, Corina, schraefel, m.c., Norman, Timothy and Jennings, Nicholas R. (2021) Different Forms of Responsibility in Multiagent Systems: Sociotechnical Characteristics and Requirements. IEEE Internet Computing, 25 (6), 15-22. (doi:10.1109/MIC.2021.3107334).
Edmonds, Bruce and Yazdanpanah, Vahid (2022) A modelling strategy for living with deep uncertainty: steps towards open, contingent, adaptive and reactive resilience. Workshop on Understanding and Modeling Complex Risks in Coupled Human-Environment Systems, online. 08 - 10 Feb 2022.
Mehryar, Sara, Surminski, Swenja and Yazdanpanah, Vahid (2022) Compound risks and challenges for governing resilience in cities. Workshop on Understanding and Modeling Complex Risks in Coupled Human-Environment Systems, online. 08 - 10 Feb 2022.
Dastani, Mehdi and Yazdanpanah, Vahid (2022) Responsibility of AI systems. AI & Society. (doi:10.1007/s00146-022-01481-4).
Ong, Yi Cheng, Protopapas, Nicos, Yazdanpanah, Vahid, Gerding, Enrico and Stein, Sebastian (2022) Preference-aware dynamic ridesharing. The 6th International Workshop on Agent-Based Modelling of Urban Systems, Auckland, New Zealand (Virtual), Auckland, New Zealand. 10 May 2022. 5 pp .
Cipolina-Kun, Lucia, Yazdanpanah, Vahid, Gerding, Enrico and Stein, Sebastian (2022) Coalition formation in ridesharing with walking options. ICLR 2022 Workshop on Gamification and Multiagent Solutions, Co-located with ICLR (virtually). 29 Apr 2022.
Liu, Mengya, Yazdanpanah, Vahid, Stein, Sebastian and Gerding, Enrico (2022) Multiobjective Routing in Sustainable Mobility-On-Demand. ATT'22: Workshop Agents in Traffic and Transportation, July 25, 2022, Vienna, Austria: Part of IJCAI 2022, Austria, Vienna, Austria. 23 - 29 Jul 2022. (In Press)
Divband Soorati, Mohammad, Gerding, Enrico, Marchioni, Enrico, Naumov, Pavel, Norman, Timothy, Ramchurn, Sarvapali, Rastegari, Baharak, Sobey, Adam, Stein, Sebastian, Tarapore, Danesh, Yazdanpanah, Vahid and Zhang, Jie (2022) From Intelligent Agents to Trustworthy Human-Centred Multiagent Systems. AI Communications.
Contact
Email: V.Yazdanpanah@soton.ac.uk
A team of students and graduates from the University of Southampton are 3D printing thousands of emergency face shields to help the NHS address the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Southampton team are working around the clock with 40 printers based in student houses and a city warehouse production line.
Fourth year MEng Electronic Engineering student Bradley McLaughlin has borrowed four 3D printers from an Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) Project Laboratory as he helps produce and assemble the shields.
Project Hydra has raised over £12,000 through a GoFundMe campaign as volunteers aim to produce 4,000 masks during the global pandemic.
"I want to use my extra time to help keep those working on the frontline safe,” Bradley says. “The project started with a very small team, including my housemate, and we would pull together to have group sessions to prepare the masks.
"I immediately wondered if it would be possible to borrow the ECS printers to up our productions; to which I received a hugely positive response from the department. They even gave us some printing filament, allowing us to get started right away."
Project Hydra has grown to now include close to 40 volunteers on different parts of the production line.
Bradley's support in the quality assurance and assembly teams includes sanding rough imperfections from the 3D-printed headbands, cutting the sheets of clear plastic to size and attaching elastic to the unit.
All shields are sterilised before being packaged in sealed containers and distributed to hospitals, GPs and care workers across England and as far as Wales.
The project is led by Aeronautics and Astronautics student Fergus McKenzie-Wilson, who is also Chief Technology Officer of the drone company Hydra, following a request from a GP in Winchester.
"This is a time in which uncertainty is at an unprecedented level, but we can take comfort in the certainty that we can work together with industry, the health service and the general public to collectively solve the great challenges facing us," he says.
"We are immensely grateful for the equipment supplied by the University of Southampton, and generosity of companies such as Motion Robotics, who have been kind enough to loan us a large supply of 3D printers. Their support has been vital to the campaign's success."
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Off-grid renewable energy solutions will be introduced to mobile telecom towers in developing countries through a new collaboration involving researchers at the University of Southampton.
London-based Global Tower Solutions will work with machine learning experts in Electronics and Computer Science on the new project funded by the national SPRINT business support programme.
The partnership will develop a solution that is estimated to cost around half that of existing diesel generators, while also improving access to mobile communication services in targeted countries in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
Professor Gopal Ramchurn, Director of the University’s Centre for Machine Intelligence, said: “Mobile phone towers make a significant contribution to CO2 emissions and Global Tower Solutions is looking to decrease carbon emissions through a reduction in diesel powered mobile phone towers.
“Through the SPRINT project, the University will apply machine learning techniques to high- and low-resolution datasets, drone imagery, census data, data from satellite images and other data available around settlements. This will help to define the business case for renewable energy for phone towers which can then be delivered to mobile phone operators to identify the most appropriate renewable energy sources and which regions need mobile communications the most.”
Mobile communication has been shown to be a key factor in relieving poverty by providing access to information and financial services that drive trade, education, reduction in poverty and better health. The project will also lead to the reduced use of diesel and improved sustainability of small businesses that underpin developing economies.
Mark Eastwood, Chief Executive Officer of Global Tower Solutions, said: “The renewable energy market has evolved over last 10-12 years and we set the company up 3-4 years ago with the aim of moving from diesel generation towards solar power and storage. We wanted to remove the diesel generation price point using sustainable, non-polluting storage solutions, particularly in emerging markets.
“The SPRINT project will help us to explore the impact of renewable generating assets on both telco tower businesses and local communities, using business insights from datasets. Working with the University of Southampton, we can access expertise that can support us in high precision localised intelligence including valuable business insights, topological mapping, individual patterns of usage and movement of local population.”
SPRINT (SPace Research and Innovation Network for Technology) helps businesses through the commercial exploitation of space data and technologies. The £4.8m programme provides unprecedented access to university space expertise and facilities. Southampton researchers are contributing to several SPRINT projects, including a recently announced collaboration with Smallspark Space Systems that is using AI to optimise aerostructure designs.
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Thousands of protective respirator hoods developed by researchers at the University of Southampton are being introduced to hospital wards for staff treating patients with COVID-19.
Experts in Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) worked with engineers, medical staff and industry partners to rapidly prototype the small portable units, consisting of a fabric hood which covers the wearer's head and a plastic visor to protect their face.
University Hospital Southampton is the first healthcare provider to widely introduce the pioneering respirator hood, which was developed into a prototype in just a week, then tested on wards and manufactured at scale in less than a month.
The first deliveries of a 5,000 unit order have arrived and are now subject to an initial clinical evaluation as a replacement for surgical masks in selected areas.
Professor Hywel Morgan, of ECS, said: "This is an excellent example of industry, universities and hospitals combining their expertise and answering the call to develop healthcare solutions for staff and patients in this crisis.
"We are really grateful to our partners at McLaren, Kemp Sails and INDO on behalf of Baynhams for their commitment in working around the clock with us to getting this from a concept to a working prototype in a matter of days."
Read the full story on the main news page.
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uture Worlds is a unique and vibrant startup network at the University of Southampton which helps nurture aspiring entrepreneurs and cutting-edge technologies