Liz Sonenberg

Contact

• Postal address:

  Professor Liz Sonenberg
  Department of Information Systems
  The University of Melbourne
  Parkville 3010, Australia
  
  Note: news about the University can be found at http://newsroom.melbourne.edu/

• Email: l.sonenberg "at" unimelb "dot" edu "dot" au
  
  • Note: As of August 2009, I have taken on the part-time role of Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research Collaboration) in Melbourne Research - with responsibility for shared research infrastructure and for ensuring the effective establishment of cross-disciplinary research institutes. University-wide activities I take an active interest in, include:
    • the Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative
    • the Melbourne Research Institutes
      
• Phone:
  • Melbourne Research +61 3 9035 8619
  • Department of Information Systems + 61 3 8344 1513
    
• Physical location:
  
  A detailed map (pdf) of the University of Melbourne shows the entire campus - a partial aerial view including Barry Street is here
  • My PVC (Research Collaboration) office is room 5.06, at 161 Barry Street - the Alan Gilbert Building (Building 104) - take the lift to Level 5 and head to the East end of the floor
  • My Department of Information Systems office is 3.53, at 111 Barry Street - the ICT Building (Building 105) - take the lift to Level 3 and turn right, twice, out of the lift lobby
  • There are regular trams to the University from the city along Swanston Street (any north-bound tram) and Elizabeth St (all trams except for 57). Parking may be available in the surrounding streets or in the nearbyUniversity car park (enter via Bouverie or Berkeley Streets) for a fee.

Research interests

I am leader of the Agent Research activity in the Department of Information Systems. This is part of the overall Agent Lab research activity that is a collaborative endeavour with the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering. I am also a participant in the Interaction Design Group in the Department of Information Systems.

I have research interests in aspects of reasoning machinery as may be useful for the design of systems that exhibit complex collaborative behaviours. For some years my major research efforts have been in the foundations and applications of systems within the BDI (Belief, Desire, Intention) agent paradigm, with a particular focus on teamwork, but I have also studied various elements of non-monotonic reasoning. I have also explored opportunities for the use of agent technologies to meet the challenges faced by designers and developers of mobile, context aware applications. Industry collaborations have included the Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute, Agent Oriented Software P/L, Clarinox P/L, the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO), and Neuragenix P/L. I have also been involved with projects receiving support from Hewlett Packard and Microsoft. I have worked with collaborators in Psychology and Education on studies involving human reasoning processes.

This page of stories and links, maintained by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) discusses the type of work that I find interesting.

My particular interests are in:

• Multi-agent systems - especially collaboration and teamwork
• Automated negotiation and decision support
• Context-aware computing and technologies for personalisation
• Computational modelling of human problem solving

The integrating theme of my research is the conceptualisation and construction of more adaptive, distributed, and intelligent information systems. Much of the work focuses on agent technology, which views a distributed system in terms of interacting autonomous software entities. Using the agent metaphor can allow system developers to adopt a level of abstraction in design that is useful for modelling complex tasks and environments, and in building software systems that are robust in the face of change and unexpected events. An important aspect of the research is the requirement of the human-machine interface and consequent implications for the development of computational mechanisms to support decision-making in complex settings.

Current projects include:

• Cross-Community Information Systems: Understanding Technology-Practice Fit in Healthcare - Funded 2008-2010 Australian Research Council - with Robert Johnston, Steve Howard, Rens Scheepers (DIS)

• Dynamic personalisation for assisted navigation of information rich, physical environments - the Kubadji project - Funded 2007-2009 Australian Research Council - with Tim Baldwin and Stephen Bird (CSSE, UoM), Ingrid Zukerman (Monash), Lawrence Cavedon (RMIT and NICTA) and Carolyn Meehan (Melbourne Museum)
  For information on related projects internationally on personalised access to cultural heritage visit this wiki
  

• Interest based Negotiation: Theory and Practice - see the IBN project website - Funded 2004-2007 Australian Research Council.
  • A possible minor thesis project within this overall project is described here

• I also play a role in the MUVES project (MUVES = Melbourne University Virtual Environments for Simulation) and am a member of the Health Informatics Network at the University. As part of this activity I am involved in a Microsoft funded project with Jim Black of the Nossal Institute for Global Health and Rens Scheepers (DIS) titled: "Cell Phone Applications for Clinical Diagnostic Theraputic and Public Health" - further information at http://www.ni.unimelb.edu.au/ResearchandActivities/Projects/CellPhoneApplications.html

My various community and related activities include:

• General Co-Chair, together with Peter Stone (University of Texas at Austin) Tenth International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi Agent Systems, to be held in Taiwan in 2011
• Editorial Board Member, 2009-2012 Knowledge Engineering Review published by Cambridge University Press
• Co-convenor of the Victorian eHealth Network - http://www.ehealthvic.org.au/
• Member of the Board of the International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems a non-profit organisation whose purpose is to promote science and technology in the area of artificial intelligence and multiagent systems (2002-2008)
• Senior Program Committee member AAMAS conferences 2002, 2003, 2005, 2007
• a coordinating editor of the Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems published by Springer.
• Program Co-chair for the Third International Joint Conference on Agents and Multi Agent Systems hosted in New York in July 2004
• one of the local organisers of the Second International Joint Conference on Agents and Multi Agent Systems hosted in Melbourne, July 14-18, 2003, and also helping to organise the associated Melbourne Agent Systems School and Doctoral Consortium.

Recent visitors

• Frank Dignum, Utrecht University, December 2009
• Peter McBurney, University of Liverpool, November 2009
• Barry Silverman, University of Pennsylvania, Feb-March 2008
• Barbara Grosz, Harvard University, March 2007 (supported by a Miegunyah Fellowship)
• Ah Hwee Tan, NTU, Singapore 2006
• Frank Dignum, Utrecht University, Jan-June 2006, December 2008
• Virginia Dignum, Utrecht University, Jan-June 2006, December 2008

Research students

I currently supervise or co-supervise the following students:

• Umberto Bonollo (PhD - part time) Knowledge-based protocols for distributed mutual exclusion, cosupervised by Ron van der Meyden at UNSW
• Emma Norling (PhD - part time) Extending the BDI model to incorporate human-like reasoning strategies
• Kathleen Keogh (PhD - part-time), from August 2004 - cosupervised with Wally Smith
• Daghan Acay (PhD - full-time) from March 2005 - Extrospection: Software Agents Reason about the Tools in Their Environment
• Steve Goschnick (PhD - part-time) from March 2005 - Drawing on Task and Information Analyses for an Enhanced MAS, Informed by Computer Games (cosupervised with Sandrine Balbo)
• Yen Ting Kuo (PhD - full-time) from April 2006 - Domain Driven Data Mining - cosupervised with Andrew Lonie and Adrian Pearce
• Karl Grieser (PhD - full-time) from March 2007 - Personalised information delivery in a museum environment - cosupervised with Tim Baldwin (CSSE)
• Beth Cardier (PhD - full-time) from March 2007 - Narrative Intelligence - primary supervisor Kevin Brophy (Faculty of Arts)
• Jens Pfau (PhD - full-time) from March 2009 - primary supervisor Michael Kirley (CSSE)

I am also a part-time advisor to:

• Fabian Bohnert, PhD student, Monash University, cosupervised by Ingrid Zukerman, Monash University, Adaptive User Modelling and Recommendation in Constrained Physical Environments

Useful resources for research students include:

• some notes on "Doing a PhD" by Peter McBurney, University of Liverpool
• a collection of pointers to Advice on Doing a PhD by Robert Dale, Macquarie University
• a selection of links on Research and Writing in Computer Science, from CMU
• Common Errors In English by Paul Brians, Washington State University
• LLSU- student support at University of Melbourne
• OWL- Online Writing lab at Purdue University

My past students include:

PhD graduates:

• Fernando Koch, PhD 2009, An Agent-Based Model for the Development of Intelligent Mobile Services Utrecht University, primary supervisors John-Jules Meyer and Frank Dignum
• Samin Karim, PhD 2009 Acquiring plans within situated resource-bounded agents: a hybrid BDI-based approach (cosupervised with Philippe Pasquier and Clint Heinze)
• Raymond So, PhD 2008, Situation awareness in software agents: Theory and practice
• Budhitama Subagdja, PhD 2007, Intentional learning in bounded-rational agents (cosupervised with Iyad Rahwan)
• Iyad Rahwan PhD, 2005, On interest-based negotiation
• Clinton Heinze, PhD 2003, Modelling Intention Recognition for Intelligent Agent Systems (cosupervised by Leon Sterling)
• Anne Rouse, PhD 2002, IT outsourcing revisited
• David Kinny, PhD 2001, Fundamentals of Agent Computation Theory: Semantics
• David Morley, PhD 1999, Semantics of Actions, Agents, and Environments
• Gil Tidhar, PhD 1999 Organisation Oriented Systems: Theory and Practice
• Todd Mansell, PhD 1995 (cosupervisor with G Smith, AAII), Planning under Uncertainty
• Wilson Wen, PhD 1991, Information Theory and Probabilistic Reasoning

All past students:

• Past students

Since 2000 I have supervised the theses of a number of visiting masters students from the University of Utrecht: http://www.masters.uu.nl/index.cfm/site/Masters/pageid/288DF325-E081-2E3C-90BBEE2920E09DD7/index.cfm

Recent publications

• A list of recent papers

Recent teaching

• 615-160 Tools of Analysis (2001-2007)
• 615-363 Mobile Computing Applications (2005-2006)
• 615-672 Pervasive Computing (2004-2007)