Activities

ModelAge will hold a general meeting of 1 week twice a year. These general meetings have as objectives:

1. to obtain a common understanding of the informal needs and of the formal models used in each field;
2. to decide the creation of new Specialist Group on promising topics;
3. to report the work of Specialist Groups;
4. to ensure adequate interfaces between the work of Specialist Groups, and to integrate the work of several Specialist Groups.
5. to keep the members aware of pertinent innovations in the fields of study.

Furthermore, shorter specialist meetings will be held about three times a year per interacting group of fields; this will yield between 6 and 12 specialist meetings per year, since several Specialist Groups will be active concurrently. These meetings will regroup the specialists of two or more fields of study comparing their approach on given facets of the concept of agent. The facets that show the most promising will be the subject of specialist meetings, where specialists from the fields where the facet is already well formalised (called proposing field) and specialists from the fields where the facet seems fruitful (called demanding field) meet and discuss the model in depth, and experiment it in small case studies. The proposals for model enrichment are then proposed to all members of the group, which evaluate the interest of integration in their field. In the first year, these subfields and facets will be those that are identified as having a potential for rapid integration. Later on, these meetings will treat the more difficult issues.

Training PhD students of the member sites will be invited to choose PhD topics in these multidisciplinary facets. Exchange of PhD students will be encouraged by ModelAge so as to form young multidisciplinary specialists. Tutorial explanations on formal models will be provided during general and specialist meetings, for the other members of ModelAge and the participants to the open Workshops.

Training for PhD students (of the other ModelAge sites) will be offered by all sites, on their speciality topics. Local training for industrials and undergraduate students will be provided by bilateral exchange of specialists. Exchanges for industrial training are intended to be self-supporting financially.