Introduction
Multi-agent systems (MAS) are a core area of research of modern artificial intelligence. A multi-agent system consists of multiple decision-making agents which interact in a shared environment to achieve common or conflicting goals. An abundance of applications and problems can be usefully modelled and analysed using MAS methodology.
Examples include markets in which artificial and human trading agents negotiate contracts; autonomous vehicles driving in dense urban traffic; teams of robots and humans working together in Industry 4.0 factories and warehouses; drone swarms used for airport surveillance and patrolling; and game playing agents in commercial or educational computer games.
Booking is now closed.
About the event
The Alan Turing Institute will host a second interactive UK Multi-Agent Systems Symposium 2025 (UK-MAS) in collaboration with the King’s College London Institute for Artificial Intelligence. The goal of the symposium is to bring together UK-based research labs at universities and industry who have a significant focus on MAS research, to explore the MAS research landscape in the UK.
We define MAS in a broad sense, including multi-agent interaction/learning/planning, negotiation, game theory, mechanism design, opponent modelling, game playing, swarm robotics, HRI/HCI, autonomous driving, social networks, verification, etc.
We have curated an exciting agenda for the event featuring keynotes, panels, talks, open discussions and posters allowing for networking opportunities for delegates from academia and industry. The event will kick off with a keynote talk by Iain Couzin (Director of the Department of Collective Behavior, Max Planck Institute), which will be followed by several sessions focusing on foundation models, open-source tools, and applications, among other topics. The speaker list includes:
• Iain Couzin (Director of the Department of Collective Behaviour, Max Planck Institute)
• Mirco Musolesi (Professor of Computer Science, University College London)
• Joel Leibo (Senior Research Scientist, Google DeepMind)
• Chris Hicks (Principal Research Scientist and Theme Lead, Alan Turing Institute)
• Subramanian Ramamoorthy (Professor of Computer Science, University of Edinburgh, and VP Prediction and Planning, FiveAI Ltd.)
As part of UK-MAS 2025 symposium, we are updating our map of MAS research labs in the UK To ensure an accurate overview of research efforts, we’re conducting a census of MAS labs and compiling key statistics to be shared at the symposium.
You can find the updated map and list of UK MAS labs here.
📌 Submit your lab details here: https://forms.gle/E35Zdvcqwi6DMUk2A (Takes less than 5 minutes!)
Please share this form with colleagues in the MAS community to help us build a comprehensive picture of the field.
Agenda
09:00 – 09:30 Registration
09:30 – 09:35 Introduction
09:35 – 09:40 Sponsors welcome
09:40 – 09:45 Overview of UK labs
09:45 – 10:45 Session 1: Keynote talk “The Geometry of Multi-Agent Decision Making” by Iain Couzin
10:45 – 11:00 Coffee break
11:00 – 12:10 Session 2: MAS research in the age of foundation models
11:00 – 11:20 Talk “Modelling Decision-making in Societies of Human and AI Agents” by Mirco Musolesi (University College London)
11:20 – 11:40 Talk “Generative Social Simulation” by Joel Leibo (Google DeepMind)
11:40 – 12:00 Shared Q&A and discussion
12:10 – 12:30 Poster session
12:30 – 13:30 Lunch and poster session
13:30 – 14:40 Session 3: Toolbox of MAS research
13:30 – 14:10 Short talks to present multi-agent software libraries
- Filippos Christianos (Convergence): EPyMARL, multi-robot warehouse environment, level-based foraging environment
- Matteo Bettini (University of Cambridge, Meta): VMAS, BenchMARL
- Zihao Guo (King’s College London): SocialJax
- Theodore Turocy (University of East Anglia, Alan Turing Institute): Gambit
- Ben Ellis (University of Oxford): JaxMARL
- Sasha Vezhnevets (Google DeepMind): Melting Pot, Concordia
- Alex Laterre (InstaDeep): Mava, Jumanji
- Georgios Pilouras (Google DeepMind): OpenSpiel
14:10 – 14:30 Discussion panel on software development for research
14:40 – 15:00 Coffee break
15:00 – 17:00 Session 4: Applications of MAS research
15:00 – 15:25 Talk “Ocado’s Hive Technology” by Gareth Siret (Ocado)
15:25 – 15:50 Talk “Multi-agent systems and cyber security” by Chris Hicks (The Alan Turing Institute)
15:50 – 16:15 Talk “Understanding others: Lessons and prospects for assistive autonomy” by Subramanian Ramamoorthy (University of Edinburgh)
16:15 – 16:40 Talk “Project Bluebird: Agent-based Air Traffic Control” by Richard Everson (University of Exeter)
17:00 – 17:15 Closing remarks
Register now
Please contact [email protected] with any questions.
