LIACC aims at producing both software algorithms and prototype systems backed by relevant publications, while also assisting young researchers in developing their theses. In order to fulfill the aforementioned general objectives, LIACC research will be centered in the core activities of the unit, adjusted to the new challenges of a rapidly evolving society, of the technological development, of the proliferation of networked devices, of a world where we all simultaneously are information producers and consumers. Intelligent decision-making for individual agents but also in networks and teams, in distributed environments, including artificial (agents, robots) and humans is a major aim of the unit. We also advocate the need for more theoretical efforts on developing methods, mostly declarative-type of programming based, for better matching software models and architectures.

LIACC is organized in three main thematic research areas.

DAIAS - Distributed Artificial Intelligence and Agent-based Simulation

DAIAS pursues research on multi-agent systems and agent-based interoperability for:

• networking and cooperation,
• agent-based simulation,
• text mining,
• Cloud, parallel computing and applications.

HMIC - Human-Machine Intelligent Cooperation

HMIC is primarily concerned on creating methodologies that enable machines and software systems to think and interact like humans and have social capabilities similar to humans enabling them to be members of heterogeneous human/machine teams.

CS - Computer Science.

CS main general aim is software and information processing reliability with emphasis on fundamental research, ranging through computational complexity, automata and formal languages, algorithms, programming languages, semantics, and formal verification.