Research Partners

The Technical University of Cluj-Napoca (TUCN) is one of the most prestigious higher education institutions in Romania and dates back to 1920. Study programs in Automation and in Computer Science were started since 1977. Since its birth, the Faculty of Automation and Computer Science has earned an international reputation for its high academic standards and excellence in research. At present, the faculty has over 120 academic staff organized in three departments (Computer Science, Control Engineering and Mathematics), three bachelor programs, eight master programs and two PhD programs in which study about 2000 students. The Computer Science Department approaches a wide range of research topics which addresses fundamental issues in Computer Science and Information Technology like: design and analysis of algorithms, data communications, artificial vision and image processing, distributed systems. The Department is involved in national and international research grants and contracts in cooperation with other universities or industrial partners like Siemens, Volkwagen, Nokia, Microsoft, or HP. Technical University of Cluj-Napoca (TUCN) is assessed at the national level by ARACIS with ``high trust degree''. At the international level it was evaluated by the Associatian of European Universities as ``Advanced Research Institute``. In 2011, the research within the 9 faculties is conducted based on 165 grants from PN-II national competition, 10 FP7 European contracts, but also 73 contracts with Romanian industrial partners and 21 agreements with international economic agents.

The Universidad Nacional del Sur was founded in 1956 in Bahía Blanca as the first University in the southern part of Argentina. There are around 24.000 students currently enrolled at the University, pursuing undergraduate and postgraduate studies in different areas (Mathematics, Physics, Engineering, Computer Science, Law, Chemistry, among many others). The Department of Computer Science and Engineering (DCIC) of the Universidad Nacional del Sur was founded In 1995, and it coordinates undergraduate and postgraduate careers in Computer Science (BSc in Computer Science, MSc in Computer Science, PhD in Computer Science). Within the DCIC., the Laboratory of Research and Development in Artificial Intelligence (LIDIA, http://lidia.cs.uns.edu.ar) is particularly important. The Laboratory is led by Prof. Dr. Guillermo Simari, and It constitutes the main research center in Latinamerica in the area of argumentation and its technological applications. The Laboratory involves several highly qualified researchers, as well as many PhD and postdoc students. Researchers from LIDIA have several publications in major AI international journals (e.g. AI Journal, Fuzzy Sets and Systems, etc.) and conferences (IJCAI, AAAI, COMMA, ECSQARU, etc.). Several research projects have been successfully carried out in the last years, including bilateral projects (with Portugal, Germany and Hungary) and other projects funded by national research agencies. Research at LIDIA includes several subareas of AI, such as argumentation, knowledge representation, logic programming, intelligent information retrieval, among others.

Table 2: Team members.

Institution	Position	Researcher	Domain
UNS	Coordonator	S. A. Gomez	Inconsistent ontologies
	Experienced Researcher	C. I. Chesnevar	Argumentation theory, Defeasible reasoning
	Postdoc	M. G. Lucero	Knowledge representation
TUCN	Coordonator	A. Groza	Normative reasoning, argumentative agents
	Experienced researcher	I. A. Letia	Artificial Intelligence, Multi-agent systems
	Phd. Student	A. Goron	Formal methods

	Sergio Alejandro Gomez is currently working as Full-time Adjoint Professor (Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Universidad Nacional del Sur, Argentina) where he teaches Computer Programming and Data Structures and Part-time Associate Professor (Facultad Regional Bahia Blanca, Universidad Tecnológica Nacional) where he teaches Fundamentals of Informatics. His education includes a PhD in Computer Science (Universidad Nacional del Sur, Argentina, 2009), a Master in Computer Science (Universidad Nacional del Sur, Argentina, 2004), a Bachelor of Science (Graduate degree in Informatics (Licenciado en Informática), Universidad Nacional de La Plata, 2001) and Computing Analyst (Undergraduate degree in Informatics, Analista de Computación), Universidad Nacional de La Plata, 1995. For his graduate studies he was awarded with the Joaquin V. Gonzalez distinction to best students. He performs his research at the Artificial Intelligence Research Lab LIDIA (Lab director: Dr. Guillermo Simari). His research interests include Defeasible Argumentation, Semantic Web, ontologies, Knowledge representation. He has category 4 (four), (1 is the highest, 5 the lowest) in Programa de Incentivos a la Investigación (Argentinian Government Research Program). He has participated as member in several research projects since 2003 under the supervision of Guillermo Simari. He was also a member of DAAD-SECYT project in 2007 (directors: Carlos Ivan Chesnevar, UNS, Argentina, and Jurgen Dix, Clausthal University of Technology, Clausthal, Germany).
	Carlos Ivan Chesnevar is one of the key persons of the research team. He is Independent Researcher from the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) of Argentina since 2004. Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of the Universidad Nacional del Sur (Bahía Blanca, Argentina). Posdoctoral activities at the University of Lleida (Spain) as hired researcher (Academic Excellence Program Ramon y Cajal, Ministry of Science and Technology, Spain), from 2003 to 2007. He has led several scientific projects related to argumentation and technological applications, supported by different funding agencies (DAAD Germany, CONICET Argentina, Microsoft Research USA, etc.). He is currently member of the Assessment Committe of the Argentinean government for appointing researchers in Computer Science within the national research system (CONICET). He has been also representing Argentina as a non-European expert in argumentation within an ESF-funded COST action on Agreement Technologies . He has carried out research stances in different universities (Imperial College, London, UK ; University Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany; Washington University, USA, etc.). He has supervised several PhD and MSc Theses in Computer Science, particularly related to argumentation in Artificial Intelligence and its applications. He has participated as PC member in most major AI conferences (IJCAI, AAMAS, ECSQARU, etc.). He has published more than 20 journal articles, 7 book chapters and more than 100 papers in international and national conferences in his research area.
	M. Lucero
	Adrian Groza received his Phd in 2008 from Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania. He is member in Open Agent Based Modeling Consortium (din 2013), Int. Assoc. for Artificial Intelligence and Law (din 2012), Computer Science Teacher Assoc@ACM (din 2011), Special Interest Group on Human Computer Interaction ROCHI@ACM (din 2004). He served on several program committees of international conferences: ICCP (Cluj-Napoca, RO), CT (Praga, Cehia,), CDT (Venetia, Italia), SSW (Barcelona, Spania), MCCSIS (Lisabona, Portugalia), ICCT (Freiburg, Germania), ICITST (Londra, UK), NDT (Ostrava, Cehia), RoCHi (Iasi, RO). He has been a reviewer for some international journals: International Journal on Semantic Web and Inf. Systems, Argument Computation, Information Technology Research. His research interests are multi-agent systems, normative reasoning and knowledge representation.
	Ioan Alfred Letia is a key person of the research team. He is a full professor in the Department of Computer Science of the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca and head of the Intelligent Systems Group. He is a correspondent member of the Academy for Technical Sciences in Romania since 1999. He received his Ph.D. in 1975 from the City University, London, UK. He is also member of the Association for Computing Machinery (1995-1998, 2004-Date), Gesellschaft fur Informatik, Artificial Intelligence, Germany (since 1991), IEEE, Computer Society (1992-1994, 2006-2008). His professional activities include: guest Resercher, National University of Singapore, Singapore (April 2002), guest Researcher, McGill University, Montreal, Canada (May 2001), Course on ''Simulation of Organizations`` taught at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2000-2001), guest Researcher, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (Sep 2000), Tempus Programme Visitor, Hamburg University, Germany (Nov 1999 ), RoboCup Championship, Paris, France, place 18 in class ''simulated soccer`` (July 1998), local Organizer of the 1st ACM Summer School for Central and Eastern Europe, Belis-Fintinele, Romania (July 1996), Adjunct Faculty; Course on Object-Oriented Technology in Information Systems Analysis and Design, Loyola College in Maryland, Baltimore, USA (Jan-May 1996), Tempus Programme Visitor Southampton University, UK (Nov. 1995), Guest Researcher Universities of Saarland and Konstanz, Germany (Oct-Nov.1994), Tempus Programme Visitor Exeter University and University of Edinburgh, UK (Nov. 1993). He served on several program committees of international conferences and has been a reviewer for some international journals. He is the program chair of the annual IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Computer Communication and Processing held in Cluj-Napoca since 2006. His current research interests include flexible multi-agent communication, and checking the normative processes.
	Anca Goron is a Phd. student at Technical Universitty of Cluj-Napoca, Department of Computer Science and member of the Intelligent Systems Group. Her current research interests regard model checking and hybrid logics.