Mission statement for the research programme Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Engineering

The research in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Engineering is definitely interdisciplinary in nature. With Computing Science, an interest in formal modeling is shared, where these models may be symbolic, statistical or hybrid in nature. With Psychology, an interest in natural cognition is shared, where the goal is to describe fundamental qualities of cognition in such an explicit way that computational models of perceptual, cognitive, and movement-control functions can be constructed. The research program covers three interrelated areas in Artificial Intelligence:

Cognitive modeling (more information)
Multi-agent systems (more information)
Autonomous and perceptive systems (more information)

All three subprogrammes embody mainly fundamental research, but also aim to develop applied aspects of their disciplines. The inspiration of the research is mainly knowledge-driven, but we do encourage applicable, if not applied, research projects for our Ph.D. students.

An important aspect of the research program is its relation to the teaching curriculum in Artificial Intelligence. This teaching programme requires a broad expertise from the staff, and the research programme reflects this.

In addition, there are strong contacts with researchers belonging to the main staff of the Artificial Intelligence educational programme but carrying out their research in the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. These researchers contribute to the subprogramme Language, speech and cognition, and are assessed in other VSNU disciplines, not treated in this report.

The programme as a whole has as its main goal performing research at a high international level, leading to publications in international scientific journals and highly qualified researchers.

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