About

Simon Parsons is a Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Lincoln and Director of the Centre for Doctoral Training on AI for Sustainable Agriculture. He received his PhD from University of London in 1993, and held positions at Queen Mary and Westfield College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, City University of New York, University of Liverpool and King’s College London before joining Lincoln. Throughout his career, Simon’s research interests have centred on the design and analysis of autonomous systems, in particular with respect to how teams of autonomous systems can decide what to do in complex environments. He is particularly interested in the use of computational argumentation, having made a number of contributions to work on argument-based dialogue and the use of argumentation for explanation. Simon moved to University of Lincoln because he is passionate about the potential of AI to solve problems in agriculture, both increasing productivity and improving sustainability. Recently he has been working on projects that: assure the safety of agricultural robots that work with humans; improve the explanations that robots can give to humans that they interact with; optimize the food production supply chain to reduce food waste; measure the use of nitrogen by plants; reduce the use of herbicides when spraying weeds; and use generative AI to help understand the biome of a cow rumen.