Αντώνης Κάκας
Καθηγητής, Τµήµα Επιστήµης Υπολογιστών, Πανεπιστήµιο Κύπρου
Biography
Antonis Kakas is a professor at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Cyprus. He obtained a first class degree in Mathematics from Imperial College, London in 1980 and then in 1984 a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics also from Imperial College, London. During the period 1984-1989, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher in physics at Kings College, London, the University of Zurich and Imperial College, London where in parallel he acquired an M.Sc. degree in Computer Science. Since 1989 he is working in Computer Science and in particular in the area of Artificial Intelligence. His main research interests are on Computational Logic in AI with emphasis on deductive and inductive reasoning, argumentation, temporal reasoning, and application problems in areas of Cognitive Agents and Computational Bioscience. He has also developed an interest in the Philosophy of Computation.
He has authored over one hundred scientific articles published in international journals, books and proceedings of international scientific conferences. He has edited (together with Professor
P.A. Flach) the book «Abduction and Induction: Essays on their Relation and Integration». The integration model of abductive and inductive reasoning, proposed with Mr. Flach in this book, was presented in 2006 at the World Congress on the Centenary of Kurt Gödel and is the basis for several contemporary of Machine Learning systems.
Antonis Kakas, is one of the founders of the area of Abductive Logic Programming which has found applications in various areas of Artificial Intelligence and recent problems of Computational Biology and Computational Science in general. This area has also aroused the interest in philosophical circles where, together with other similar approaches, is referred to as the «AKM model» of abductive reasoning.
He has developed, together with his collaborators, a theoretical model of argumentation and a computational framework of automated argumentation. The Gorgias system which implements these models is amongst the first automated reasoning systems for argumentation that are freely available on the internet. It has been applied to various problems such as decision-making problems in medical cases, trading policies and network security. Recently, with others he has proposed, Argumentation Logic, as a logic that offers a new perspective for logic-based AI that facilitates the synthesis of Cognitive Psychology with theory and methods from AI. Currently, he is working on the development of a new framework of Cognitive Programming that aims to offer a programming environment for developing Cognitive Assistants that can naturally operate along human users at large. Argumentation Logic also offers a new philosophical perspective on logic that can be linked to Aristotle’s work in Topics and to logical paradoxes such as the Epimenides’ Liar’s paradox.
Antonis Kakas is a founding member of the international scientific meetings «Abduction and Induction in Artificial Intelligence (AIAI)» which began in 1996 and the international conference «Argumentation and Multi-Agent Systems (ArgMas)» which started in 2003, as well as of the Panhellenic Logic Symposium (PLS) starting in 1997 in Cyprus.
He was the principal investigator in eleven research programs at the University of Cyprus with external funding from the European Union, including the COMPULOG II project, which was the first research program to the University with external funding. During the period 1999- 2003, he served as the National Contact Point for Cyprus in the area of Information and Telecommunication of the 5th EU Framework Programme and thus contributed to the first participation of Cyprus in the research framework programs of the European Union.
During 2006-2010 he served as the Vice Rector for International Relations, Finance and Administration at the University of Cyprus, responsible for its annual budget of around 100 million euro. He currently coordinates a University of Cyprus initiative to revitalize the agriculture and industry of carobs nationwide in Cyprus.
