Peter McBurney

Links

Teaching

Research

MBC Project

vicibus gratis formare loquentes
suetus et alterno verum contexere nodo.
Claudius Claudianus, 399 AD.
With skill at shaping urbane interchanges
A tapestry of truth from crossing strands.
Translation of Garry Wills.

Start-ups of students & colleagues:
3scale
Bozii (now Freedom4)
Carbon 360
Cleartango
Dolphin Music
Edward Ridding Design
eepok
e-Seek
Fatsoma
jazzle
Redwing Consulting
Ripple Software
Victria

Peter McBurney is a Professor in the Planning, Agents, and Intelligent Systems (PAIS) Group of the Department of Informatics at King's College London. Between January 2004 and March 2006, McBurney was the Administrative Co-ordinator of the AgentLink III network, an EC-funded Co-ordination Action supporting European research and development in agent-based computing. The network comprised over 200 academic, research and industrial organizations from across Europe. In 2007, 2008 and 2009, he was founding GameMaster of the Market Design or CAT Tournament, sponsored by the Trading Agent Competition and the MBC Project. In 2011, he was Chair of the Innovative Applications Track at the 10th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS 2011), in Taipei, Taiwan.
Since January 2007, McBurney has been joint Editor-in-Chief of the refereed journal, The Knowledge Engineering Review, published by Cambridge University Press. During 2008-2011, he is an invited Board Member of the Association for Trading Agent Research, organizers of the annual Trading Agent Competitions (TAC). As measured by research citations in August 2006, he is among the Top 1.2% of all computer scientists in the world. According to Google Scholar, McBurney has an h-index score of 29, and his most-cited publication has 395 citations. According to Microsoft Academic's rankings in January 2011, McBurney is the 65th most-cited Artificial Intelligence researcher in the world, and is the second-highest ranked Australian, based on academic citations over the last 10 years.
McBurney's research focuses on several areas in multi-agent software systems:

The design, analysis, and implementation of agent communications languages (ACLs) and protocols, to enable automated and rational interaction, argumentation, and dialog over action between machines. His research has primarily explored the formal semantics and pragmatics of ACLs and protocols.
and
The automated design, software engineering, and control of multi-agent simulation models of public policy and corporate strategy domains, particularly in economics, marketing, public health, and security. In these domains, the presence of reflective intelligent entities able to learn, and able themselves to model the environment they are in, creates enormous research and engineering challenges for agent-based modelling of these complex adaptive systems.

Most recently, in collaboration with colleagues in the King's War Studies Department, he has applied these ideas on complex adaptive systems to understanding cyberwarfare and cyberweapons, for example here.
The practical value of McBurney's work in agent communications has been shown by a recent application, in work by PA Kodeswaran and colleagues, of the Fatio Protocol for multi-agent argumentation (developed with Simon Parsons) for the problem of resolving conflicting routing policies of distinct autonomous domains each using the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), at the Network Layer (Layer 3) of the standard Internet stack.
He has published over 180 papers (124 refereed), 6 books and 14 monographs. He has applied successfully for research grants from the Arts Council of England (ACE), the UK Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB), the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the European Commission's Information Society Technologies (IST) programme, the Ford Foundation, the US Department of Labor, the Canadian Agency for International Development, and the International Labor Organization (ILO). In total, these grants have amounted to some GBP 11 million in research funding. He has undertaken inter-disciplinary research projects with economists, philosophers, pure mathematicians, epidemiologists and a composer.
McBurney has the University Medal in Mathematical Statistics from the Australian National University, Canberra, and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Liverpool. In 1985-1986, as Chairman of the Department of Business Studies at the University of Zimbabwe, he led the creation of majority-ruled Southern Africa's first MBA programme. In 1991, he was appointed Chairman of an ad-hoc European Commission Working Party exploring future technology needs of the Publishing and Media industries (Eurinfo); among its achievements was the first detailed specification for an e-book. In both 2002 and 2005 he was co-author of an EC-sponsored report on the future of agent-based computer technologies, the AgentLink Agent Technologies Roadmap. He has undertaken proposal or project reviews for the research funding agencies of Belgium, Canada, the EC, Finland, Flanders, the Netherlands, and the UK (EPSRC and ESRC). He has been an official examiner for 29 PhD candidates in Australia, Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK, and the USA, and he has successfully supervised 6 PhD students and 1 MPhil student to completion. In addition to these, he currently supervises 7 PhD students.
As a management consultant, McBurney has advised the world's leading IT and Telecommunications companies on marketing strategy, implementation planning and strategic programming, and his clients have included: AT&T, British Telecom, Charoen Pokphand, Dallah Albaraka, Ericsson, GTE, ICO Global, Inmarsat, Kolon, NYNEX, O2, Omnipoint, Pegaso Telecomunicaciones, Qualcomm, Reliance Telecom, Sampoerna Telekomunikasi, Singapore Telecom, Teledesic, US WEST, and the World Insurance Network.
McBurney has been an invited co-editor of special issues of the refereed journals, ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems, Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (here and here), E-Commerce Research and Applications, IEEE Intelligent Systems, The Knowledge Engineering Review, and Synthese/Knowledge, Rationality and Action. He has helped organize a AAAI Symposium on Chance Discovery, a UK Multi-Agent Systems (UKMAS) Meeting, three AgentLink Technical Forums, two AgentLink Agent Technology Conferences, a Workshop on Technical Standards in Agent Systems, a Workshop on Multi-Agent Systems and Complexity, two workshops on Market-Based Control of Complex Computational Systems, the Second International Workshop on Computational Social Choice, and three editions of the TAC Market Design (CAT) Tournament; he is also a founding member of the Steering Committee of the International Workshop series on Argumentation in Multi-Agent Systems, held annually since 2004, and Co-ordinating Co-Chair of the 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 ArgMAS Workshops.

Teaching

Office Hours: I am generally in my office on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. If you wish to see me, please first make an appointment by email (see below for address).

In Semester 2 of academic year 2010-2011, I will be teaching: MSc Group Software Project.

Other Activities

Co-ordinator, MSc Individual Projects, 2011.

Other McBurneys

My grandfather, Charles Bernard B. McBurney (1890-1943), was a founder member and trumpeter with The Ballina Jazz Band. This band, founded by David Samuel Harris (aka "Kewpie Harris"), was one of Australia's earliest jazz ensembles, performing regularly from 1919 to 1951. Charles McBurney died during WW II while on active duty, helping to resist the attempted invasion of Australia by the military-fascist regime of Japan, and is buried in the Australian War Graves cemetery in Casino, NSW, Australia. My great-uncle Cecil C. Sexton (1916-1942) also fought Japanese colonialism and was killed during the Battle of Singapore; he is buried in Kranji War Cemetery, Singapore.

His grandfather Charles McBurney (Belfast 1828-1899 Balmain), sea captain, master of the barque Fury, ship-wrecked at Sealers Cove, Rabbit Island, Victoria, en route from Newcastle (New South Wales) to Melbourne with a cargo of coal, 26 August 1869. He is also recorded as being the captain of The Prince Regent, which docked in Sydney from Auckland on 6 June 1866.

Another of my great-great-grandfathers was William Grant Law (Williams River, NSW 1847-1936 Mullumbimby), an original selecter (1881) on Mullumbimby Creek in far northern New South Wales, and dairy-farming pioneer, timber-getter, and bullocky. His bullock teams collected cedar from the Brunswick and Richmond valleys and took it to be loaded onto ships across the surf at Brunswick Heads.

As far as I am aware, I am not related to:

Sir MacBurney, one of the 60 Knights participating in the Tournament, supervised by Geoffrey Chaucer on the orders of Richard II, held at Smithfield, London, in 1390.
Charles Burney, FRS (1726-1814), composer, musician and music historian. Charles and his twin sister Susanna were the last of 20 children, and born to the second wife, of James Macburney (1678-1749), dancer, violinist and painter, who changed the family name to Burney at the time of Charles' birth. James had an older son by his first wife, a son also named James Burney (1710-1789), who was organist at St Mary's Church, Shrewsbury, for 54 years (1732-1786).

For a period, Charles Burney and his family lived in Isaac Newton's former house at 35 St Martin's Street, Leicester Square, London. Among Charles' children were Esther (1749-1832), harpsichordist, who married her cousin Charles Rousseau Burney (1747-1819), also a keyboardist and violinist; Fanny (Madame d'Arblay, 1752-1840), novelist and playwright; Rear Admiral James Burney, FRS (1750-1821), naval historian and sailor (he twice sailed around the world with Captain James Cook RN); Rev. Charles Burney FRS (1757-1817), classical scholar; Charlotte Ann (Mrs Broome, 1761-1838), novelist; and Sarah Harriet (1772-1844), novelist. Charles' nephew, Edward Francisco Burney (1760-1848), artist and violinist, was a brother to Charles Rousseau Burney, both sons of Richard Burney (1723-1792), an elder brother to Charles. (Main sources: ODNB and K. S. Grant: "Charles Burney", Grove Music Online, Accessed 2006-12-10.)

In 1793, Fanny Burney married Alexandre-Jean-Baptiste Piochard D'Arblay (1754-1818), an emigre French aristocrat and soldier, and adjutant-general to Lafayette. Their son, Alexander d'Arblay (1794-1837), was a poet and keen chess-player, and was 10th wrangler in the Mathematics Tripos at Cambridge in 1818, where he was a friend of fellow-student Charles Babbage. He was also a member of Babbage's Analytical Society (forerunner of the Cambridge Philosophical Society), which sought to introduce modern analysis, including Leibnizian notation for the differential calculus, into mathematics teaching at Cambridge. d'Arblay was ordained and served as founding minister of Camden Town Chapel (later, All Saints Camden) from 1824-1837, and then served briefly at Ely. The founding organist at Camden Town Chapel was Samuel Wesley (1766-1837).
Not everyone was a fan of clan Burney. Here is William Hazlitt:

"There are whole families who are born classical, and are entered in the heralds' college of reputation by the right of consanguinity. Literature, like nobility, runs in the blood. There is the Burney family. There is no end of it or its pretensions. It produces wits, scholars, novelists, musicians, artists in 'numbers numberless.' The name is alone a passport to the Temple of Fame. Those who bear it are free of Parnassus by birthright. The founder of it was himself an historian and a musician, but more of a courtier and man of the world than either. The secret of his success may perhaps be discovered in the following passage, where, in alluding to three eminent performers on different instruments, he says: 'These three illustrious personages were introduced at the Emperor's court,' etc.; speaking of them as if they were foreign ambassadors or princes of the blood, and thus magnifying himself and his profession. This overshadowing manner carries nearly everything before it, and mystifies a great many. There is nothing like putting the best face upon things, and leaving others to find out the difference. He who could call three musicians 'personages' would himself play a personage through life, and succeed in his leading object. Sir Joshua Reynolds, remarking on this passage, said: 'No one had a greater respect than he had for his profession, but that he should never think of applying to it epithets that were appropriated merely to external rank and distinction.' Madame d'Arblay, it must be owned, had cleverness enough to stock a whole family, and to set up her cousin-germans, male and female, for wits and virtuosos to the third and fourth generation. The rest have done nothing, that I know of, but keep up the name." (On the Aristocracy of Letters, 1822)
Robert Ross McBurney (1837-1897), first paid administrator and long-standing member of the YMCA in New York City. McBurney was born in Castle Blayney, County Monaghan, in what is now Northern Ireland, the son of a doctor and from a staunchly protestant family. He emigrated to New York in 1854, and served the YMCA for 34 years. The YMCA branch at West 14th Street in Lower Manhattan is named for him.
Charles Heber McBurney (1845-1913), BA (Harvard) (1866), surgeon and developer of the procedure for diagnosis of appendicitis, and removal of the appendix. Here is a reprint of his 1889 paper to the New York Surgical Society. Charles McBurney was also a member of the medical team which treated US President William McKinley following his assassination; the team's official report published in the Buffalo Medical Journal (November 1901, 57: 271-293) is here.

His grandson, Charles Brian Montague McBurney (1914-1979), American-born archeologist who made his career in Cambridge, UK. His late wife Anne is mentioned by John Berger in his book on drawing ("Berger on Drawing", 2005).

Their sons, Gerard McBurney, composer and expert on Russian music (and sometime speaker before concerts of the Halle Orchestra), and Simon, actor and theatre director.

His brother, Henry Horton McBurney (1843-1875), BA (Harvard) (1862), rower, chemist, student of Adolphe Wurtz in Paris and of Robert Bunsen in Heidelberg, and first husband of Susan Sturgis (1846-1923, married 1867), a woman who was cousin of the first husband of the mother of George Santayana; Mrs McBurney (from 1876, Mrs Henry Bigelow Williams) is briefly mentioned in Santayana's autobiography, Persons and Places (London, UK: Constable, 1944, p. 80).
Andrew R. McBurney, Lieutenant-Governor of Ohio, USA, 1866-1868.
Mona McBurney (1862-1932), composer and the first woman graduate in music from an Australian University, or her brother, Samuel McBurney (1847-1909), music educator and linguist.
James Edwin McBurney (1868-1955), artist and muralist, founder of an art school in Chicago, IL, and WPA painter of public murals, including three at Palmer Park, Chicago. His landscapes have a Hudson Valley School feel to them.
James Howard McBurney (1905-1986), argumentation theorist and third Dean of the School of Speech at Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA. Born in South Dakota, he graduated in 1925 from Yankton College, SD, obtained a Master's degree in economics and business administration in 1929 from the University of South Dakota, and a PhD in 1935 in Speech and General Linguistics from the University of Michigan. After post-doctoral work at Columbia University in 1936, he joined Northwestern in 1936, and was promoted to full Professor in 1941. He was appointed Dean of the School of Speech in 1942, retiring in 1972. In 1949, he was President of the National Communication Association of the USA. He is pictured here at his weekly TV program on WGN, Chicago, in the 1950s. He hosted this TV program, Your Right to Say It, from 1956 to 1972. He also moderated a Chicago radio program, Reviewing Stand, from 1936 to 1972. He co-authored seven books about speech and argumentation.
Alvin McBurney (Alvino Rey) (1911-2004), inventor of the pedal steel guitar.
Samuel Stuart McBurney, statistician at the Australian National University, Canberra (in the same Department where I studied), public servant, and Member of the Order of Australia (1988).
Australian actress, Judy McBurney (1948- ).
US Congressman for the Florida 16th, Rep. Charles McBurney (1957- ), Republican.
Irish logistics company, and Irish and International Haulier of the Year 2006, McBurney Transport.

Contact Details

I welcome emails from potential PhD students or academic visitors who are interested in working on a specific project or research area with me. General emails, which do not mention a specific project or research area, or those which describe a project unrelated to my research interests, are most unlikely to receive a reply from me.

For potential PhD students: I do not generally have funding for PhD students. Please only email me about doing a PhD if you have already secured your own funding or have good prospects of doing so. However, if you are a student at King's College, I am always happy to talk to you about doing a PhD.
For potential student interns: I do not usually have funding or places for student interns. In addition, if you are not a citizen of the European Union, you need a work permit to take a paid position as an intern in Britain. Please don't email me if you have neither funding nor permission to work in Britain.

Contact details:

Peter McBurney
Department of Informatics
King's College London
The Strand
London WC2R 2LS
UK

Email: peter.mcburney [at] kcl.ac.uk