Gary Polhill (Principal Investigator) has been working on agent-based models of human-natural systems for over twenty-five years. His research over the past ten years has focused on empirical applications of agent-based modelling, in agriculture, biodiversity, pro-environmental behaviour, sustainable lifestyles, energy use and systemic change such as the potential transition to lab-grown animal proteins. This has been funded from diverse sources, chiefly the Scottish Government’s Strategic Research Programmes and the European Union’s Framework Programmes (FP6, FP7 and H2020). He has considerable experience working in international and inter- and trans-disciplinary academic research projects, contributing insights from agent-based modelling work done using a high-performance computing cluster dedicated to agent-based simulation studies. He was President of the European Social Simulation Association (the largest international learned society collecting interdisciplinary individuals interested in agent-based modelling) from 2016-2020, and is on the editorial board of the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (JASSS). He currently leads a £3M project on Large Scale Modelling for the Scottish Government (JHI-C5-1), which includes agent-based modelling to simulate policy-to-fork value chains in Scotland, developing provenance-enabled tools to support simulation studies, and methods for front- and back-end participatory modelling design.
