Wiktor Piotrowski

Senior Research Scientist · Intelligent Systems Lab · Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), part of SRI International

I am a Senior Research Scientist at Palo Alto Research Center in the Intelligent Systems Lab. My research is focused on resilient and adaptable autonomy in dynamic and expressive environments.

Research Interests

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Automated Planning & Scheduling
  • Hybrid (Mixed Discrete/Continuous) Systems
  • Interactive Data Visualisation
  • Engineering Design
  • Aerospace Systems
  • Heuristic Search
  • Optimisation
  • Knowledge Representation & Systems Modelling

Experience

Senior Research Scientist

Palo Alto Research Center

Leading Automated Planning efforts contributing to a variety of research projects (commercial and government-funded). Developing AI Planning algorithms and techniques, modelling complex systems.

October 2019 - present

Research Associate

Engineering Design Centre, University of Cambridge

Working on the TOICA & APROCONE projects aiming to develop an innovative aircraft design environment (with Airbus, GKN, Rolls-Royce, and Cranfield University). Researching and developing innovative Visual Analytics approaches for interactive visualisation and control of complex multidimensional engineering design data. Developing Machine Learning and optimisation methods to automate parts of the aircraft design process, improve accuracy and efficiency of the designs, and support the analysis of the data, as well as handle uncertainties in the models. The developments are being implemented into the Cambridge Advanced Modeller (CAM) using Java and Python programming languages.

August 2015 - September 2019

University Applicant Interviewer

Clare and Homerton Colleges, University of Cambridge

Interviewing and testing Computer Science and Engineering student applicants. Selecting top candidates to receive offers from the pool.

December 2018

Student Supervisor

University of Cambridge

Delivering teaching supervisions to university students in a range of subjects: Artificial Intelligence, Engineering Programming, Object-Oriented Programming. Colleges: Christ's, Clare, Corpus Christi, Downing, Homerton, Emmanuel, Selwyn, Murray Edwards, Pembroke.

January 2018 - September 2019

Graduate Teaching Assistant

King's College London

Delivering lectures, tutorials and practical sessions in Programming Practice & Applications, Artificial Intelligence, Data Structures & Algorithms, Mobile Applications, Development, Elementary Logic, Foundations of Computing, Individual and Group Programming Projects.
Awarded the 2014 Outstanding Teaching Award from King's College London.

October 2013 - September 2017

Student Mentor

King’s College London

Guiding two students throughout the duration of their MSc degree in Computer Science. Helping them with coursework and preparing for exams, as well as advising them on extracurricular activities and job hunting after finishing their courses

September 2014 - September 2015

Programming Course Coordinator

King’s College London

Developing a pre-term Java programming course for MSc students: preparing lecture materials and exercises, delivering practical sessions, preparing and marking coursework and exams.

August 2014 - September 2014

Research Assistant

Royal Holloway, University of London

Developing software in Python for web scraping and data processing. Extracting and processing facial features from images. Web design and maintenance.

December 2013 - September 2014

Young Graduate Trainee in Informatics

Advanced Concepts Team, European Space Agency

Primary Project: Space Hopper
Developing Space Hopper, an experiment aiming to improve automated methods for designing complex interplanetary spacecraft trajectories using self-adaptive differential evolution algorithms. Developing an interactive 3D crowdsourcing system to formulate novel heuristic search algorithms based on innate spatio-temporal abilities of human users.
Secondary project: Google Summer of Code Mentor
Supervising a Master’s student extending the functionality of the PaGMO/PyGMO optimisation software making it a distributed system. Analysing, testing and developing Python code, advising and guiding the assigned student, writing reports.

October 2012 - October 2013

Education

King's College London

Doctor of Philosophy in Artificial Intelligence
Thesis Topic: Heuristics for Artificial Intelligence Planning in Hybrid Systems

October 2013 - July 2018

University of Glasgow

MSc in Computing Science with Merit
Sebtember 2011 - September 2012

University of Strathclyde

BSc in Computing Science with First Class Honours
September 2007 - July 2011

Selected Publications

A Domain-Independent Agent Architecture for Adaptive Operation in Evolving Open Worlds

Shiwali Mohan*, Wiktor Piotrowski*, Roni Stern, Sachin Grover, Sookyung Kim, Jacob Le, Johan de Kleer.

Artificial Intelligence, 2024.

System Resilience through Health Monitoring and Reconfiguration

Ion Matei, Wiktor Piotrowski, Alexandre Perez, Johan de Kleer, Jorge Tierno, Wendy Mungovan, Vance Turnewitsch.

ACM Transactions on Cyber-Physical Systems, 2024

Novelty Accommodating Multi-Agent Planning in High Fidelity Simulated Open World

James Chao*, Wiktor Piotrowski*, Roni Stern, Héctor Ortiz-Peña, Mitch Manzanares, Shiwali Mohan, Douglas Lange

Prestigious Applications of Intelligent Systems, European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2024.

Self-adaptive Mission Planning using High-Fidelity Open World Simulation

Wiktor Piotrowski, James Chao, Sachin Grover, Roni Stern, Shiwali Mohan, Douglas S Lange

International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS), 2024.

Nyx: Planning for Emerging Problems with PDDL+ and Beyond

Wiktor Piotrowski, Alexandre Perez, Sachin Grover

Knowledge Engineering for Planning and Scheduling, ICAPS, 2024.

Crafting a Pogo Stick in Minecraft with Heuristic Search

Yarin Benyamin, Argaman Mordoch, Shahaf Shperberg, Wiktor Piotrowski, Roni Stern.

International Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS), 2024.

Learning to Operate in Open Worlds by Adapting Planning Models

Wiktor Piotrowski, Roni Stern, Yoni Sher, Jacob le, Matthew Klenk, Johan de Kleer, Shiwali Mohan.

International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS), 2023.

Novelty Accommodating Multi-Agent Planning in High Fidelity Simulated Open World

James Chao, Wiktor Piotrowski, Mitch Manazares, Douglas S. Lange

Multiagent Sequential Decision Making under Uncertainty, AAMAS, 2023.
Most Visionary Paper Award at AAMAS 2023 Workshops.

Heuristic Search for Physics-Based Problems: Angry Birds in PDDL+

Wiktor Piotrowski, Yoni Sher, Sachin Grover, Roni Stern, Shiwali Mohan.

International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS), 2023.

Model-Based Novelty Adaptation for Open-World AI

Matthew Klenk, Wiktor Piotrowski, Roni Stern, Shiwali Mohan, Johan de Kleer.

Advances in Cognitive Systems, 2020.

Enhanced interactive parallel coordinates using machine learning and uncertainty propagation for engineering design

Wiktor Piotrowski, Timoleon Kipouros, P.J. Clarkson.

IEEE International Conference on eScience, 2019.

Automated Planning with Goal Reasoning in Minecraft

Mark Roberts, Wiktor Piotrowski, Pryce Bevan, David Aha, Maria Fox, Derek Long, Daniele Magazzeni.

Integrated Execution of Planning and Acting, ICAPS, 2017.

Heuristic Planning for PDDL+ Domains

Wiktor Piotrowski, Maria Fox, Derek Long, Daniele Magazzeni, Fabio Mercorio.

International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), 2016.

Heuristic Planning for Hybrid Systems

Wiktor Piotrowski, Maria Fox, Derek Long, Daniele Magazzeni, Fabio Mercorio.

Planning in Hybrid Systems, AAAI, 2016.

Space Hopper: a Serious Game Crowdsourcing the Design of Interplanetary Trajectories

Wiktor Piotrowski, Marcus Martens, Dario Izzo, Daniel Hennes.

Acta Futura, issue 9, pp.93-100, 2014.