I am a Professor and Head of the School of Information Management, at Victoria University of Wellington, in Aotearoa / New Zealand.

Previously, I was at the University of Otago in the Department of Information Science. I joined that department in September 2009, and was Head of Department from February 2011 to December 2016. Earlier in 2009 (since September 2008) I worked at Otago’s Higher Education Development Centre, and before that was Associate Professor at RMIT University’s School of Computer Science and IT.

I’m on Mastodon and used to tweet at @profwinikoff.

Research

The overall aim of my research is to find better ways of creating software. I am interested in (agent oriented) software engineering, programming languages, and logic and formal methods.

Over the past two decades I have focussed on software that is conceptualised in terms of “intelligent agents” which are able to exhibit robust and flexible behaviour. I am perhaps best known for my work on design methodologies for agent-based systems, in particular the Prometheus methodology.

More recently I have been looking at societal consequences of autonomous systems, and the issues that affect trust in these systems.

My Erdős number is 3. See also my google scholar entry and my DBLP page.

You can find on this site a list of publications.

Leadership & Service

I am President of the International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (IFAAMAS), Vice President of the Computing Research and Education Association of Australasia (CORE), and co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (JAAMAS). I am also on the steering committee for the EMAS workshop series, and am on various (senior) programme committees.

I was Editor-in-Chief for the International Journal of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (IJAOSE), was on the 2018 PBRF MIST panel, and was general co-chair for AAMAS 2017 and program co-chair for AAMAS 2012. I was head (“chairperson”) of the department of Information Science (February 2011 – December 2016).

Software

I have written a range of software including W-Prolog, Lygon, auml.pl, SmartGuide, and a range of palm pilot software including Karel the robot.

Non-work

When not working, I enjoy being with my wife, Julija, and children. I also enjoy playing board games, reading, and watching sci-fi. Finally, I am a keen musician: I play piano, sing in (and sometimes conduct) choirs, and also compose.