Nick Jennings’s biography, net worth, fact, career, awards and life story

Nicholas Robert Jennings CB FREng FCGI FIET FBCS FRSA MAE CEng CITP is the Vice-Provost for Research and Enterprise at Imperial College London, where he is also a Professor of Artificial Intelligence. He was previously the first Regius Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton and the inaugural Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government on National Security. He is an internationally recognised authority in the areas of AI, autonomous systems, agent-based computing and cybersecurity. He is involved in a number of startups including Aerogility, Contact Engine, Crossword Cyber Security, and Reliance Cyber Science. He is also an adviser to Darktrace, a member of the UK Government’s AI Council and the Monaco Digital Advisory Council, and a council member for the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

Education and early life

Nick was born in London. He grew up on the Isle of Portland in Dorset and attended Weymouth Grammar School and studied for an undergraduate degree in computer science at the University of Exeter. His PhD was from the Department of Electronic Engineering at Queen Mary, University of London.

Research and career

Nick’s research focus is on developing AI systems for large-scale, open and dynamic environments. In particular, he is interested in how to endow individual autonomous agents with the ability to act and interact in flexible ways and with effectively engineering systems that contain both humans and software agents. He is passionate about the real-world impact of research and has been involved with deployments of systems in domains such as business process management, smart energy systems, sensor networks, disaster response, telecommunications, citizen science and eDefence—and generally advocating the area of agent-oriented software engineering. His most recent project, ORCHID, developed the science of Human-Agent Collectives (HACs) in which humans and software agents collaborate in a seamless manner.

In undertaking this research, he has attracted grant income of over £32M, published more than 650 articles (with some 370 co-authors) and graduated 49 PhD students (including two winners and one runner-up of the British Computer Society (BCS)/CPHC Distinguished Dissertation Award). He is one of the world’s most cited computer scientists, with over 79,000 citations in Google Scholar and an h-index of 123.

From 1988 he was at Queen Mary, University of London, where he was a PhD student, research fellow, lecturer, reader and professor. He was appointed to a full professorship at the age of 31.

In 1999, he moved to the Department of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton where he was the Deputy Head of Department (Research), the Associate Dean (Research and Enterprise) for the Faculty of Engineering, Science and Maths, the Head of the Agents, Interaction and Complexity group and the Head of Department. He was appointed the Regius Professor of Computer Science in 2014.

From 2010 to 2015, he was the UK Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor for National Security.

In 2016, he moved to Imperial College to be the Vice-Provost (Research and Enterprise), as well as a Professor of Artificial Intelligence.

Awards

He was appointed Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in the 2016 New Year Honours for services to computer science and national security science.

• 1999 (1999): IJCAI Computers and Thought Award
• 2000 (2000): IEE Achievement Medal for contributions to agent-based computing
• 2003 (2003): ACM Autonomous Agents Research Award for contributions to the field of agent-based computing
• 2004 (2004): Team leader of winning agent in the 20th Anniversary Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma Competitions
• 2007 (2007): Team leader of winner of Trading Agents Competition on Mechanism Design (CAT)
• 2007 (2007): ARGUS II project winner of The Engineer’s Large Company / University Collaboration Award
• 2007: Int. Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems Special Recognition Award for “Intelligent agents: theory and practice” in The Knowledge Engineering Review
• 2008 (2008): Winner of “Best Industrial Demonstrator” award at International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Systems Conference
• 2009 (2009): Winner of The Engineer Award for Best Aerospace and Defence Project for ALADDIN
• 2010 (2010): Winner of Best Paper Award at International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (out of 685 submissions)
• 2010 (2010): Winner 1st International Competitions on the Lemonade Stand Game
• 2011 (2011): Winner 2nd International Competitions on the Lemonade Stand Game
• 2012 (2012): Winner US State Department’s TAG challenge on social mobilisation and rapid information gathering
• 2016: IJCAI-JAIR Best Paper Prize (Honourable Mention) for “Theoretical and practical foundations of large-scale agent-based micro-storage in the smart grid” in Journal of AI Research
• 2016: The Engineer’s “Collaborate to Innovate” Award for the ORCHID project
• 2018: Int. Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems Influential Paper Award for “Developing multiagent systems: the Gaia methodology” in ACM Trans. on Software Engineering and Methodology

Fellowships

• 2003 (2003): Fellow European Association for Artificial Intelligence
• 2003 (2003): Fellow British Computer Society (FBCS)
• 2004 (2004): Fellow Institution of Engineering and Technology (FIET)
• 2005 (2005): Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng)
• 2006 (2006): Fellow Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour (AISB)
• 2008 (2008): Member of the Academia Europaea (MAE)
• 2008 (2008): Fellow Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (FIEEE)
• 2010 (2010): Fellow Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)
• 2012 (2012): Fellow German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI)
• 2018: Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)
• 2019: Fellow City and Guilds of London Institute

Personal life

Nick is married to Jo and they have two children. He is a keen sportsman: playing cricket for Bishops Waltham Cricket Club, previously managing a youth football team at Waltham Wolves, and being an avid West Ham United Football Club fan.