Simon Wells is a Computer Scientist, researcher, educator, entrepreneur, and consultant. He is the published author of peer-reviewed research in Artificial Intelligence and specialises in Argumentation Theory and Automated Reasoning applied to large, complex, real-world problems.
Simon has won more than £125,000 of research funding from a variety of sources including AgentLink, Nuffield, IAESTE, University of Dundee, and private industry and is a founder member of ARG:dundee the Argumentation Research Group in the School of Computing at the University of Dundee. He was previously employed on the EPSRC funded research project the Information Exchange which ran from 2002-2006 and which was evaluated as “tending towards excellence”.
Simon's research interests are broadly in the field of Artificial Intelligence, and specifically in Argumentation Theory and Automated Reasoning, and Intelligent Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). He is also interested in both physical and digital security, ludic theory, and sustainable design. The common research thread through all areas is that of complex systems, particularly complex real-world systems. I am interested in how these systems can be represented in formal models and visualised, and how software to work with these systems is designed, constructed, deployed, and utilised. I am also interested, perhaps most importantly in how such systems can fail.
Simon has more than six years experience of developing, enhancing, coordinating, delivering and examining material across the core undergraduate and postgraduate Computer Science curriculum. Simon has also used his research expertise to develop courses for the advanced postgraduate curriculum in his research area of Multiagent Systems and Grid Computing and continuing professional development training in the area of critical thinking, argumentation, persuasion and negotiation. Since 2007 Simon has successfully supervised more than twenty research students performing their BSc (hons) and MSc research projects as part of Applied Computing, Computing, and Applied Computational Intelligence course and for the IAESTE student placement program. Simon's other academic activities have seem him contribute to the research ethics committee and termination of studies committee, the undergraduate and postgraduate exam boards, annual course review, and doctoral progress monitoring for the School of Computing at the University of Dundee.
