Nick Jennings listed today as one of the world's top researchers

Professor Nick Jennings of the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) has just been listed as one of the world’s most highly cited researchers.

The listing, which appears today (Friday 22 October) on ISIHighlyCited.Com has identified Professor Jennings as one of the most highly cited researchers of our time in both engineering and computer science, and as someone who has contributed to the progress of science through his insight and accomplishments. He is one of only 20 academics worldwide to be listed in both categories.

ISIHighlyCited.com, developed by Thomson Reuters, is the first online community composed of and designed completely for highly cited scientific researchers. It highlights the top 250 pre-eminent individual researchers in each of 21 subject categories who have demonstrated great influence in their field as measured by citations to their work for the period 1981-2008.

Professor Jennings is an internationally-recognised authority in the areas of agent-based computing and intelligent systems. His research covers both the theory and the application of such systems. Specifically, he has undertaken fundamental research on automated bargaining, auctions, markets, mechanism design, trust and reputation, coalition formation and decentralised control.

He has also pioneered the application of multi-agent technology; developing some of the first real-world systems (in domains such as business process management, energy systems, sensor networks, disaster response, telecommunications, and eDefence) and generally advocating the area of agent-oriented software engineering. He has just completed the ALADDIN programme, a five-year strategic research programme funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and BAE Systems, which developed a multi-agent toolbox across a range of data and information applications for emergency scenarios. This research will be further developed in the new ORCHID programme. Also funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) with significant investment from the industrial partners, ORCHID will tackle the challenge of understanding, designing, building, and deploying systems that are composed of human-agent collectives (HACs).

Professor Jennings joined ECS in 1999 and has achieved much in the 11 years since then. He is recognized as one of the world’s leading researchers in artificial intelligence and has attracted over £13M of grant income for his work in this field. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. More recently still, he was appointed as a Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Government.

Commenting on his listing on ISIHighlyCited.Com, he says: “I am delighted to be joining this prestigious grouping of academics who have all had a major impact on the scientific landscape through the take-up of the ideas and solutions they have presented in their published work.â€?

Professor Sheng Chen of the Communications Group in the School of Electronics and Computer Science is listed in the engineering category. His research interests are in Adaptive signal processing for communications, machine learning and neural networks, modeling and identification of nonlinear systems, finite-precision digital controller design, evolutionary computation methods and optimization. He was appointed a Professor in ECS in 2005, and received a Doctor of Science degree from the University in the same year. He has 244 publications listed the ISI database.

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Professor Nick Jennings is Head of the Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia group in the School of Electronics and Computer Science. If you are interested in PhD research positions in this group you can find out more information on our Research Admissions pages.

Professor Sheng Chen is a member of the Communications Group in ECS. If you are interested in PhD research positions in this group you can find out more information on our Research Admissions pages.

For more information about this news story contact Joyce Lewis; tel.+44(0)23 8059 5453.