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.

Prof. 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 served as Visiting Professor at London School of Economics; Brunel University,West London;Wuhan University, China; Cologne University of Applied Sciences, Germany; and Moratuwa University, Colombo, Sri Lanka. George and Petr are Joint Founders of a network of advanced technologycompanies, which include Magenta Corporation, London, UK, and Samara,Russia; Rzevski Solutions Ltd, London; Knowledge Genesis Ltd, London, UK, and Hanover, Germany; Smart Solutions Ltd, Samara; and Multi-AgentTechnology Ltd, London, UK. The companies are engaged in marketing and developing multi-agent systems for adaptive allocation of resources (complexity management) and the network is
self-organising to adapt to changing market conditions.

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. His Centre was well funded by grants from government and industry and his Department was rated 5 out of 5 in the two UK Research Assessment Exercises.

As a tribute to his successful research career, the University established recently a new “The George Rzevski Complexity Laboratory”.

At The Open University George pioneered undergraduate education in intelligent mechatronics launching a course in which each of 400 students were given
his/her personal intelligent robot to conduct experiments at home.

Prof. Rzevski has published widely and delivered keynote papers at numerous international conferences. Jointly with Petr, George has three UK and international patents on multi-agent systems for logistics, dynamic data mining and semantic processing.

He supervised a large number of PhD projects and acted as external examiner for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in many UK university departments. He served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Engineering, published by Elsevier.

He has assessed candidates for tenure on behalf of a number of American universities, including Stamford, Ohio and Texas; examined over 30 PhD
students from universities in the UK and abroad, including Cambridge University, Imperial College, LSE, Royal College of Art, The Open University, Cardiff
University, Singapore University and National University of Ireland. For several years George has delivered a regular series of lectures on Economic,
Social and Cultural Implications of Global Networks to postgraduate students at London School of Economics.

Throughout his academic career George worked as a consultant for private companies,government administrations and EU on various issues related to advanced information technologies. He has advised ITT Communications, London, Antwerp and Paris; ICL Computers, Manchester; IBM, London; Philips, Eindhoven.He began his academic career in the UK at Kingston Polytechnic, later Kingston University, where he was Professor and Founder Head of Information Systems.At Kingston he launched new undergraduate and postgraduate courses aimed at bringing together disciplines of Information Technology (IT) and Business and led a successful research centre in Computer-Integrated Manufacturing. The Centre worked in close cooperation with leading high-technology companies, including ICL, Xerox and IBM.

George is of Russian origin. His family emigrated from Russia in 1918 and settled in Serbia, where hewas born in 1932 and educated at the University of Belgrade.

In his late twenties he was given an opportunity to establish a new design office in Belgrade. He hand-picked his staff employing only talented young engineers and the design bureaux grew under his leadership into a major organisation capable of undertaking large-scale electrical engineering projects. At the age of 29 George was Chief Designer of all major railways electrification schemes inYugoslavia.George moved to the UKin the 1960s where he attended a postgraduate refresher course at Imperial College before joining Kingston.