Valentin Robu

Valentin's current research interests include using multi-agent systems distributed Artificial Intelligence techniques to solve challenges arising in smart electricity grids. More specifically, his recent research addressed a variety of problems in this area, ranging the from decentralised scheduling of multiple electric vehicles, such that the capacity of distribution networks is not exceeded, using scoring rules to integrate renewable energy suppliers into existing grids, to the formation of efficient buyer groups in collective switching schemes.

Valentin obtained his PhD in 2009 from CWI, the Netherlands National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science in Amsterdam (awarded jointly with the Technical University of Eindhoven, NL). At CWI, he was employed in the DEAL (Distributed Engine for Advanced Logistics) project, that looked at applying multi-agent systems, machine learning and game-theoretic techniques to optimise logistic supply chains. Before this, he obtained a master degree in AI from the free University in Amsterdam, where he worked on electronic negotiation.

After his PhD (between 2009-2014), he was employed as a research fellow, then senior research fellow in the Agents, Interaction and Complexity research group at the University of Southampton (where he is still a visiting senior research fellow). In Southampton, he was employed in the industrially-funded iDEaS project (intelligent Decentralised Energy-aware Systems), that looked at a broad range of AI applications in the Smart Grid. He was published over 50 conference and journal papers on a wide range of AI-related topics, ranging from electronic negotiation, mechanism design and their application to the smart grid and distributed logistics, to the complex dynamics of collaborative tagging systems. Some of this research was featured in several popular venues such as the Engineer, the Economist, the Conversation, ACM TechNews etc.

For this research, he has visited and collaborated widely with researchers from a range of top international institutions, ranging from the Santa Fe Complex Systems Institute, Harvard University, Nagoya Institute of Technology, Microsoft Research, TU Delft, University of Toronto etc.