Peter McBurney

vicibus gratis formare loquentes suetus et alterno verum contexere nodo. Claudius Claudianus, 399 AD. With skill at shaping urbane interchanges A tapestry of truth from crossing strands. Translation of Garry Wills. Start-ups of students & colleagues: 3scale (now part of Redhat) Alectro Block Insights Bozii (later Freedom4) CogniCor Technologies Dolphin Music Empela Fatsoma Financial Network Analytics Hadean jazzle Mahout Mesonomics Nexus Mutual Pisa Research Redwing Asia Sandtable Umami UnitU

POTENTIAL PhD STUDENTS: Please see the note at the foot of this page. Peter McBurney is Professor of Computer Science and former Head of the Department of Informatics in the Faculty of Natural and Mathematical Sciences of King's College London. He is a member of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) Research Group of the Department. McBurney's primary areas of research are in AI and Computational Finance: Automated musical composition and interpretation (algomusic) Distributed ledgers, blockchain, smart contracts, digital assets, and DAOs AI applied to knowledge-intensive, regulated domains (law, finance, insurance, etc), and Agent communications protocols and agent-based simulation. McBurney's over-arching interest is in automated decision-making, both individually and collectively, by machines. In the hierarchical stack appropriate for intelligent systems, his research focus has always been at the knowledge-level of such systems, not at the data level. His work finds application in computational finance and economics, cyber conflict, and machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. According to Google Scholar, McBurney has an h-index score of 53, and his most-cited publication has over 725 citations. Examples of recent activities include: Introduction to AI and Large Language Models: In February 2024, David Kohan Marzagao, Alexander Doronin and Peter McBurney presented a non-technical introduction to AI and Large Language Models in a webinar for the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA Global). The webinar is available here for viewing on-demand for a limited period. Regulating and Governing DAOs: I participated in the launch event of a new interdisciplinary UK research network exploring issues of regulation and governance of Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs), held at the School of Law and Social Justice of the University of Liverpool in January 2024. This topic can usefully be studied from multiple and varied perspectives: Law, Political Science, the Economic theory of the firm, the Philosophy of Argumentation, and Computer Science. Commercial applications of Distributed Ledger Technologies: In the Northern summer of 2022, I spoke to Computerphile about commercial applications of distributed ledger technologies, an interview which has received some 138K views and which can be seen here. Also on Computerphile, my colleague and research collaborator Dr David Kohan Marzagao recently spoke about Graphs, Vectors and Machine Learning. Since 2007, McBurney has been Joint Editor-in-Chief of the refereed AI journal, The Knowledge Engineering Review, published by Cambridge University Press. He is a member of the Academic Advisory Council of the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), a board established in 2018 to provide advice on AI, data analytics and regulatory technology (regtech). During 2018-2020, he was an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Law Futures Centre at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. McBurney is a regular speaker and advisor on Artificial Intelligence, on blockchains & distributed ledgers, and on cryptocurrencies. He has experience working on several blockchain Proofs-of-Concept, including for major financial institutions and commodities trading companies. His research projects include the EPSRC-funded VOLT Project, which aimed to develop trusted voting systems using distributed ledger technologies for management of shareholder rights and for elections in non-government organizations. Contact details: Peter McBurney Department of Informatics King's College London Bush House 30 Aldwych London WC2B 4BG UK Email: peter.mcburney [at] kcl.ac.uk

Contact

For potential PhD students: I am currently fully loaded with PhD students, and so I am not able to accept any new students.

For potential student interns: I do not have places or funding for student interns.

Office Hours: If you wish to see me, please first make an appointment by email.