Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) has a vacancy in the “Intelligent and Autonomous Systems” research group for a talented Researcher: Autonomous negotiation agents for online peer to peer trading.

The world of peer to peer trading is changing rapidly. Whereas in the past, people would contact their vendors personally over phone or e-mail, online trading platforms now make it possible for vendors to match and discover supply and demand in a more effective and scalable way. This creates a new opportunity to use negotiation agents that can support vendors in their negotiations and eventually make deals autonomously on their behalf. This requires a combination of a state-of-the-art multi-agent and machine learning techniques that can support the user in making efficient offers and learn the preferences of the user as well as of the trading partners.

The aim of the vacant position is to develop fundamental and applicable solutions for agent negotiations within a new online trading platform. Depending on the interests and expertise of the candidate, the project draws on tools and techniques from multi-agent learning, preference modeling and elicitation, machine learning, automated negotiation, decision support systems, and sequential multi-agent decision-making under uncertainty. One of the scientific challenges in this project will be to formulate long-term negotiation strategies that can strike partial deals with multiple partners under preference uncertainty, motivated by the challenge of autonomously representing a user in repeated many-to-many negotiations.

The research will focus on the following aspects:

1. Developing agent models for many-to-many automated negotiation to help negotiate complex trading deals with multiple partners;
2. Establishing new machine learning techniques that are able to estimate the opponent’s preference from multiple, short interactions;
3. Developing active preference elicitation models in order to accurately represent and support users by a negotiating agent;
4. Designing new negotiation strategies and planning algorithms for multi-issue negotiations in an environment with multiple trading parties and large product portfolios. The purpose is to develop optimal solutions for trading scenarios with high degrees of complexity.

The project is a collaboration between CWI and an ambitious start-up company Acumex, which has built the first online negotiation platform for complex trading goods. This platform replaces the old trading paradigm with a more streamlined cloud-based approach that allows a structured approach to peer to peer trading processes and real-time online negotiations. The vacant position will primarily devise algorithms and experiments for online preference and strategy elicitation and distributed negotiations in face of uncertainty, and will closely collaborate with other project team members for the implementation of experimental tests.

The successful applicant will contribute to the research group's ambition to  develop and mature fundamental principles that find applications in practical intelligent and autonomous systems. The position is embedded in a diverse team of motivated junior and senior researchers with experience and ongoing complementary projects on topics such as multi-agent learning, autonomous representation, negotiation, smart energy systems, and more. Group alumni have moved on to excellent positions in academia and industry, making it a cornerstone in their career path.

The candidate is required to have a Ph.D. in computer science, artificial intelligence, mathematics, or in comparable areas. Candidates should have a clear interest in fundamental research, should be creative and solid in their research, should have interest in multi-agent systems and in the application area of negotiation and trading, and should be able to cooperate with experts from different disciplines. Candidates are expected to have an excellent command of English, experience in programming (preferably object-oriented, e.g. Java, C#), academic writing and presenting.

The terms of employment are in accordance with the Dutch Collective Labour Agreement for Research Centres ("CAO-onderzoeksinstellingen"). The gross monthly salary for an employee on a full time basis, depending on relevant work experience, ranges from € 3477 to € 4945. The appointment will be for 3 years, with a preferred starting date of November 1, 2018.

Employees are also entitled to a holiday allowance of 8% of the gross annual salary and a year-end bonus of 8.33%. CWI offers attractive working conditions, including flexible scheduling.

Please visit our website for more information about our terms of employment: www.cwi.nl/terms-of-employment.

Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI)

Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) is the Dutch national research institute for mathematics and computer science and is part of the Institutes Organisation of NWO. The mission of CWI is to conduct pioneering research in mathematics and computer science, generating new knowledge in these fields and conveying it to trade, industry, and society at large.

CWI is an internationally oriented institute, with 160 scientists from approximately 27 countries. The facilities are first-rate and include excellent IT support, career planning, training, and courses.

CWI is located at Science Park Amsterdam that is presently developing into a major location of research in the natural sciences in The Netherlands, housing the sciences of the University of Amsterdam and of the Vrije Universiteit as well as several other national research institutes next to CWI.