I am a Research Fellow in Autonomous Systems in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Manchester, UK. My work focuses on assurance—generating better evidence and arguments to ensure the safe, ethical, and secure design and implementation of robotics and autonomous systems. The main research themes include evidence generation, informing future standards, design for assurance, and dynamic assurance. This work is part of CRADLE (The Centre for Robotic Autonomy in Demanding and Long-lasting Environments), which researches new technologies for demanding and heavily regulated industry sectors such as space, nuclear decommissioning, energy generation, and urban infrastructure.
From April 2021 to January 2024, I worked as a Research Fellow in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bristol, UK. I collaborated with a multidisciplinary team to develop new verification and specification methods and apply them to specific case studies in swarm robotics, soft robotics, and machine learning UAVs. This position was part of the multidisciplinary UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Node in Functionality programme, which aims to explore how evolving functionality (adaptation) influences the ways in which autonomous systems need to be specified, designed, verified, and regulated to be trustworthy.
From November 2019 to February 2021, I worked as a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Warwick, UK. I investigated agent-based modelling of norms and conventions using reinforcement learning. There, I proposed a novel agent-based modelling approach to make agent interactions more nuanced. From April 2018 to October 2019, I worked as a Research Fellow in the Agents, Interactions and Complexity research group in the Department of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton. There, I focused on responsible AI and proposed a novel, systematic model-checking approach for responsible decision-making of human-agent collectives to ensure they are safe, controllable, and ethical.
Previously, I held two ERCIM Fellowships (European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics). In this context, I secured an EU Marie Curie Fellowship from 2013 to 2014. The two ERCIM Fellowships were completed at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland in Oulu, Finland (2015-2017), and the Fraunhofer FOKUS research institute in Berlin, Germany (2013-2014). Prior to that, I worked as a postdoc for two years (2011-2013) at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy. The second year of that project was performed as a consultant in autonomic systems at Volkswagen AG in Berlin, Germany. The postdoctoral projects from 2011 to 2015 were in the context of the ASCENS EU project (autonomic service-component ensembles).
I earned a PhD in Software Engineering (2010) and a First Class Honours degree in Computing (2004) from Monash University, Australia.
Research expertise and interests: assurance, autonomous and robotic systems, specification, formal verification and model checking, multi-agent systems, norms and conventions, reinforcement learning, responsible AI, software architecture and design, architectural patterns, service-oriented computing, model-driven engineering, models at runtime, and requirements engineering.
Publications: So far, I have published 33 research papers (13 journal articles/book chapters; 19 conference papers; 1 PhD symposium paper), of which I am the first author on 30. http://www.dhaminda.com/publications