Associate Professor of Computer Science ISC (Tec de Monterrey), M.Sc., Ph.D. (University of Calgary) Christopher Newport University Department of Physics, Computer Science & Engineering 1 University Place, Newport News, VA 23606 USA Gosnold Hall 139 | roberto.flores@cnu.edu (757) 594-7487 | fax: (757) 594-7919

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CPSC 110: Introduction to Computing

CPSC 150: Computers and Programming I

CPSC 250: Computers and Programming II

CPSC 360: Principles of Programming Languages

CPSC 480/501: Software Design and Development

Multiagent Systems [conversation protocols, communication languages, social commitments & robotics simulation]
Software Engineering [OOSE, agile development].

My primary research interest is in multiagent systems, which are computer systems made out of loosely coupled software programs that interact to achieve their (individual or collective) objectives. One of the challenges in this area is to define how communicational interactions (called conversations) evolve over time. Negotiating the advance of the state of social commitments is one way to indicate this evolution -- where a social commitment indicates that one of the agents is responsible to do a performance advancing the interaction. The use of social commitments has interesting practical implications, since their fulfillment (or lack thereof) involve the possible imposition of rewards (or sanctions) which impact reputation and the likeliness of being considered as a reliable partner in future interactions.

Projects

• WISE: Watershed Interdisciplinary Science Education. GK-12 NSF-funded project.
• MoSES: Mobile Sensing and Exploring System @ PCSE.
• CNU BlueJ Formatter: Source code style formatting extension for BlueJ.

M.Sc. Students

• Emily Coate (2012, estimated)
• William Hanson (2011)
• Martin Press (2011)

Student Projects

• Jonathan Gallagher, M.Sc. (Spring 2009) "Introduction to Functional Programming and Type Theory".
• Devin Saverline, B.Sc. (Spring 2009) "WOW add-on".
• David Brear, B.Sc. (Fall 2008) "UUMMUU: A Discovery Web Search Engine System".
• Daniel Goodwin & Martin Press, B.Sc. (Spring 2008) "PALASS: A portable application for a location-aware social system".
• Quintin Mirick, B.Sc. (Fall 2006) "Investigating Unit testing in a Trust management system".

Conferences

• International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence (ICAART '09 '10 '11)
• 4th International Workshop on Agents and Web Services Merging in Distributed Environments (AWeSoMe '08)
• The 7th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS '08)
• 39th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE '08)
• Central and Eastern European Conference in Multiagent Systems (CEEMAS '03, '05, '07)
• 2007 International Conference on Complex Open Distributed Systems (CODS 07)
• AAMAS '06 / Workshop on Agent Communications (AC 2006)
• AAMAS '05 / Workshop on Agent Communications (AC 2005)

Search the DBLP bibliography [Flores][Flores-Mendez] and the ACM digital library [Flores]

• Martin Press & Roberto A. Flores (2012) "Towards Flexible Conversation Protocol Generation and Verification: A Social Commitment Approach." IADIS International Journal on Computer Science and Information Systems. (To appear) [download ] (Extended version of the paper published in A. Palma dos Reis (Ed.), Proceedings of the IADIS International Conference on Intelligent Systems and Agents (ISA 2011), Rome, Italy, July 24-26, 2011. IADIS Press, pp. 35-42. Outstanding Paper Award)
  
• Martin Press, Daniel Goodwin & Roberto A. Flores (2008) "PALASS: A Portable Application for a Location-Aware Social System." In R. Meersman, Z. Tari & P. Herrero (Eds.), International Workshop on Mobile and Networking Technologies for Social Applications (MONET'08), OnTheMove for Meaningful Internet Systems (OTM 2008), Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), Volume 5333, pp. 499?508, Springer-Verlag, Monterrey, Mexico, November 9-14, 2008.
  
• Frank Dignum, Rogier van Eijk & Roberto A. Flores, Editors (2007) "Agent Communication II: International Workshops on Agent Communication, AC 2005 and AC 2006 Utrecht, Netherlands, July 25, 2005 and Hakodate, Japan, May 9, 2006, Selected and Revised Papers", Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Volume 3859, January 2007, Springer Verlag.
  
• Roberto A. Flores, Philippe Pasquier & Brahim Chaib-draa (2007) "Conversational Semantics Sustained by Commitments." In F. Dignum & R. van Eijk (Eds.), Journal on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, Volume 14, Number 2, April 2007, Springer-Verlag, pp. 165-186. [download ]
  
• Robert C. Kremer & Roberto A. Flores (2005) "Using a Performative Subsumption Lattice to Support Commitment-based Conversations." In F. Dignum, V. Dignum, S. Koenig, S. Kraus, M.P. Singh & M. Wooldridge (eds.), Proceedings of the 4th International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi Agent Systems (AAMAS 2005), ACM Press, pp. 114-121, Utrecht, The Netherlands, July 25-29, 2005.
• Philippe Pasquier, Roberto A. Flores & Brahim Chaib-draa (2004) "Modelling Flexible Social Commitments and their Enforcement." In M.-P. Gleizes, A. Omicini & F. Zambonelli (Eds.), Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop: Engineering Societies in the Agents World (ESAW), Springer-Verlag, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Volume 3451, Springer-Verlag, pp. 153-165, Toulouse, France, October 20-22, 2004.
• Roberto A. Flores & Robert C. Kremer (2004) "A Principled Modular Approach to Construct Flexible Conversation Protocols." In A.Y. Tawfik & S.D. Goodwin (Eds.), Advances in Artificial Intelligence, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Volume 3060, Springer-Verlag, pp. 1-15. [download ]
  
• Roberto A. Flores & Robert C. Kremer (2002) "To Commit or Not To Commit: Modelling Agent Conversations for Action." Computational Intelligence. Blackwell Publishing, 18:2, pp. 120-173.
  
• Roberto A. Flores (2002) "Modelling Agent Conversations for Action." Ph.D. Thesis. University of Calgary, Canada. [download ]
  
• Roberto A. Flores (1997) "Programming Distributed Collaboration Interaction through the WWW" M.Sc. Thesis. University of Calgary, Canada. [download ]