Professor Michael Wooldridge
Tutorial fellow in Computer Science
Senior Research Fellow
I am the Ashall Professor of the Foundations of Artificial Intelligence in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford, and a Senior Research Fellow at Hertford College. From 2014-21 I was Head of Department of Computer Science. I joined Oxford on 1 June 2012; before this I was for twelve years a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Liverpool.
In 2020, I was awarded the Lovelace Medal from the British Computer Society; in 2006, I was the recipient of the ACM Autonomous Agents Research Award; in 2021 I received the AAAI/EAAI Outstanding Educator Award; and in 2023 I received the Distinguished Service Award from the European Assocation for AI.
I am an ACM Fellow, a AAAI Fellow, a EURAI Fellow, an AISB Fellow, a BCS Fellow, and a member of Academia Europaea.
I served as President of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) from 2015-17, President of the European Association for AI (EurAI) from 2014-16, and President of the International Association for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (IFAAMAS) from 2007-09.
I was general chair for the 38th Annual AAAI Conference on AI (AAAI-24), held in Vancouver, BC, in February 2024, Conference Chair for the 24th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-2015), held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in July 2015, program chair for the 19th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI-2010), held in Lisbon, Portugal, in August 2010, program chair for the  Fourth International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS-2005), held in Utrecht, the Netherlands, in 2005, General Chair for the Second International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS-2003), held in Melbourne, Australia, in July 2003, and Program Chair for the Second International Conference on Autonomous Agents (Agents-98), held in Minneapolis in May 1998.
In 2021 I received a Turing AI World Leading Researcher Fellowship from UKRI; in 2011, I was awarded a 5-year ERC Advanced Grant, entitled “Reasoning About Computational Economies” (RACE); and in 1997, I founded AgentLink, the EC-funded European Network of Excellence in the area of agent-based computing.
I am co-Editor-in-Chief of Artificial Intelligence Journal, the oldest international journal for AI (established 1971), and indeed one of the oldest computing journals. Between 2003 and 2009 I was co-editor-in-chief of the Journal Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems. I have served as an associate editor of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR) (2006-2009, 2009-2012), an associate editor of Artificial Intelligence journal (2009-2012) and I currently serve on the editorial boards of the Journal of Applied Logic, Journal of Logic and Computation, Journal of Applied Artificial Intelligence, Games, and Computational Intelligence.
I have given evidence to multiple government committees, including the House of Lords Select Committee on AI, the Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee, and the Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology. In 2023 I was appointed Specialist Advisor to the House of Lords inquiry on Large Language Models and Generative AI.
I give frequent public lectures on AI (e.g., Hay Festival, Cheltenham Literary Festival, Stratford Literary Festival, Oxford Literary Festival, How The Light Gets In). I gave the 2023 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, in the 198th year of the series, broadcast by BBC TV over Christmas 2023. I have written two popular science introductions to AI: the Ladybird Expert Guide to Artificial Intelligence, a short overview in the iconic British book series, and The Road to Conscious Machines, a longer introduction to AI in Penguin’s classic Pelican series; an edited and revised version of The Road to Conscious Machines was published in the USA by Flatiron Press under the title A Brief History of AI. Both books are aimed a general audience. My life and work were profiled in the 300th edition of the BBC Radio 4 program “The Life Scientific”.
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Research interests
Michael’s main research interests are in the use of formal techniques of one kind or another for reasoning about multiagent systems. He is particularly interested in the computational aspects of rational action in systems composed of multiple self-interested computational systems. His current research is at the intersection of logic, computational complexity, and game theory, and is focused around the problem of identifying and managing the equilibria of game-like concurrent programs.
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Publications
Authored books
- G. Chalkiadakis, E. Elkind, and M. Wooldridge. Computational Aspects of Cooperative Game 
Theory. Morgan & Claypool Publishers, October 2011. (168 pages)
- M. Wooldridge. An Introduction to Multiagent Systems — Second Edition. John Wiley & Sons, 
May 2009. (484 pages)
- R. Bordini, J. F. Hubner, and M. Wooldridge. Programming Multi-Agent Systems with AgentSpeak. John Wiley & Sons, October 2007. (273 pages)
- S. Bussmann, N. R. Jennings, and M. Wooldridge. Multiagent Systems for Manufacturing Control. Springer-Verlag, June 2004. (288 pages)
- M. Wooldridge. An Introduction to Multiagent Systems. John Wiley & Sons, March 2002. (367 pages) 
Chinese translation, Publishing House of the Electronics Industry, 2004. Greek translation, Klidarithmos Publishing, 2008.
- M. Wooldridge. Reasoning about Rational Agents. The MIT Press. July 2000. (240 pages)
Journal articles (since 2007)
- N. Hazon, Y. Aumann, S. Kraus, and M. Wooldridge. On the Evaluation of Election Outcomes 
under Uncertainty. In Artificial Intelligence, 189:1–18, 2012.
- T. Rahwan, T. Michalak, M. Wooldridge, and N. R. Jennings. Towards Anytime coalition structure generation in multi-agent systems with positive or negative externalities. In Artificial Intelligence, 86:95–122, July 2012.
- W. van der Hoek, N. Troqard, and M. Wooldridge. Reasoning about Social Choice Functions. In Journal of Philosophical Logic, 40:473–498, 2011.
- B. Lithgow-Smith, V. A. M. Tamma, and M. Wooldridge. An Ontology for Coordination. In Applied Artificial Intelligence, 25:235–265, 2011.
- F. Wolter and M. Wooldridge. Temporal and Dynamic Logic. In Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research, XXVII(1):249–276, January–March 2011.
- 30. T. Agotnes, W. van der Hoek, and M. Wooldridge.On the logic of preference and judgment aggregation. In Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 22:4–30, 2011.
- P. E. Dunne, A. Hunter, P. McBurney, S. Parsons, and M. Wooldridge. Weighted Argument Systems: Basic Definitions, Algorithms, and Complexity Results. In Artificial Intelligence, 175:457-486, 2011.
- T. Moyaux, P. McBurney, and M. Wooldridge. A Supply Chain as a Network of Auctions. In Decision Support Systems, 50:176–190, 2010.
- J. Grant, S. Kraus, D. Perlis, and M. Wooldridge. Postulates for BDI Structure Revision. In Synthese, 175:39–62, 2010.
- W. van der Hoek, D. Walther, and M. Wooldridge. Reasoning about the Transfer of Control. In Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR), 37:437–477, 2010.
- 35. T. Agotnes, W. van der Hoek, and M. Wooldridge. Robust normative systems and a logic of norm compliance. In Logic Journal of the IGPL, 18(1):4-30, February 2010
- P. E. Dunne, S. Kraus, E. Manisterski, and M. Wooldridge. Solving Coalitional Resource Games. In Artificial Intelligence, 174(1):20–50, 2010.
- J. Ruan, W. van der Hoek, and M. Wooldridge. Verification of Games in the Game Description Language. In Journal of Logic & Computation, 19(6):1127-1156, 2009.
- R. Bordini, M. Fisher, M. Wooldridge, and W. Visser. Property-Based Slicing for Agent Verification. In Journal of Logic & Computation, 19(6):1385-1425, 2009.
- E. Elkind, L. A. Goldberg, P. Goldberg, and M. Wooldridge. On the Computational Complexity of Weighted Voting Games . In Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence, 56(2):109-131, June 2009.
- T. Michalak, J. Tyrowicz, P. McBurney and M. Wooldridge. Exogenous coalition formation in the e-marketplace based on geographical proximity. In Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 8(4):203-223, July–August 2009.
- E. Elkind, P. Goldberg, L. A. Goldberg, and M. Wooldridge. A Tractable and Expressive Class of Marginal Contribution Nets and Its Applications. In Mathematical Logic Quarterly, 55(4):362– 376, August 2009.
- T. Agotnes, W. van der Hoek, J. A. Rodriguez-Aguilar, C. Sierra, and M. Wooldridge. Multi-Modal CTL: Completeness, Complexity, and an Application. In Studia Logica, 92(1):1–26, 2009.
- T. Agotnes, W. van der Hoek, and M. Wooldridge. Reasoning about Coalitional Games. In Artificial Intelligence, 173(1):45-79, January 2009.
- S. S. Fatima, M. Wooldridge, and N. R. Jennings. A Linear Approximation Method for the Shapley Value. In Artificial Intelligence, 172(14):1673–1699, September 2008.
- T. Agotnes, W. van der Hoek, and M. Wooldridge. Quantified Coalition Logic. In Knowledge, Rationality, and Action, 165:269–294, 2008.
- F. Lopes, M. Wooldridge, and A. Q. Novais. Negotiation Among Autonomous Computational Agents: Principles, Analysis and Challenges. In Artificial Intelligence Review 29(1–44), June 2008.
- P. E. Dunne, W. van der Hoek, and M. Wooldridge. A Logical Characterisation of Qualitative Coalitional Games. In Journal of Applied Non-Classical Logics, 17(4):277–509, 2007.
- S. Paurobally, V. Tamma, and M. Wooldridge. A Framework for Web Service Negotiation. In ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems, 2(4), November 2007.
- R. Vieira, A. F. Moreira, M. Wooldridge, and R. H. Bordini. On the Formal Semantics of Speech- Act Based Communication in an Agent-Oriented Programming Language. In Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR), 29:221-267, 2007.
- W. van der Hoek, M. Roberts, and M. Wooldridge. Social Laws in Alternating Time: Effectiveness, Feasibility, and Synthesis. In Synthese, 156(1):1–19, May 2007.
- W. van der Hoek, W. Jamroga, and M. Wooldridge. Towards a Theory of Intention Revision. In Synthese, 155(2):265–290, March 2007.