rAIson: a story of scientific research
raison is a story of researchers and the fruit of several years of scientific research.
Professor
Antonis KAKAS
Professor of Computer Science
University of Cyprus (Cyprus)
CSO and Co-founder of Argument Theory
Antonis Kakas (CSO and co-founder of AT) is a Professor at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Cyprus. He obtained a first class degree in Mathematics from Imperial College, London in 1980 and then in 1984 a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics also from Imperial College, London. During the period 1984-1989, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher in physics at Kings College, London, the University of Zurich and Imperial College, London where in parallel he acquired a M.Sc. degree in Computer Science. Since 1989 he is working in Computer Science and in particular in the area of Artificial Intelligence. In December 1991, he moved to the University of Cyprus as one of the first three faculty members of the Department of Computer Science. He has helped to set up the Department and the University which started accepting students in September 1992. During 2006-2010 he served as the Vice Rector for International Relations, Finance and Administration at the University of Cyprus, responsible for its annual budget of around 100 million euro.
His main research interests are Computational Logic with emphasis on deductive and inductive reasoning, argumentation, temporal reasoning, and application problems in areas of Cognitive Systems and Computational Bioscience. He is one of the founders and developers of the area of Abductive Logic Programming, with his interest and work in Argumentation running in parallel to this. Recently, with others he has proposed, Argumentation Logic, as a logic that offers a new perspective for logic-based AI that facilitates the synthesis of Cognitive Psychology with theory and methods from AI. This has been applied to the problem of automating Story Comprehension. Currently, he is working on the development of a new framework of Cognitive Programming that aims to offer a programming environment that can be naturally used by human users at large.
He has co-developed several research software systems for Abductive Reasoning (ACLP, A-system and Prologica), Argumentation (GORGIAS), Abductive Learning (ACL), Temporal Reasoning using Argumentation (E-RES) and Story Comprehension through Argumentation (STAR), all publicly available. In particular, different groups have used the GORGIAS system in several real-life applications. He has co-developed new tools, GORGIAS-B and COGNICA, for Cognitive Argumentation and its use in applications.
He is a member of the editorial board of several journals, such as Journal of Applied Logic, AI Communications, Journal of Algorithms in Cognition, Informatics and Logic and the Journal of Theory and Practice of Logic Programming. He has chaired or co-chaired several international conferences, such as the 11th International Symposium on Logical Formalization on Commonsense Reasoning, Commonsense-2013, the15th European Conference on Logics in Artificial Intelligence, JELIA 2016, and the 5th International Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Cognition, AIC 2017. Antonis Kakas is also a founding member of the international scientific meetings «Abduction and Induction in Artificial Intelligence (AIAI)» which began in 1996 and the international conference «Argumentation and Multi-Agent Systems (ArgMas)» which started in 2003, as well as of the Panhellenic Logic Symposium (PLS) starting this in 1997 in Cyprus.
He was the principal investigator in eleven research programs at the University of Cyprus with external funding from the European Union, including the COMPULOG II project, which was the first research program to the University with external funding. During the period 1999-2003, he served as the National Contact Point for Cyprus in the area of Information and Telecommunication of the 5th EU Framework Programme and thus contributed to the first participation of Cyprus in the research framework programs of the European Union. He is the National Contact Point for Cyprus in the flagship EU project on AI, AI4EU (2019-2021).
Professor
Pavlos MORAITIS
Professor of Computer Science
Université Paris Cité (France)
CEO and Co-founder of Argument Theory
Pavlos Moraitis (CEO and co-founder of AT) is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Paris (France) and head of the DAI (Distributed Artificial Intelligence) research group, which is part of the Laboratory of Informatics Paris Descartes (LIPADE). He was director of LIPADE for the period 2009-2019. His academic degrees include a Diploma in Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece (or National Metsovion Polytechnic), a M.Sc. in Computer Science, a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence and an Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches (Habilitation for Research Supervising) in Artificial Intelligence, all from the Paris Dauphine University (France).
Before starting his academic career he held a consulting engineer position with Capgemini, a leading software advisory company. He was responsible for the scientific aspects of work involving agent technology in several European and industrial projects. He collaborates with software companies (SingularLogic-Greece) and industrial companies (Thales-France) on the application of agent technology in real world applications.
His research activity concerns both theoretical and applied research in the field of Artificial Intelligence and more particularly in the area of Intelligent (Software or Robotic) Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). His main research interests include: computational argumentation, automated negotiation, automated decision making, multi-agent planning and agent-oriented software engineering.
He has made several contributions in the field of computational argumentation as co-author of several articles in major international conferences and journals proposing theoretical work on different aspects of this field, including an argumentation framework called Logic Programming with Priorities (LPP) and its associated system called GORGIAS. He has also co-developed a preference-based argumentation framework (PAF), a dynamic argumentation framework called CAF (Control Argumentation Framework) and recently an argument strength-based argumentation framework (StrAF)
He has used his theoretical work in argumentation in multi-agent systems to model automated negotiations between agents, complex decision-making problems (and sometimes distributed), communication protocols and more generally dialogues between agents. His theoretical work on argumentation has also been applied in different real-world domains such as ambient intelligence, ambient assisted living, medical diagnosis, printed / handwritten texts discrimination, automatic product pricing, automated risk and compliance management.
He was an elected member of the Board of Directors of the European Association for Multi-Agent Systems (EURAMAS) (2012-2018), co-founder of the International Workshop Series on “Argumentation in Multi-Agent Systems” (and co-chair of the 1st, 2nd, 5th and 12th edition of this Workshop), general chair and co-organizer of the 8th European Conference on Multi-Agent Systems (EUMAS'10) and finance chair of the 13th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS'14).
