Biography

Professor Benjamin Kwang Mong Sim, IET Fellow and former Associate Editor-in-Chief of Springer's Applied Intelligence Journal, conducts interdisciplinary research spanning the areas of game theory, fog computing, cloud computing, multiagent systems, and evolutionary computation. Placing great emphasis on validating economic efficiency and computational efficiency to demonstrate mathematical rigor, his research results culminated in the publication of articles in journals in two different fields: 1)  journals in the field of game theory and economics and 2)  journals in the field of computer science. Additionally, he previously published papers in the field of philosophical logic. The impact and efficacy of his research are evidenced by award-winning journal articles, most frequently cited papers, robust economic mechanism, mathematical solutions that are adopted by fog/cloud computing researchers, and award-winning proof-of-concept software prototypes.

Professor Sim is a pioneer and a leading researcher in  agent-based Cloud computing and agent-based fog computing. 

• Earliest work: He is the first to coin the terms "agent-based Cloud computing" and "agent-based fog computing". Whereas his paper entitled "agent-based Cloud commerce" published in 2009  is the earliest published paper documenting the idea of using intelligent agents for bolstering resource allocation in cloud computing, his paper entitled "Agent-based Fog Computing: Gossiping, Reasoning, and Bargaining" published in 2018 is the earliest published paper documenting the idea of using intelligent agents for bolstering resource allocation in fog computing.

• IEEE Spotlight, most-frequently cited, & best papers: His journal paper entitled "Agent-based Cloud Computing" was selected as the Spotlight Paper of the October-December 2012 issue of the IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, is the most frequently cited paper on this topic, and was the No. 5 Most Popular Article in IEEE Xplore in August 2014. Professor Sim also received many best paper awards on agent-based cloud computing in international conferences.

• Mathematical rigor: Game-theoretic analysis and computational complexity analysis validate that Professor Sim's agent-based techniques for bolstering resource allocation in fog computing are both economically efficient and computationally efficient. 

• Keynotes, tutorials, & surveys: He delivered several keynote lectures on agent-based cloud computing in IEEE-spored international conferences and is the sole author of two IEEE Transactions Survey-Tutorial papers on agent-based cloud computing and agent-based fog computing.

Over the past three decades, he has also made a considerable amount of contributions to automated negotiation, including the publication of several best journal and conference papers.

• ACM Best of Computing:  In 2013, Professor Sim's journal paper on finding optimal negotiation strategies received the award as ACM Computing Reviews’ 2013 Best of Computing: Notable Article in Computing. 

In game theory, Professor Sim has contributed to mechanism design, bargaining theory, and cooperative game theory.

• Mechanism design: He is the first to devise a robust bargaining mechanism that is 1) incentive compatible, 2) strongly group strategyproof, 3) shill resistant, and 4) computationally efficient.

  • Incentive compatibility: Being incentive compatible, the Sim bargaining mechanism gives incentives to agents for behaving in a manner consistent with the desired outcome where every agent's benefit is maximized. 

  • Strong group strategyproofness: Since strong group strategyproofness is a stronger notion of collusion resistance than the more prevalent notion of group strategyproofness, being strongly group strategyproof, the Sim bargaining mechanism is strongly resistant to collusion and is more robust than existing group strategyproof mechanisms.

  • Shill resistance: Being shill resistant, the Sim bargaining mechanism is not susceptible to identity faking for illicit trading over the Internet.

  • Computational efficiency: Being computationally efficient, the bargaining rules of the Sim bargaining mechanism do not have high computational demands and do not squander computational resources.

• Bargaining theory: He developed a bargaining theory for fog computing which validates that the Sim bargaining solution for pricing fog computing resources satisfies the famous axioms developed by Nobel Laureate John Nash.

• Cooperative game theory: He formulated an Intercloud coalition game for analyzing the interactions of stakeholders in an intelligent InterCloud.

Moreover, he also made significant contributions to both the theory and (many) applications of agent-based techniques, including swarm Intelligence and biologically-inspired agents,  agent-mediated e-Commerce,  agent-based information retrieval and search engine, and reasoning of multiagent systems.

Professional Activities and Services: Professor Sim held many notable and senior editorial appointments  - he was the Associate Editor-in-Chief of Springer's Applied Intelligence Journal and was an Associate Editor of four IEEE  Transactions/Journals. He served as an external tenure and promotion reviewer for a preeminent research university in USA and a referee for many national research grant councils, including the National Science Foundation, USA. He also served as a referee for Routledge Economics Book Series on Game Theory, Taylor & Francis, UK, and a PhD thesis examiner for universities in Canada and Australia. 

Education: Professor Sim received the PhD and the MSc degrees in computer science from the University of Calgary, AB, Canada and the BSc (Hon) Summa Cum Laude degree in computer science from the University of Ottawa, ON, Canada.