Michael Lees

Michel H. Lees received the Ph.D. degree from the School of Computer Science at the University of Nottingham, Nottingham, U.K. Currently he is an Assistant Professor in the Section Computational Science, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Prior to this he was an Assistant Professor in the School of Computer Engineering of Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. He has post-doctoral experience at NTU, the University of Nottingham and the University of Birmingham, U.K. His research interests are in modeling and simulation of large scale complex systems, he is particularly interested in understanding the effects human behavior and individual behavioral interactions have on system level dynamics. Dr. Lees is currently workshop chair of the International Conference on Computational Science (ICCS) and an editor of the Journal of Computational Science (JOCS).

I am an Associate Professor at the Universiteit van Amsterdam where I lead the Computational Science Lab (Informatics Institute). Prior to this I was an Assistant Professor at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore.I completed my PhD Adaptive Optimistic Simulation of Multi-Agent Systems at and I graduated from Edinburgh University in July of 2001 with a joint honours Computer Science/Artificial Intelligence degree.

My research is driven by scientific challenges in the area of social-urban complex systems. Complex Systems span a wide range of different application areas, but exhibit common systemic behaviours that emerge through the interactions of simple elements. This systemic behaviour can only be understood by holistic analysis that necessitates viewing the system as a dynamic collective of individuals. Computational models one means of analysis that are capable understanding such emergent phenomena. One of the most fundamental challenges in this area is how to map social technical and natural phenomena into scalable and predictive computational models that can help develop and test interventions.

In order to address this fundamental challenge my research aims to develop novel methods in agent-based modelling (modelling methodology) and discrete-event simulation (computation execution). This includes methods for semiautomatic model construction, modelling formalisms that are able to capture human behaviour and new ways to probe and measure social-urban systems to be able to validate and calibrate such models. My application areas include the growth of informal settlements, the process of school segregation through school choice, the dynamics of human crowds, and the social dynamics of EV charging behaviour.