Professor Petr Skobelev is Founder, President and Product/Technology Leader of the software engineering company Smart Solutions Ltd in Samara, Russia, and focused on developing multi-agent technology and solutions. He is also Director and Co-owner, with George Rzevski, of Multi-Agent Technology Ltd, London, UK.

Petr has graduated from Computer Science Department of Samara Aerospace University in 1983 and obtained PhD degree in Functional Programming Languages and Artificial Intelligence for Aerospace Applications in 1986. Petr is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Control of Complex Systems of Russian Academy of Science and Professor of Multi-Agent Systems at the Volga Region Academy of Telecommunications and Informatics, Samara State Aerospace University and State University of Railways.

Between 1983 and 1991 Petr Skobelev was senior scientist and chief developer of real-time measurement and control systems, image processing systems, intelligent simulators and expert systems for Samara Branch of Institute of Physics and Institute of Complex System of Russian Academy of Science.

At the beginning of Perestroika, in 1990, he met George and they started collaborative research and design projects in the area of multi-agent systems.
This collaboration led to Petr’s intense entrepreneurial activity. He started his first business, ArtLog Ltd, in Samara, developing intelligent tutoring systems and
learning environments and then, in 1997, Knowledge Genesis Ltd, also in Samara, a software house specialising in multi-agent e-Government applications.

In 1999, George and Petr founded Magenta Corporation Ltd in London, UK, with a software development branch in Samara, the company that is still successfully
developing multi-agent software for large-scale industrial applications. The partnership worked rather well and after they left Magenta Corporation, they expanded to Germany and the USA and considerably increased the UK and Russian business, transferring it to Multi-Agent Technology Ltd and Smart Solutions Ltd, respectively. All commercial applications described in the book have been developed under Petr’s direct supervision in Samara.

In 2012 Smart Solutions has won IP project in FP7 EU Program “Smart Factories” together with EADS and Airbus, Cologne University, Prague University,196 MANAGING COMPLEXITY Manchester University, Politechnik Institute of Braganca and partners from other countries.

In 2013 Smart Solutions has been recognised as one of the most innovative and fast growing companies in Russia. The award was given by the Association
of Innovative Regions in Russia and Russian Venturing Company. The assessment was performed by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Petr’s research interests include multi-agent platforms and applications as well as emergent intelligence. He authored more than 150 publications and, jointly
with George, has three UK and international patents on multi-agent systems for logistics, dynamic data mining and semantic processing. He is member of IEEE IES Technical Committee on Industrial Agents.

Professor. George Rzevski is an academic, entrepreneur and consultant based in London, UK. He is Professor Emeritus, Complexity Science and Design Research Group at The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK.

George began his academic career in the UK at Kingston Polytechnic, later Kingston University, where he was Professor and Founder Head of Information Systems. Until 1999 George was a full-time academic and Professor in Department of Design and Innovation at The Open University, Milton Keynes, where he was Director, Centre for the Design of Intelligent Systems. He supervised a large number of PhD projects and acted as external examiner for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in many UK university departments.

Throughout his academic career George worked as a consultant for private companies, government administrations and the EU on various issues related to advanced information technologies.

Prof. Rzevski has published widely and delivered keynote papers at numerous international conferences and also served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Engineering, published by Elsevier.

George is one of the Joint Founders of a network of advanced technology companies, which are engaged in marketing and developing multi-agent systems for adaptive allocation of resources (complexity management).