People
Elske van der Vaart
Bart Verheij
Rineke Verbrugge, Team Leader
Floris Bex is a PhD candidate at the University of Groningen. He is part of the NWO project Making Sense of Evidence, which aims to research and develop software-support for crime investigators. His supervisors are Henry Prakken, from the Faculty of Law, and Bart Verheij. He is currently focusing his research on the role of stories and arguments in reasoning with evidence.
Rineke Verbrugge is Full Professor of Logic and Cognition at the University of Groningen's Institute of Artificial Intelligence. Since 2002, she has been the leader of the Multi-Agent Systems research group. Her work focuses on logics, multi-agent systems, and social cognition.
She received a M.Sc. (cum laude) and a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Amsterdam. Subsequently, she was a post-doc in Prague and Gothenburg, and Assistant Professor at MIT and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
Rineke Verbrugge is chair of the Netherlands Organization for Logic and has (co-)chaired events such as FAMAS, CEEMAS and the Twentieth European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information. Together with Jan van Eijck, she has been awarded four grants for their large international NIAS-project Games, Action and Social Software. Since December 2008, Rineke Verbrugge is a laureate of NWO's 'Innovative Research VICI Scheme' 2008 for her project 'Cognitive systems in interaction: Logical and computational models of higher-order social cognition.'
Bart Verheij is a lecturer/researcher at the Institute of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Groningen. His research interests include argumentation, rules and law. As research methods, he uses formal analysis (in the styles of logic and analytic philosophy), software design, algorithm implementation and agent-based social simulation. His research field is interdisciplinary, and includes artificial intelligence, argumentation theory and legal theory.
In 2005 he published the book Virtual Arguments. On the Design of Argument Assistants for Lawyers and Other Arguers (T.M.C. Asser Press, the Hague). In 2006 he co-edited the volume Arguing on the Toulmin Model. New Essays in Argument Analysis and Evaluation (Argumentation Library, Springer, Dordrecht.) His dissertation appeared in 1996 and is entitled Rules, Reasons, Arguments. Formal Studies of Argumentation and Defeat.
Floris Bex
Appointment at Law & ICT
Elske van der Vaart is pursuing her PhD at the University of Groningen. Her project is titled Theory of Mind in Corvids: Insights from Modeling and is funded by an NWO 'TopTalent' grant, awarded to her in 2007. Her supervisors are Charlotte Hemelrijk, from Theoretical Biology, and Rineke Verbrugge. Besides models of very bright birds, she is interested in animal cognition, evolution, agent-based simulation, and complex systems.
Joint appointment with Computer Science
Past Members
Current Members
Title of thesis:
Knowledge, Chance and Change.
(Co-)Promotors:
Gerard Renardel de Lavalette,
Rineke Verbrugge
Now at:
Theoretical Philosophy,
University of Groningen
Title of thesis:
Reconciling Information Exchange and Confidentiality.
(Co-)Promotors:
Lambert Schomaker, Rineke Verbrugge
Now at:
Digital Security, Radboud University Nijmegen
Wouter Teepe
Barteld Kooi
External PhDs
Ph.D. Candidate,
2002 - 2007
Ph.D. Candidate,
1999 - 2003
Sonja Smets
Joint appointment with Philosophy
Sonja Smets is Assistant Professor at the University of Groningen and holds a Rosalind Franklin Fellowship at the Institute of Artificial Intelligence and at the Faculty of Philosophy. Her research ranges over Logic (in particular non-classical logics, including non-monotonic logics, belief revision, modal and temporal logic, quantum logic); Multi-agent Systems; Formal Epistemology; Philosophy of Quantum Physics, Quantum Information and Computation.
She obtained her PhD in Philosophy at the Free University of Brussels in 2001. Subsequently, she held a post-doc position at the Flemish Fund for Scientific Research and a part-time lectureship in Brussels. She is affiliated to the Research Group on the Philosophy of Information at the University of Oxford.
Sujata Ghosh is a postdoctoral researcher working in the Institute of Artificial Intelligence, University of Groningen. Her project, titled 'Strategies in multi-agent systems: From implicit to implementable', is funded by an NWO Free Competition Grant. Her research interests include logic, games and strategies; information dynamics; belief networks; belief-disbelief revision; nonmonotonic reasoning; knowledge representation.
She received her MSc and PhD in Pure Mathematics from the University of Calcutta. Then she did a one-year postdoc at the Institute for Logic, Language and Competition, University of Amsterdam. In the mean-time she also worked as a Lecturer at Visva-Bharati University, India and as Assistant Professor at the Indian Statistical Institute.
Sujata Ghosh
Leendert van Maanen is a post-doc at the Institute of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Groningen. He is affiliated with the project "Cognitive Systems in Interaction", for which he studies the cognitive constraints on social interaction. His work is a combination of computational cognitive modeling (mainly using the cognitive architecture ACT-R and psychological experimentation. Often, the latter is used to validate predictions made by the former.
Leendert received a M.Sc. in Cognitive Artificial Intelligence from Utrecht University and will defend his Ph.D thesis in Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the University of Groningen shortly. The thesis - entitled "Context Effects on Memory Retrieval: Theory and Applications" - introduces a new theory as to how the environment influences people's memory demands.
Leendert van Maanen
Piter Dykstra
Detached from the Hanze
hogeschool
Joint appointment with Theoretical Biology
Piter Dykstra has a PhD subject on the social behaviour of rational artificial agents. Of particular interest is the emergence of social behaviour by agents that reason on the basis of knowledge acquired by the communication with other agents in their social networks.
The project is realized in the context of a cooperation agreement between the Hanzehogeschool Groningen and the University of Groningen. The supervisors are Gerard Renardel de Lavalette and Rineke Verbrugge.
