Designing artificial organisations: lessons from the other side

Liz Sonenberg
Department of Information Systems
University of Melbourne

Friday, 27th May 2005
0930 - 1100

Theatre 2, ground floor
University of Melbourne ICT Building
111 Barry Street, Carlton.

Abstract:

Over time, human organisations arrange their activities in different ways and it has been argued that computational models are a useful type of formal model for exploring organisational behaviour. At the same time we see computer scientists seeking to engineer ever more complex, distributed and loosely coupled software systems in ways where the individual sub-systems interact to form an artificial organisation. I am interested in understanding how lessons from human organisations may be applied to inform the design/engineering of artificial organisations. The talk will present some current work - at Melbourne and elsewhere.

Biosketch:

Liz is in the Department of Information Systems at the University of Melbourne. For some years her research has focused on reasoning machinery as may be useful for the design of systems that exhibit complex collaborative behaviours. She has worked with collaborators in Psychology and Education on studies involving human reasoning processes. Industry collaborations have included the Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute, Agent Oriented Software P/L, the Defence Science and Technology Organisation, Neuragenix P/L and KESEM International P/L. Liz's research has been supported by grants from a variety of sources, including the Australian Research Council.