Matthias Nickles
Department of Computer Science, University of Bath

I work as a Lecturer at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bath, where I'm a member of the Artificial Intelligence group.

The focus of my research is on Distributed Artificial Intelligence and Social Computing - especially Multiagent Systems, distributed and uncertain knowledge on the Semantic Web, Machine Learning for the Web and the Semantic Web, social trust, norms and opinion, and agent-oriented software engineering. Please find details about my research here and the list of my publications here.

Currently, I lecture CM10192 and CM50175. Further teaching activities.

Contact details

Dr Matthias Nickles
Department of Computer Science
University of Bath
Bath, BA2 7AY
United Kingdom

eMail:
Phone: +44 1225 38 3934
Fax: +44 1225 38 3493

Office: L 2.27 (Library building)
Directions

My research is concerned with Artificial Intelligence approaches to communication and knowledge in distributed systems with autonomous and socially interacting entities (artificial agents as well as humans), such as Open Multiagent Systems, Social Software, and the Semantic Web.

More specifically, my main research topics are

  • Agent communication and formal communication languages
  • Distributed and uncertain knowledge and ontologies on the (Semantic) Web
  • Machine learning in social environments and the (Semantic) Web
  • Probabilistic and logic-based representation and integration of opinions
  • Computational trust and social norms, social reasoning
  • Agent-based approaches to the Semantic Web and social software
  • Formal models of social interaction systems
  • Agent-oriented software engineering

Further research experiences include the following fields:

  • Semi-structured XML databases
  • Social Simulation
  • Computational Linguistics (Computational Semantics and Pragmatics, Ontolinguistics)
  • Functional Programming and Lambda Calculus, Logic Programming and Inductive Logic Programming

Selected completed research projects:

2009

  • Fernando Bobillo, Paulo C. G. da Costa, Claudia d'Amato, Nicola Fanizzi, Kathryn B. Laskey, Kenneth J. Laskey, Thomas Lukasiewicz, Trevor Martin, Matthias Nickles, Michael Pool, Pavel Smrž (eds.). Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Uncertainty Reasoning for the Semantic Web (URSW 2009), 2009. To appear.

  • Matthias Nickles, Davide Sottara. Approaches to Uncertain or Imprecise Rules – A Survey. Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Rules, Applications and Interoperability (RuleML-2009), Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), Springer, 2009. To appear.

  • Achim Rettinger, Matthias Nickles, Volker Tresp. Statistical Relational Learning with Formal Ontologies. In Proceedings of the European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (ECML PKDD 2009). Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI), Volume xxxx. Springer. To appear. (pdf)

  • Matthias Nickles, Achim Rettinger. Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes with Behavioral Norms. In Guido Boella, Pablo Noriega, Gabriella Pigozzi, Harko Verhagen (eds.). Proceedings of NorMAS 2009, 2009. To appear.

  • Achim Rettinger, Matthias Nickles. Infinite Hidden Semantic Models for Learning with OWL DL. In Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Inductive Reasoning and Machine Learning on the Semantic Web. Heraklion, Greece, 2009. To appear.
2008
  • Fernando Bobillo, Paulo C. G. da Costa, Claudia d'Amato, Nicola Fanizzi, Kathryn B. Laskey, Kenneth J. Laskey, Thomas Lukasiewicz, Trevor Martin, Matthias Nickles, Michael Pool, Pavel Smrž (eds.). Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Uncertainty Reasoning for the Semantic Web (URSW 2008), 2008.

  • Angelika Foerst, Achim Rettinger, Matthias Nickles. Argumentation- vs. Proposal-based Negotiation: An Empirical Case Study on the Basis of Game-Theoretic Solution Concepts. In Postproceedings of the Fifth International Workshop on Argumentation in Multi-Agent Systems (ArgMAS 2008). Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI), Volume 5384. Springer, 2008. (pdf)

  • Achim Rettinger, Matthias Nickles, Volker Tresp. A Statistical Relational Model for Trust Learning. In Proceedings of the Seventh International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS 2008). IFAAMAS, 2008. (pdf)

  • Matthias Nickles, Ruth Cobos. An Approach to Description Logic with Support for Propositional Attitudes and Belief Fusion. In Uncertainty Reasoning for the Semantic Web I. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI), Vol. 5327. Springer, 2008. (pdf)

  • Angelika Foerst, Achim Rettinger, Matthias Nickles. A Comparative Study of Argumentation- and Proposal-based Negotiation. In Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Agent-based Complex Automated Negotiations (ACAN 2008), 2008.

  • Paulo C. G. Costa, Claudia D'Amato, Nicola Fanizzi, Kathryn B. Laskey, Ken Laskey, Thomas Lukasiewicz, Matthias Nickles, Michael Pool (eds.). Uncertainty Reasoning for the Semantic Web I. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI), Vol. 5327. Springer, 2008.
2007
  • Matthias Nickles. Social Acquisition of Ontologies from Communication Processes. In Journal of Applied Ontology, Volume 2, Number 3-4 (special issue "Formal Ontologies for Communicating Agents"), p. 373-397. IOS Press, 2007. (pdf)

  • Fernando Bobillo, Paulo C. G. Costa, Claudia d'Amato, Nicola Fanizzi, Francis Fung, Thomas Lukasiewicz, Trevor Martin, Matthias Nickles, Yun Peng, Michael Pool, Pavel Smrz, Peter Vojtas (eds.). Proceedings of the ISWC 2007 Workshop on Uncertainty Reasoning for the Semantic Web (URSW 2007), 2007.

  • Matthias Nickles, Michael Rovatsos, Marco Schmitt, Wilfried Brauer, Felix Fischer, Thomas Malsch, Kai Paetow, Gerhard Weiss. The Empirical Semantics Approach to Communication Structure Learning and Usage: Individuals- vs. System-Views. In Nigel Gilbert (ed.), Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 10(1), 2007. (link)

  • Achim Rettinger, Matthias Nickles, Volker Tresp. Learning Initial Trust among Interacting Agents. In Proceedings of the Eleventh International Workshop CIA 2007 on Cooperative Information Agents. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS). Springer, 2007. (pdf)

  • Matthias Nickles. Towards a Logic of Graded Normativity and Norm Adherence. In Guido Boella, Leon van der Torre, Harko Verhagen (eds.). Proceedings of the 2007 Dagstuhl Seminar on Normative Multiagent Systems (NORMAS 2007), 2007.
2006
  • Matthias Nickles. Modeling Social Attitudes on the Web. In Proceedings of the 5th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2006), Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), Vol. 4273. Springer, 2006. (pdf)

  • Matthias Nickles, Ruth Cobos. Social Contexts and the Probabilistic Fusion and Ranking of Opinions: Towards a Social Semantics for the Semantic Web. In Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Uncertainty Reasoning for the Semantic Web (URSW 2006), 2006. (revised version)

  • Felix Fischer, Matthias Nickles. Computational Opinions. In Gerhard Brewka, Silvia Coradeschi, Anna Perini, Paolo Traverso (eds.). Proceedings of the 17th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2006). IOS Press, 2006. (pdf)

  • Benoit Gaudou, Andreas Herzig, Dominique Longin, Matthias Nickles. A New Semantics for the FIPA Agent Communication Language based on Social Attitudes. In Gerhard Brewka, Silvia Coradeschi, Anna Perini, Paolo Traverso (eds.). Proceedings of the 17th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2006). IOS Press, 2006. (pdf)

  • Matthias Nickles, Adam Pease, Andrea C. Schalley, Dietmar Zaefferer. Ontologies Across the Disciplines. In Andrea C. Schalley, Dietmar Zaefferer (eds.). Ontolinguistics. How Ontological Status Shapes the Linguistic Coding of Concepts. Mouton de Gruyter, 2006.

  • Gerhard Weiss, Matthias Nickles, Michael Rovatsos, Felix Fischer. Specifying the Intertwining of Coordination and Autonomy in Agent-Based Systems. In Journal of Network and Computer Applications, Vol. 29. Elsevier, 2006. (pdf)

  • Gerhard Weiss, Felix Fischer, Matthias Nickles, Michael Rovatsos. Operational Modelling of Agent Autonomy: Theoretical Aspects and a Formal Language. In Joerg Mueller and Franco Zambonelli (eds.). Agent-Oriented Software Engineering VI, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS). Springer, 2006. (pdf)

  • Matthias Nickles. Communication Structures of Open Multiagent Systems. PhD thesis. Department of Informatics, Technical University of Munich, 2006.
2005 2004
  • Matthias Nickles, Tina Froehner, Gerhard Weiss. Social Annotation of Semantically Heterogeneous Knowledge. Proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on Knowledge Markup and Semantic Annotation (SemAnnot 2004), CEUR Volume 184, 2004.

  • Matthias Nickles, Tina Froehner, Gerhard Weiss. Open Ontologies and Open Knowledge Bases for Modeling the Social Layer of the Semantic Web. The Third International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2004). Hiroshima, Japan, 2004 (poster). (pdf)

  • Matthias Nickles, Michael Rovatsos, Gerhard Weiss. Empirical-Rational Semantics of Agent Communication. In Proceedings of the Third International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS 2004), 2004. (pdf)

  • Tina Froehner, Matthias Nickles, Gerhard Weiss. Open Ontologies - The Need for Modeling Heterogeneous Knowledge. In Proceedings of The 2004 International Conference on Information and Knowledge Engineering (IKE 2004), 2004.

  • Tina Froehner, Matthias Nickles, Gerhard Weiss. Towards Modeling the Social Layer of Emergent Knowledge Using Open Ontologies. In Proceedings of The ECAI 2004 Workshop on Agent-Mediated Knowledge Management (AMKM 2004), 2004. (pdf)

  • Michael Rovatsos, Matthias Nickles, Gerhard Weiss. An Empirical Model of Communication in Multiagent Systems. In Frank Dignum (ed.). Agent Communication Languages. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), Vol. 2922. Springer, 2004.

  • Matthias Nickles, Michael Rovatsos, Wilfried Brauer, Gerhard Weiss. Towards a Unified Model of Sociality in Multiagent Systems. In International Journal of Computer and Information Science (IJCIS), Vol. 5, No. 1, 2004. (pdf)

  • Gerhard Weiss, Johann Duscher, Matthias Nickles, Michael Rovatsos. Spezifikation von Softwareautonomie. In Journal Kuenstliche Intelligenz (KI) 4/2004. Arendtap Verlag, 2004.

  • Matthias Nickles, Michael Rovatsos, Gerhard Weiss (eds.). Agents and Computational Autonomy. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS/LNAI) Volume 2969 ("Hot Topics" subseries). Springer, 2004. (details)
2003
  • Matthias Nickles, Michael Rovatsos, Wilfried Brauer, Gerhard Weiss. Towards a Unified Model of Sociality in Multiagent Systems. In Proceedings of The Fourth ACIS International Conference on Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Networking, and Parallel/Distributed Computing (SNPD 2003), 2003.

  • Matthias Nickles, Gerhard Weiss. A Framework for the Social Description of Resources in Open Environments. In Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Cooperative Information Agents (CIA 2003). Helsinki, Finland, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI). Springer, 2003. (pdf)

  • Michael Rovatsos, Matthias Nickles, Gerhard Weiss.Interaction is Meaning: A New Model for Communication in Open Systems. In Proceedings of the Second International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS 2003), 2003.

  • Gerhard Weiss, Michael Rovatsos, Matthias Nickles, Christian Meindl. Capturing Agent Autonomy in Roles and XML. In Proceedings of the Second International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS 2003), 2003. (pdf)

  • Sarah Bluhme, Matthias Nickles, Dietmar Zaefferer: Cross-Linguistic Reference Grammar: An XML-based Internet Database for General Comparative Linguistics. Poster session on Computer Linguistics at DGfS-2003, 27 Feb 2003, Munich. (slides)

  • Matthias Nickles, Gerhard Weiss. Agent-Based Social Assessment of Shared Resources. In Gianluca Moro, Claudio Sartori and Munindar P. Singh (eds.). Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Agents and Peer-to-Peer Computing (AP2PC 2003), Melbourne, Australia. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), Volume 2872. Springer, 2003. (pdf)

  • Matthias Nickles, Gerhard Weiss. Empirical Semantics of Agent Communication in Open Systems. In Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Challenges in Open Agent Environments, 2003. (pdf). See here and here for newer works on this topic.

  • Matthias Nickles. An Observation-based Approach to the Semantics of Agent Communication. Research Report FKI-248-03, AI/Cognition Group, Department of Informatics, Technical University of Munich, 2003.

  • Matthias Nickles, Michael Rovatsos, Gerhard Weiss. A Schema for Specifying Computational Autonomy. In Proceedings of the Third International Workshop "Engineering Societies in the Agents World" (ESAW 2002), Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), Volume 2577. Springer, 2003. (pdf)
2002 and earlier
  • Kai F. Lorentzen, Matthias Nickles. Ordnung aus Chaos - Prolegomena zu einer Luhmann'schen Modellierung deentropisierender Strukturbildung in Multiagentensystemen. In Thomas Kron (ed.), Luhmann modelliert. Ansaetze zur Simulation von Kommunikationssystemen. Leske & Budrich, 2002.

  • Matthias Nickles. Multiagent Systems for the Social Competition Among Website Ratings. In Who's Who in Recommender Systems, Proceedings of the ACM SIGIR 2001 Workshop on Recommender Systems, 2001. (poster. pdf)

  • Matthias Nickles. SYSTEMATICS - Ein XML-basiertes Internet-Datenbanksystem für klassifikationsgestützte Sprachbeschreibungen. CIS-Report 01-129. Centre for Information and Language Processing (CIS), 2001. (pdf, 37 pages, in German)

  • Wilfried Brauer, Matthias Nickles, Michael Rovatsos, Gerhard Weiß, Kai F. Lorentzen. Expectation-Oriented Analysis and Design. In Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE 2001) @ Agents-01, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), Vol. 2222. Springer, 2002. (pdf)

  • Matthias Nickles. Towards a Multiagent System for Competitive Website Ratings. Research Report FKI-243-01, AI/Cognition Group, Department of Informatics, Technical University of Munich, 2001.

  • Matthias Nickles. Verarbeitung und Darstellung Indefiniter Daten in einer Applikativen Sprache. Diploma Thesis. Teaching and Research Unit "Programming and Modelling Languages", Institute of Computer Science, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, 1998. (ps.gz, 132 pages, in German)

  • Matthias Nickles. A Tool for the Interactive Processing of And-Or Trees. Project Report. Teaching and Research Unit "Programming and Modelling Languages", Institute of Computer Science, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, 1997. (ps, 69 pages, in German and English).

Courses

2008/2009

2007/2008

Winter 2005/2006:

Summer 2003:

Winter 2002/2003:

Summer 2002:

Winter 2001/2002:

Summer 2001:

Winter 2000/2001:

Summer 2000:

  • Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes with Behavioral Norms, Dagstuhl seminar on Normative Multi-Agent Systems, 18th March 2009, Dagstuhl castle, Germany

  • Expectation as a Foundational Concept for the Development of Open Multiagent Systems, Department of Computer Science, University of Bath, 25th September 2007, Bath, UK (invited talk)

  • Towards Social Semantics, Computer Science and Communications Research Unit, University of Luxembourg, 4th December 2006, Luxembourg (invited talk)

  • Modeling Social Attitudes on the Web, 5th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC-2006), 7th November 2006, Athens (GA), USA

  • Social Contexts and the Probabilistic Fusion and Ranking of Opinions: Towards a Social Semantics for the Semantic Web, Second Workshop on Uncertainty Reasoning for the Semantic Web (USWC-2006), 5th November 2006, Athens (GA), USA

  • Computational Opinions, 17th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI-2006), 20th August 2006, Riva Del Garda, Italy

  • Communication Structures of Open Multiagent Systems, Department of Informatics, Technical University of Munich, 20th July 2006, Munich, Germany

  • Evolving and Reflective Expectation as a Fundamental Concept for the Development of Open Multiagent Systems, Dagstuhl Seminar on Foundations and Practice of Programming Multi-Agent Systems, 20th June 2006, Dagstuhl, Germany (invited talk)

  • Modeling and Learning of Communication Patterns and Opinions in Open Environments, Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse (IRIT), Universite Paul Sabatier, 23rd May 2006, Toulouse, France (invited talk)

  • Communication Attitudes: A Formal Approach to Ostensible Intentions, and Individual and Group Opinions, Third International Workshop on Logic and Communication in Multi-Agent Systems, 1st August 2005, Edinburgh, UK

  • Empirical-Rational Semantics of Agent Communication, AAMAS-2004, 21st July 2004, New York City, USA

  • Towards Modeling the Social Layer of Emergent Knowledge Using Open Ontologies, ECAI 2004 Workshop on Agent-Mediated Knowledge Management (AMKM-04), 22nd August 2004, Valencia, Spain

  • Open Ontologies - The Need for Modeling Heterogeneous Knowledge, International Conference on Information and Knowledge Engineering 2004, 21st June 2004, Las Vegas, USA

  • A Framework for the Social Description of Resources in Open Environments, Seventh International Workshop CIA 2003, 28th August 2003, Helsinki, Finland

  • Agent-Based Social Assessment of Shared Resources, Second International Workshop on Agents and Peer-to-Peer Computing (AP2PC 2003), 14th July 2003, Melbourne, Australia

  • Empirical Semantics of Agent Communication in Open Systems, Challenges in Open Agent Systems '03 Workshop, 15th July 2003, Melbourne, Australia

  • Capturing Agent Autonomy in Roles and XML, AAMAS-2003, 16th July 2003, Melbourne, Australia

  • Kommunikation/Offenheit (Communication/Openness), joint talk with Michael Rovatsos, Socionics Workshop, 28th June 2003, Kloster Seeon, Germany (invited talk)

  • Empirische Semantik von Agenten-Kommunikationssprachen in offenen Multiagentensystemen (Empirical Semantics of Agent Communication Languages in Open Multiagent Systems), Advanced Seminar of the AI/Cognition Group, 12 December 2002, Munich, Germany

  • Eine holonische Architektur fuer offene Multiagentensysteme (A Holonic Architecture for Open Multiagent Systems), joint talk with Kai F. Lorentzen, Socionics Workshop, 23rd June 2002, Kloster Seeon, Germany (invited talk)

  • Soziale Semantik von Kommunikationsprozessen in offenen Multiagentensystemen (Social Semantics of Communication Processes in Open Multiagent Systems), Advanced Seminar of the AI/Cognition Group, 10th January 2002, Munich, Germany

  • Auf dem Weg zu einem Multiagenten-Sozialsystem fuer die Bewertung von Websites (Towards a Multiagent-Social System for the Rating of Websites), Socionics Workshop, 7th February 2001, Tutzing, Germany (invited talk)

  • Auf dem Weg zu einem Multiagenten-Sozialsystem fuer die Bewertung von Websites (Towards a Multiagent-Social System for the Rating of Websites), Advanced Seminar of the AI/Cognition Group, 1st February 2001, Munich, Germany

  • Linguistisches Datenbankprojekt AVG 2.0 (The Linguistic Database Project CRG 2.0), Advanced Seminar "Computational Logic" (Prof. Francois Bry), Ludwig- Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen, 21th February 2000, Munich, Germany (invited talk)

  • Aspekte der Verarbeitung und Darstellung indefiniter Daten (Aspects of the Processing and Representation of Indefinite Data), Advanced Seminar of the AI/Cognition Group, 25th November 1999, Munich, Germany

  • Categories - A Tool for Classification-based Language Description, Workshop "From Structured Concepts to Clause Structure: What is a Possible Lexicon-Grammar Interface?", Venice International University, 18th January 1999, Venice, Italy (invited talk)

  • Verarbeitung und Darstellung indefiniter Daten in einer applikativen Sprache (Processing and Representation of Indefinite Data using an Applicative Language), Advanced Seminar "Computational Logic" (Prof. Francois Bry), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen, 22nd June 1998, Munich, Germany