Simon Wells
Simon Wells

Dr Simon Wells

Lecturer

Biography

Research interests: Simon is a computer scientist with interests in Artificial Intelligence who works at the nexus of Argumentative Dialogue, Behaviour Change, and Interaction Design. His research is concerned with formal models of reasoning and communication that are based upon argumentation. He has developed theoretical and applied intelligent computational systems that support argumentation between heterogeneous groups of people and machines, and which have been deployed in pure science, educational, social and policy domains.

Career history: Simon began his career at the University of Dundee where he researched a thesis on inter-agent communication using argumentation whilst employed on the EPSRC-funded Information Exchange Project. After his doctoral research Simon stayed in the School of Computing at Dundee until 2011. During this time he lectured across the undergraduate Computer Science curriculum whilst helping establish the nascent Argumentation Research Group. In 2011, Simon joined the Open Microscopy Environment (OME) project and worked on joint research between OME and the Ninewells Hospital Health Informatics Centre. In 2012 Simon joined the School of Computing at the University of Aberdeen where he was on employed on a large EU-funded IP project called SUPERHUB. On SUPERHUB he researched the roles of persuasive technology and behaviour change mechanisms in sustainable transport systems. In 2014 Simon joined the school of computing at Edinburgh Napier as a lecturer.

Research Areas

Events

Esteem

Conference Organising Activity

  • 23rd Workshop on Computational Models of Natural Argument
  • 22nd Workshop on Computational Models of Natural Argument
  • 21st Workshop on Computational Models of Natural Argument
  • 20th Workshop on Computational Models of Natural Argument
  • 19th Workshop on Computational Models of Natural Argument

 

Editorial Activity

  • Proceedings of the 23rd Workshop on Computational Models of Natural Argument
  • Proceedings of the 22nd Workshop on Computational Models of Natural Argument
  • Proceedings of the 21st Workshop on Computational Models of Natural Argument
  • Proceedings of the 20th Workshop on Computational Models of Natural Argument
  • Proceedings of the 19th Workshop on Computational Models of Natural Argument

 

Grant Reviewer

  • Polish National Science Centre PRELUDIUM Funding Scheme
  • SICSA Postdoctoral and Early Career Researcher Exchanges (PECE)
  • Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) Programme - Transitions and Behaviour
  • SICSA DIstinguished Visitor Scheme
  • Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) Programme - Human Capital: Professional Games for Professional Skills
  • Polish National Science Centre PRELUDIUM Funding Scheme

 

Public/Community Engagement

  • West of Scotland Herring Hunt (WOSHH) Website Launch Community Outreach Event at Gairloch Museum

 

Research Degree External Examining

  • External Ph.D Examiner: University of York (Fatima Alkhawaldeh)
  • External Ph.D Examiner: King's College London (Jack Mumford)
  • External Ph.D Examiner: King's College London (Federico Castagna)

 

Reviewing

  • Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING)
  • Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2023)
  • Journal of Computers In Human Behaviour
  • Workshop on Computational Models of Natural Argument (CMNA)
  • Journal of Argument & Computation
  • 2023 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing
  • International Conference on the Applications of Evolutionary Computation (EvoApps)
  • Workshop on Computational Models of Natural Argument (CMNA)
  • Journal of Argument & Computation
  • 2nd Conference of the Asia-Pacific Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics and the 12th International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing
  • Journal of Computers In Human Behaviour
  • International Conference on the Applications of Evolutionary Computation (EvoApps)
  • Synthese Journal
  • 9th International Conference on Computational Models of Argument (COMMA)
  • 29th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING)
  • International Conference on the Applications of Evolutionary Computation (EvoApps)
  • Journal of Computers In Human Behaviour
  • Synthese Journal
  • Workshop on Computational Models of Natural Argument (CMNA)
  • 1stConference of the Asia-Pacific Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics and the 11th International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing
  • EACL Association for Computational Linguistics European Chapter
  • Manuscrito: Revista Internacional de Filosofia
  • 8th International Conference on Computational Models of Argument (COMMA)
  • Journal of Computers In Human Behaviour
  • Transportation Journal
  • IEEE Technology and Society Magazine
  • Journal of Argument & Computation
  • Journal of Argument & Computation
  • International Conference on the Applications of Evolutionary Computation (EvoApps)
  • Workshop on Computational Models of Natural Argument (CMNA)
  • Journal Of Intelligent Transportation Systems
  • Journal of Computers In Human Behaviour
  • Workshop on Computational Models of Natural Argument (CMNA)
  • International Workshop on Theory and Applications of Formal Argument (TAFA)
  • Journal of Logics and their Applications
  • Journal Of Intelligent Transportation Systems
  • ACM SIGCHI Designing Interactive Systems (DIS)
  • International Conference on the Applications of Evolutionary Computation (EvoApps)
  • Workshop on Computational Models of Natural Argument (CMNA)
  • Journal of Computers In Human Behaviour
  • EAI Endorsed Journal Of Ambient Systems
  • International Workshop on Theory and Applications of Formal Argument (TAFA)
  • Journal of Logique et Analyze
  • Workshop on Computational Models of Natural Argument (CMNA)
  • International Workshop on Theory and Applications of Formal Argument (TAFA)
  • International Workshop on Non-Monotonic Reasoning
  • International Workshop on Theory and Applications of Formal Argument (TAFA)
  • Workshop on Computational Models of Natural Argument (CMNA)
  • Workshop on User Modelling for Motivation (UM4Motivation)
  • Dialectics, Dialogue and Argumentation. an Examination of Douglas Walton's Theories of Reasoning (Tributes)
  • Workshop on Computational Models of Natural Argument (CMNA)
  • Knowledge Engineering Review
  • International Workshop on Non-Monotonic Reasoning
  • Journal of Argument & Computation
  • Wiley Encyclopedia of Computer Science & Engineering Article on Agent Technology

 

Date


27 results

Ontology Based Business Simulations

Journal Article
Farrenkopf, T., Guckert, M., Urquhart, N., & Wells, S. (2016)
Ontology Based Business Simulations. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 19(4), https://doi.org/10.18564/jasss.3266
Within business games there is a need to provide realistic feedback for decisions made, if such business games are to continue to remain relevant in increasingly complex busin...

Combinatorial Dialogue Games in Strategic Argumentation

Book Chapter
Wells, S. (2016)
Combinatorial Dialogue Games in Strategic Argumentation. In Argumentation and Reasoned Action Volume 2 (1045-1063). College Publications
We introduce combinatorial dialogue games, an approach to strategizing within argumentative dialogue games where the moves played are interpreted as moves within an edge addit...

Using argumentation within sustainable transport communication

Book
Wells, S. & Pangbourne, K. (2016)
Using argumentation within sustainable transport communication. In Argumentation and Reasoned Action Volume 1, 781-801. College Publications. ISBN 1848902115
In this paper we present the preliminary results of a survey of persuasive communication within the sustainable transport domain. This survey is underpinned by a reconstructi...

Large-scale Argument Visualization (LSAV)

Conference Proceeding
Khartabil, D., Wells, S., & Kennedy, J. (2016)
Large-scale Argument Visualization (LSAV). In Eurographics Conference on Visualization (EuroVis), Posters Track (2016)
Arguments are structures of premises and conclusions that underpin rational reasoning processes. Within complex knowledge domains, especially if they are contentious, argument...

Demo paper: AGADE - Scalability of ontology based agent simulations

Conference Proceeding
Farrenkopf, T., Guckert, M., Urquhart, N. B., & Wells, S. (2016)
Demo paper: AGADE - Scalability of ontology based agent simulations. In Advances in Practical Applications of Scalable Multi-agent Systems. The PAAMS Collection (256-259). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39324-7_25
Simulations of real world scenarios often require considerably large numbers of agents. With increasing level of detail and resolution in the underlying models machine limitat...

Automatically Detecting Fallacies in System Safety Arguments

Presentation / Conference
Wells, S., Yuan, T., Manandhar, S., & Kelly, T. (2015, October)
Automatically Detecting Fallacies in System Safety Arguments. Paper presented at 15th International Workshop on Computational Models of Natural Argument(CMNA15
Safety cases play a significant role in the development of safety-critical systems. The key components in a safety case are safety arguments, that are designated to demonstrat...

Introducing ALIAS

Presentation / Conference
Wells, S. & LaGreca, R. (2015, October)
Introducing ALIAS. Paper presented at 15th International Workshop on Computation Models of Natural Argument, Bertinoro, Italy
ALIAS is a Python library for constructing, manipulating, storing, visualising, and converting argumentation structues. It is available with full source code under a copyleft ...

Using Argumentation Within Sustainable Transport Communication

Presentation / Conference
Wells, S. & Pangbourne, K. (2015, June)
Using Argumentation Within Sustainable Transport Communication. Paper presented at 1st European Conference on Argumentation: Argumentation and Reasoned Action (ECA15), Lisbon, Portugal
See attached file.

Combinatorial Dialogue Games in Strategic Argumentation

Presentation / Conference
Wells, S. (2015, June)
Combinatorial Dialogue Games in Strategic Argumentation. Paper presented at 1st European Conference on Argumentation: Argumentation and Reasoned Action (ECA15
This paper introduces combinatorial dialogue, a formal approach to strategising within argumentative dialogue games where the moves played within a dialogue game are interpret...

Design challenges in motivating change for sustainable urban mobility.

Journal Article
Gabrielli, S., Forbes, P., Jylha, A., Wells, S., Sirén, M., Hemminki, S., …Jacucci, G. (2014)
Design challenges in motivating change for sustainable urban mobility. Computers in human behavior, 41, 416-423. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.05.026
In recent years, the design and deployment of persuasive interventions for inducing sustainable urban mobility behaviors has become a very active research field, leveraging on...

Pre-Napier Funded Projects

  • SUstainable and PERsuasive Human Users moBility in future cities (SUPERHUB)
  • Nuffield Undergraduate Research Bursary (URB/38468)
  • International Association for the Exchange of Students for Technical Experience (IAESTE) Placement UK/10/317/01
  • EPSRC (GR/S03/706/01): The Information Exchange

Current Post Grad projects

Previous Post Grad projects