Sebastian Sardina's Extended Bio
Sebastian Sardina is a Professor in Artificial Intelligence at the School of Computing Technologies, RMIT University (Melbourne, AUSTRALIA), and a member of the RMIT AI Innovation Lab. He joined RMIT as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in 2005 under a project directed by Prof. Lin Padgham on integrating BDI style agent-programming with AI planning approaches to sequential decision making. He completed his PhD and M.Sc in the Cognitive Robotics Group at the University of Toronto (Canada) under the supervision of Prof. Hector Levesque. Before that, he obtained a Bachelor in Computer Science from the South National University (Universidad Nacional del Sur) in Bahia Blanca, Argentina, with a thesis under the advise of Prof. Guillermo Simari. Sebastian has held Visiting Professor/Research positions at Universidad Nacional del Sur and Universidad de Buenos Aires (Argentina), Sapienza Universita’ di Roma and Free University of Bolzano-Bozen, Bolzan (Italy), the Universidad Católica de Chile (Chile), and at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Spain).
Sebastian’s research falls in the intersection between knowledge representation, AI automated planning, and agent-oriented programming, seeking better representation models and algorithms for programming goal-oriented controllers operating in dynamic environments, where the use of mainstream programming languages (like C++, Python, or JAVA) is difficult, cumbersome, and error-prone. Sebastian has contributed to the enhancement of agent programming languages with learning and planning capabilities, and to the study and development of advanced forms of AI planning, including non-deterministic planning and automatic behaviour composition of devices and agents. In recent years, he has significantly contributed to the the goal/intention recognition problem. Sebastian’s research has been carried out with a many collaborators and students around the world, for which he feels extremely lucky and grateful!
Sebastian scientific contributions regularly appear in premier AI scientific publication outlets, including IJCAI, AAMAS, ICAPS, KR, AIJ, JAIR, JAAMAS, and AAAI, for which he also regularly serves as Area Chair or Senior Program Committee member. He has also published in non-AI venues like IEEE SOCA, BPM, CIG, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, and Journal of Robotics and Autonomous Systems. His work has received paper awards/recognition (or nominations for) at ICAPS'21, AAMAS'19, AAMAS'17, IJCNN'17, AAMAS'14, and JELIA'12, and has been invited for presentation nationally and internationally at various forums and institutions. Sebastian is in the Editorial Board of the Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent Systems (JAAMAS), the premier journal in intelligent agents, and has been in the organization committee of various top-rated AI conferences (e.g., KR'18 Tutorial & Workshop Chair, IJCAI’17 as Exhibition Chair, AAMAS'16 as Tutorial Chair, AAAI'15 as Student Abstract and Poster Track Chair, and AAMAS'15 as Student Travel Support Coordinator), for which he also regularly serves as Area Chair or Senior Program Committee.
Sebastian Sardina’s teaching at RMIT has focused on courses related to the mathematical foundations of Computer Science, such as Theory of Computation, Discrete Mathematics, and Artificial Intelligence. He have also taught two seminar research-style courses, namely, COSC1204/2048 Agent-oriented Programming & Design and COSC2780 Intelligent Decision Making. In the past, he has have been the Program Manager for the BH013 Honours in Computer Science and BP232 Computing Studies (currently discontinued). Besides RMIT, he has delivered intense advanced courses overseas at Sapienza Universita’ di Roma (Italy), Universidad de Buenos Aires (Argentina), as part of their long-standing ECI serie, and Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (Spain), under the ERASMUS+ scheme, as well as staff training workshops at Agent-oriented Software.
More generally, as a Computer Scientist, Sebastian Sardina has also been interested in bringing Computational Thinking and programming to the community, particularly to children and youth. He has delivered or supported courses and workshops on algorithmic thinking and coding in Melbourne (in primary and secondary schools as well as in community centres) and provided outreach activities from RMIT to the community. He has helped (or tried to!) promote the integration of Computational Thinking with the Math teaching at the Mathematical Association of Victoria annual conferences (the premier forum for math educators in Victoria), running workshops, presentations, and participating in panel of experts discussions. During 2020-2021, I have been a member of the panel at VCAA conducting the study design review for the Algorithmics (HESS) VCE program which would come into effect in 2023.
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