Hello,

My name is Roberto and I am a graduate student at The Pennsylvania State University. I am in the “Information Sciences - Cybersecurity and Information Assurance program”, through which I discovered my interest in ABM. I am conducting my capstone research project on how to make ABM more effective in the disaster recovery planning process of IT companies. I am currently looking for interview candidates to conduct my research. If you or anyone you know have experience using ABM for disaster recovery planning in IT or tech, please reach out!

I learned about ABM through the Intelligent Agents course at Penn State, where we modeled everything from terrorist attacks to social relationships. I was immediately interested in ABM due to the potential and capabilities that it provides in so many areas. I hope to make ABM more popular in IT disaster recovery planning through my research, while learning more about ABM myself.

Positions held today:
• Associate Professor for Geoinformatics and Ecology at the University of Salzburg (since 2017)
• UNIGIS Program Director (since 2020)
• Head of the Research Group “Spatial Simulation” (since 2013)

Major academic milestones:
• Assistant Professor, Department for Geoinformatics, University of Salzburg (2013-2017)
• Associate Faculty in the FWF Doctoral College “GIScience” (2013-2017)
• Director of Studies UNIGIS MSc distance learning programs, University of Salzburg (2012-2020)
• PhD at the University of Innsbruck on ecological modelling (2011)
• Research Assistant Austrian Academy of Sciences, GIScience Institute (2007-2011)
• Magistra in Ecology, Univ. of Innsbruck (2001) and MSc in GIS, Univ. of Edinburgh (2006)

I’m a Senior Fellow at Fors Marsh who has a PhD in Industrial-Organizational Psychology and a PStat accreditation by the American Statistical Association.

I am an Associate Professor of Industrial Engineering with over two decades of experience in teaching, research, and supervision in data-driven decision making, operations research, and computational modeling. My research integrates Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), Agent-Based Modeling (ABM), and Reinforcement Learning (RL) to support strategic decision systems in sustainability, investment, and industrial operations. My recent work explores human-centric and multi-actor systems, leveraging simulation-based optimization and AI-driven analytics to enhance resilience, efficiency, and sustainability in complex socio-technical environments. I have published extensively in international journals, reviewed over 75 manuscripts, and am an active member of INFORMS and the System Dynamics Society. My long-term goal is to bridge industrial systems modeling with intelligent decision support, aligning academic research with real-world sustainability and innovation challenges.

🔹 Experience
Associate Professor — Industrial Engineering, University of Engineering and Technology, Taxila (2018 – Present)• Teach graduate and undergraduate courses in Operations Research, Data Mining, Advanced Statistics, System Simulation, and Soft Computing.• Conduct funded research in agent-based and reinforcement learning models for sustainable and data-driven decision systems.• Supervise doctoral students in decision analytics, multi-agent modeling, and MCDM applications.• Reviewer for international journals including Neural Computing and Applications, the Journal of Cleaner Production, Annals of Operations Research, Environment, Development and Sustainability, Energy for Sustainable Development, Scientific Reports, IEEE Access, Cleaner Energy Systems, Utilities Policy, and Sustainable Futures

🔹 Research Interests•
Data-Driven Decision Making• Agent-Based Modeling (ABM)• Reinforcement Learning (RL)• Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA / MAMCA)• Sustainable Supply Chains• System Dynamics; Simulation• E-Health and Humanitarian Systems

🔹 Selected Achievements•
30+ peer-reviewed publications; ~360+ citations• Reviewer for 75+ international journal papers• Completed Coursera Specializations in Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Reinforcement Learning• 20+ years of experience integrating data science with sustainability modeling