Peter McBurney: Research
Peter McBurney
Research
My research interests are:
- Blockchains and Distributed Ledgers, especially in
financial domains and for non-proliferation applications.
- Agent communications languages and interaction protocols, with a focus on the semantics and pragmatics of dialogs over action.
- Computational models of cyber attack and defence, such as Hide-and-Seek Games.
- Mathematical models of distributed consensus protocols, such as Flag Co-ordination Games.
- Models of co-evolutionary behaviour in complex adaptive systems, especially in domains of intelligent, reflective entities
(eg, financial markets, epidemiology, and diffusion of new technologies). Here my interest is in complex decision-making, and its automation, often through the use of agent-based simulation modeling.
- Automated reasoning over diagrams, as occurs in Euclidean geometry and category theory.
I welcome enquiries from potential PhD students in these areas. However, please note that UK funding opportunities for PhD students
are severely limited, so it helps if you have your own funding.
My research has been motivated by the challenge of automating complex group decision-making
under uncertainty, and this has led me to the philosophy of argumentation and of language,
the design of
communications languages and protocols for systems of autonomous agents, the use of
algebraic topology and category theory, and the ideas of political philosophy,
particularly theories of deliberative
democracy, and blockchains and distributed ledger technologies.
If my research is of interest, I would be delighted to hear from you. My home page has contact details.